As I noted more eleven days ago, Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times calling for an international boycott of Israel. Facing outraged donors, particularly in the Los Angeles area, university President Rivka Carmi penned an article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, in which she blasted Gordon, but claimed that she is powerless to fire him.
Academic freedom exists to ensure that there is an unfettered and free discussion of ideas relating to research and teaching and to provide a forum for the debate of complicated ideas that may challenge accepted norms. Gordon, however, used his pulpit as a university faculty member to advocate a personal opinion, which is really demagoguery cloaked in academic theory.
Gordon argues that Israel is an "apartheid" state and that "a boycott would save Israel from itself." But the empirical facts show that it would destroy the very fabric of the society that he claims to want to protect. Instead of investing in activities that promote coexistence, this "call for a boycott" is already being used to isolate Israel.
This is particularly pernicious for our university, a proudly Zionist institution that embodies the dream of Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, to bring development and prosperity to all the residents of the Negev region. This work -- which includes community outreach and scientific innovation in Israel and around the world carried out by nearly 25,000 students, faculty and staff -- is being threatened by the egregious remarks of one person, under the guise of academic freedom.
A number of online campaigns have been launched calling for donors and other supporters of the university to "boycott BGU." We have heard the calls by those who demand that the university ignore Israeli law and fire Gordon, a tenured faculty member, on the basis of his statements. And we are also under attack by others who champion Gordon on the basis of freedom of speech.
Like it or not, Gordon cannot be readily dismissed. The law in Israel is very clear, and the university is a law-abiding institution.
On Wednesday night, I confirmed with someone who knows far more about this area of the law than I do that Gordon can apparently only be fired if he commits a crime. I asked whether his article might not be considered treason - which is a crime - and she said that "what he has done isn't treason in the eyes of the law." As Charles Dickens wrote in Oliver Twist, the law is an ass.
Gordis focuses on the outrage of American donors to Israeli universities, and argues that they should have known that Gordon and people who think like him permeate Israeli universities. Gordon himself has made similar arguments for years (including comparing Israel to Nazi Germany), as have his colleagues at just about every university in the country. Gordis is correct about this. American donors must be writing their checks with their eyes closed. Gordis' solution is an indictment of the Israel university system.
But first, a small digression. Gordis points out that there are no liberal arts colleges in Israel. That is true. One is admitted directly to a faculty (law, medicine, business, computers or whatever else strikes one's fancy) and just about everything you learn is a required course from that faculty. If you change what you want to do in the middle, you have to start over again. There's no four years of liberal arts to expose you to a wide variety of disciplines so that you can choose what you would really like to do. That's why there are so many kids here who finish university and then don't work at all in what they studied in university (and there are also kids who don't finish because of the frequent faculty strikes but that's another story - last year nearly an entire semester was wiped out).
Here's Dr. Gordis' solution:
In today's Israel, the People of the Book do not even read their own books. When they read or hear someone like Neve Gordon, nothing in their education has given them the tools to evaluate what he says, or to take him on. They are helpless.
TODAY'S NARROW model of education, in which students essentially study only one discipline, produces excellence, but excellence as technocrats. It does not produce the broadly read, intellectually nuanced people that the Jewish state so desperately needs.
Without dramatic change, Israeli universities will produce only more Neve Gordon's - scholars of varying quality, who feel no love for the very country that has saved their people. If it learned from American education, Israel might actually begin to cultivate a new wave of leadership, and with it, a generation of Israelis who actually love their nation.
Dr. Gordon is correct - Israel needs to be saved from itself. What Israel needs now is a reconceived notion of the educated Israeli.
It needs a liberal arts college, and the young people prepared to speak constructively about Jewish sovereignty, its challenges, its failures and its future that only that kind of college can produce.
A century ago, who could have imagined that the Jewish state would one day have a world-class army but a failing, collapsing educational system? Whether or not American Jews have the foresight to use their philanthropy to promote genuine change in Israeli academe still remains to be seen. But if they do, Neve Gordon's op-ed may ironically have goaded both Israel and the American Jewish community into taking the first steps needed to begin to save the Jewish state.
Gordis is 100% correct. But here's the catch: Most Israelis who go to university serve in the army until they are 21 years old. Add a four-year liberal arts program and they will be 25 before they start to pursue a profession. This is a country where people marry young. Tuition is cheap, but I'm not sure how much you gain from school if you're spending 40 hours a week working while you study in order to support yourself. The liberal arts college will not appeal to everyone. I doubt that an American-type system would work here.
Does Israel need a liberal arts college? Absolutely. But it will likely serve - and probably should only serve - an academic elite who would go on to become the country's philosophers and thinkers and historians and political scientists (but not - unfortunately - our politicians). Do enough Israelis see the importance of developing an academic elite like that? Do enough American Jews see it? That remains to be seen. But give Dr. Gordis credit for thinking outside the box. If a liberal arts college comes into existence, we may have a lot more people who can put the Neve Gordons of this country in their place.
Elder of Ziyon reviews a book that I'd love to read, Daniel Gordis' Saving Israel.
So what does Gordis suggest? He wants the very definition of what it means to be Jewish to change. He wants Israel to become a central part of diaspora Judaism and he wants Judaism to become the central part of Israeli life. He is equally upset at how Israeli schools ignore all Jewish history between the Bible and the birth of Zionism as he is at how the Chief Rabbinate of Israel ignores the opportunities to lead the entire country in debates about the religion, choosing instead to concentrate only on the religious sector.
Only when Judaism returns as the centerpiece of the Jewish state can Zionists articulate the purpose of Israel. Only a people who know who they are and how they became that way can justify their existence and their self-defense.
Gordis, ordained as a conservative rabbi, couches his suggestions in a pluralistic Jewish way. He doesn't refer to his beliefs in the book and one could argue that Conservative or Masorti Judaism has not exactly inspired masses of Jews in America. Nevertheless, his ideas make sense. Israelis need to become Jewishly literate and there need to be public debates about every difficult issue not (only) from a Western perspective but from the rich Jewish tradition. The divide between the religious Zionist, the haredi and the secular Israelis is too large and the religious have been too insular. Gordis shows that non-religious Israelis seem to want to learn more about Judaism as well but all too often do not have the tools.
...
Do these suggestions solve the problems that Israel has? Hardly. Gordis' questions are better than his answer. But his ideas are a prerequisite to solving Israel's problems. Israeli Jews need to be confident enough and conversant enough in their own Jewishness to rely on it to inform their decisions. Without that, the Jewish State could, God forbid, turn into just a Hebrew-speaking America that has nothing unique to offer the world and world Jewry.
Elder recounts several incidents from the book that illustrate how little some Israeli Jews know about Judaism. Having worked with Israeli Jews in Israel and with non-Jews in the US, I can confirm every word about how little the Israelis know. I used to get far more intelligent questions about being Jewish from non-Jewish co-workers in New York than from Jewish co-workers in Tel Aviv. And the extent to which some Israelis - Ashkenazim even more than Sephardim - are detached from Judaism is simply beyond belief. Let me give you a small example.
In my very first job after moving to Israel (in which I was urged by co-workers to "go back to America before you get stuck here), I often stayed late. The very first time I stayed late, my co-workers told me that they were ordering dinner, but they were sure I would not order with them. I told them I probably would not order with them, because I assumed from the way they were talking that they were ordering from a non-Kosher place. They said yes, they were ordering basar lavan (white meat). Never having heard that term before to describe the 'other white meat,' I assumed they meant white meat chicken. When they were explicit about what kind of white meat they were ordering, I looked at them in shock. They asked if I was shocked that they would order such a thing. I said that I was not shocked that they would order it, but that it was readily available in Tel Aviv (that was 18 years ago - it's much worse today). The reason I was shocked was that I knew that there is a law in Israel that prohibits raising swine "on the land of Israel." What I did not know is that there are several Kibbutzim that circumvent the law by raising swine on platforms (I kid you not).
The extent of the detachment of many Israeli Jews from Judaism is shocking.
Kerry in Israel amid Israeli calls for 'one-state solution'
What is perhaps most telling about US Secretary of State John FN Kerry's upcoming visit to Israel is that the photos being published in the mainstream media are variations on the one above. All of the photos include Shimon Peres, our 90-year old President who has never won a national election, and probably could not be elected to the house committee of his condominium. None of the pictures include Binyamin Netanyahu, who will soon pass David Ben Gurion as Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister (this is his third term). That's because 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud AbbasAbu Mazen won't meet with Netanyahu, and because Netanyahu - although he can't say so publicly - knows in his heart that the 'two-state solution' is dead.
Moreover, if you read that first link above regarding the trip, you will discover that no Israeli officials are quoted - only the director of communications for the pro-'Palestinian' J Street lobby, and David Harris of the American Jewish Committee, who recoiled with horror over Naftali Bennett's splashing the 'two-state solution' with cold water last week.
Even Abu Mazen senses that the game is over. That's why he's now dropping hints to the media about meaningless 'limited negotiations,' as if setting a deadline will ensure a cloud of white smoke between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Abu Mazen cannot and will not make the compromises necessary for a peace agreement, and there is other 'Palestinian' leader who is willing to make those compromises. But Abu Mazen cannot risk offending his financial patron in Washington, and so he makes empty noises about starting 'negotiations' as if that will make a difference.
Writing in the Jerusalem Post (unfortunately, behind a pay wall, but I have the column by email and will reproduce most of it below), Evelyn Gordon argues that although Netanyahu cannot say it yet, we Israelis can and should tell the world that the 'two-state solution' is dead, and that we should back our second-tier politicians - like Bennett - when they do so.
If it weren’t for one flaw, I’d agree completely with Daniel Gordis' column in
this paper last Friday. He’s right that the endless debate over the
peace process has sucked all the air out of the international Jewish
conversation “for far too long,” leaving no room for crucial topics like
“why the Jews need a state and the values on which it ought to be
based.” He’s right that we can’t afford to keep ignoring these issues.
And he’s right that the impossibility of an Israeli-Palestinian deal in
the foreseeable future creates space to finally start addressing them.
Indeed, that’s precisely what happened in the last Israeli election,
which, for the first time in decades, revolved around domestic issues –
i.e., what kind of state Israel should be – rather than the peace
process.
Yet these important arguments are undercut by the flaw
hidden in one seemingly innocuous statement: “Reasonable minds can
differ as to whether saying publicly that the two-state solution is dead
is healthy for Israel’s standing in the international community.”
Actually, where Gordis stands on that question seems pretty clear: Just last July, he signed an open letterurging
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not to adopt the Levy Report, lest it
“place the two-state solution and the prestige of Israel as a
democratic member of the international community, in peril”; he then
wrote an op-edinHaaretz
explaining his objections in more detail. Yet all the Levy Report said
is what every Israeli government has said for decades: that the West
Bank isn’t “occupied Palestinian territory,” but disputed territory to
which Israel has a valid claim – which in no way negates Israel’s
ability or willingness to cede part or all of it for peace. If Gordis
views even that as too dangerous to say publicly lest it paint Israel as
a peace rejectionist, I can’t imagine him not objecting to a blunt
public statement that “the two-state solution is dead.”
And therein
lies the flaw. For if prominent Israelis, and especially Israeli
leaders, aren’t willing to say this publicly and repeatedly, the “peace
process” will keep right on monopolizing the conversation, and we’ll
never have time and space for those other topics that Gordis rightly
considers vital.
First, this is because nobody
can be more Catholic than the pope: Neither American Jews nor world
leaders can declare the two-state solution dead as long as Israeli
leaders insist ad nauseam that it’s achievable.
Moreover, the
benefits of peace as envisioned by the optimists are enormous: no more
terror, an economic boom, reduced defense spending that frees up funds
for other purposes, unassailable international legitimacy instead of
creeping delegitimization. Most Israelis by now consider this “peace
dividend” a mirage: 83% think even withdrawing to the 1967 lines and
dividing Jerusalemwouldn’t endthe
conflict, meaning that terror, high defense spending, the economic
hindrance of being in a “war zone” and delegitimization of Israel’s
efforts to defend itself would all continue. But people who still
believe a deal is possible generally also believe it really would
produce those benefits.
Thus as long as Israeli
leaders encourage the fallacy that an agreement is possible, overseas
Jews will naturally think this should take precedence over the issues
Gordis rightly wants to discuss. For unless you think Israel would
forfeit its heart by ceding its historic heartland – which two-state
enthusiasts don’t – then whatever kind of state you want Israel to be,
the above-mentioned benefits would make it easier to achieve.
The
biggest problem, however, is that Israeli leaders don’t just say peace
is possible; whether out of genuine belief or merely to prove their
peacemaking bona fides, they also repeatedly declare it essential for
Israel’s very survival: “If the day comes when the two-state solution
collapses … the State of Israel is finished” (former prime minister Ehud Olmert); “it's impossible to survive in the long run without a political settlement” (Netanyahu); without a Palestinian state, “Israel will not be the Jewish nation-state” (Justice Minister Tzipi Livni).
When
Israel’s own leaders – to whom Israelis routinely demand that Diaspora
Jews defer on vital security issues – deem a two-state solution the most
vital security issue of all, necessary for Israel’s very survival, how
can overseas Jews be expected to care about anything else? If Israel
truly will expire without a two-state solution, then there’s no point in
discussing either why we need it or what kind of state it should be;
all such questions are irrelevant until we first ensure its survival by
implementing such a solution.
Thus if the conversation is ever to
change, Israelis must first explain to the world why the two-state
solution is indeed dead, and why Israel can nevertheless survive and
even thrive without it, just as it has for the past 65 years.
In fact, explaining this is absolutely vital – because Israel can’t
survive and thrive without peace unless we invest in building a state
capable of doing so, and that entails a lot of very hard work. We have
to reform our economy and education system, promote our case overseas,
foster social solidarity, better integrate our minorities, and much,
much more. Yet none of this can happen if Israel continues wasting vast
amounts of political time and energy on the peace process – which it
must keep doing as long as world leaders and overseas Jewry keep
insisting on it. And they will keep insisting until Israeli leaders
persuade them of what most Israelis already know: that it’s a lost
cause.
It may be the world isn’t yet ready to hear this from the very
top (even assuming Netanyahu were capable of saying it, which I doubt).
But it never will be ready unless other Israelis start laying the
groundwork.
And for those of you who are sitting and worrying that we will be demographically overwhelmed,, here is yet another reminder that the demographic monster is fake.
The latest Palestinian census, released in
2008, reported that there are 3.71 million Arabs living in Judea,
Samaria and the Gaza Strip. However, this figure includes persons living
overseas, persons twice counted, and inaccurate projections. In
addition, it appears that many PA Arabs have discovered the secret to
eternal life and rarely die, or – whose families simply choose not to
record the many members that do.
The Arab census numbers in Judea, Samaria and
Gaza are inflated by as many as 1 million persons. Even after removing
twice-counted persons and individuals not currently living in the
territories, the Arab population of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip
totals no more than 2.7 million people.
Furthermore, according to the American Israel
Demographic Research Group (AIDRG), studies have indicated that Arab
numbers have been on a significant decline while the Jewish birth rate
has been steadily on the upswing.
There exists no rational reason to put off the One State Solution.
If anything, due to the current wave of
illegal Arab settlement in Area C, which is under full civil and
military Israeli control as per the Oslo accords, the push towards the
One State Solution would be expedient and advisable, if not necessary in
Israel’s defense against an existential threat from within.
If we will not apply sovereignty over Judea
and Samaria, the Arabs will succeed in choking the Jewish communities,
isolating them—a process of establishing a terrorist run Palestinian
State that would threaten all of Israel. The PA’s blatant efforts to
establish physical infrastructures specifically in Area C are clearly an
attempt to actively annex more land and place it under PA control. In
fact, in July 2009, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad announced
his plan to unilaterally establish a de facto Palestinian state.
Say it ain't so: 40 prominent US Jews urge Netanyahu to bury Levy report
If you're wondering the extent to which the 'two-state solution' has become an article of faith, I was shocked to find Daniel Gordis among 40 'US Jews' (that's in scare quotes because Gordis is technically an Israeli, and the letter also included Edgar Bronfman, who is Canadian) who signed a letter urging Prime Minister Netanyahu to bury the Levy report.
More than 40 prominent American Jewish leaders and philanthropists sent a letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Sunday in which they implored him not to approve the judicial report that says Jews may settle freely in Judea and Samaria.
"As strong advocates for Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish and democratic state, we are deeply concerned about the recent findings of government commission led by Supreme Court Justice (Ret.) Edmond Levy,” the letter said.
"We fear that this report, if approved, will place the two-state solution, and the prestige of Israel as a democratic member of the international community, in peril.”
The letter's signatories letter include philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Lester Crown; Marvin Lender, Former National Chairman of UJA; Rabbi Daniel Gordis, President of the Shalem Center; Deborah Lipstadt, an expert on Holocaust studies at Emory University; Bernard Nussbaum, former White House Counsel; Thomas Dine, a former executive director of AIPAC; E. Robert Goodkind, a former president of the American Jewish Committee; Richard Pearlstone, former chairman of the Jewish Agency; and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.
The Levy Committee's report determines that Israel cannot be characterized as "an occupier" of Judea and Samaria because the territory never legally belonged to Jordan before Israel regained it in 1967.
The letter was initiated by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), which was attacked in 2007 by veteran Jewish leader and columnist Isi Liebler as a group that "delegitimizes" Israeli policies.
I'm deeply disappointed to see Gordis on there, but while many of these people are considered prominent 'thinkers' I wouldn't characterize most of them as leaders of the Jewish community (unless being wealthy makes you a leader).
But in their letter to Netanyahu on Sunday, the US Jewish leaders said they were concerned that approval of the report would “place the two-state solution, and the prestige of Israel as a democratic member of the international community, in peril.”
The letter added, “At this moment, it is more critical than ever that Israel strengthen its claim in the international community that it is committed to a two-state vision, which is, in turn, central to Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state.”
...
In their letter, the US Jews called on Netanyahu to take a stand against the report. “Securing Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state requires diplomatic and political leadership, not legal maneuverings,” they said.
They asked him to “ensure that adoption of this report does not take place,” the letter stated.
Signatories to the letter included: Michael Berenbaum, former Project Director of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC; Charles R. Bronfman, philantrhopist; Lester Crown, Chairman of Henry Crown & Co.; Thomas A. Dine, Former Executive Director of AIPAC; Rabbi David Ellenson, President, Hebrew Union College –Jewish Institute of Religion; Peter A. Joseph, Chairman, Israel Policy Forum; and Richard Pearlstone, Former Chairman, Jewish Agency.
Again, most of these people are not recognized leaders of the Jewish community.
What this letter shows is how wedded the American Jewish community is to the 'two-state solution' and how they have lost any ability to think of alternatives outside the box. When the community's supposed original thinkers have a knee jerk reaction of rejecting anything that varies from the conventional wisdom, something is really wrong.
At the President's Conference last month, Caroline Glick mentioned that she is working on a book that argues in favor of Israel annexing all of Judea and Samaria. While some people may fear that solution (because they have bought into the demographic lies that claim that annexing all that land would mean that we would either no longer be a Jewish state or no longer be a democratic state), Caroline's book probably will stand a chance of being the first to prompt a serious reevaluation of the two-state paradigm since the 90's. The sooner she can get it out, the better.
Daniel Gordis (the same Daniel Gordis with whom Jeffrey Goldberg had breakfast on Monday) responds to a Jewish American friend who finds himself 'embarrassed' by Israel's actions off the coast of Gaza on Monday (Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).
On one boat, however, the first soldiers to land on the boat were attacked with metal rods and knives. There’s video of it. It’s playing all over Israeli and all over the internet. In some cases, soldiers’ weapons were stolen and used against them. One was stabbed, apparently in the abdomen. Another was tossed from a desk and trampled when he landed. There were a handful of commandos there, and 600 “peace activists.” On Israeli news tonight, the soldiers on helicopters taking them to the hospital were interviewed. They descended the ropes, they said, planning to talk the “activists” into going to Ashdod. Their weapons were not in their hands, but strapped to their backs. “We went into war,” one in his 30’s said bitterly tonight, “and all we had were toys.” They were beaten, trampled, shot (yes, there were bullet injuries) but only after forty minutes of combat did they resort to live five. They were going to get lynched if they didn’t fight back, they said.
Was I there? No. Do I know what really happened? No. But do I trust these kids and their officers? Yes, I do.
I'll come back to Dr. Gordis in a minute, but first I'd like to show you a video interview with an IDF officer who was there on Monday and who describes what happened.
Let's go to the videotape.
And now back to Dr. Gordis.
As for “peace activists,” David, how much do you know about the IHH? It’s a terror support group, supported by Turkey (among others) and it was sent to provoke. If they just wanted the goods to get to Gaza, they could have agreed to transfer them to an Israeli ship, or to unload them in Ashdod, as the Navy personnel asked them to. But they didn’t want that. They just wanted to break the blockade. Why? For food? Even a few Palestinian journalists with some guts are reporting that there’s no humanitarian food crisis in Gaza. No, it wasn’t about food. They want the blockade broken so that after that, non-humanitarian items (read weapons) could brought in. Why should Israel allow that? So that they can be better armed the next time we have to send our kids into Gaza?
As for “being on the defensive,” you “will be on the defensive” only because you totally don’t get it. For if you did get it, you wouldn’t feel that way. There’s only one country anywhere on the planet about which there’s a conversation about whether it has a right to exist. Do you ever think about why that is? What, the fate of the Palestinians is worse than that of aborigines in Australia? Or people in the Congo, or Rwanda? Why all the attention on Israel? Do you really not get it? You think that New Zealand just coincidentally decided this week to make kosher slaughtering illegal? You think it’s really about humanitarian commitments? Come on.
No, David, you really don’t have to defend Israel. No one’s asking you to. We know that it’s too late to expect many Americans like you to assume we’re right before you assume we’re wrong. As we look out at Jews across the world, we’re just assessing who gets Jewish history, and who’s so thoroughly intellectually assimilated that they’re actually embarrassed that that Jews don’t have to continue to be victims. I’m horrified by what happened on the ship, and I’ll be shocked if after all is in, we find that Israel made no mistakes. (This was pretty clearly an intelligence failure, at the very minimum, sending those soldiers into something for which they had not at all been prepared or armed.) But if that had been my kid on the ship, and he’d gone in to prevent the blockade from being broken, but had no intention of fighting, and had then been attacked, I’d want him to defend himself. No matter what. I’d want him to come home whole, because that’s part of the new Jewish reality that this country is supposed to make possible.
The loss of life is tragic. So are the injuries to soldiers, including serious head wounds. But most tragic of all is that the world is so willing to be blinded to what’s really going on here.
JJ Goldberg cannot understand why all those reviewers of Peter Beinart's new book aren't insisting on an Israeli mea culpa. In fact, he all but calls it a conspiracy.
Much of what’s been said about the book in the nation’s leading journals hasn’t been reasoned critique or analysis so much as vituperation. Something about this book has caused The New York Times, The Washington Post and some other normally high-minded publications to come unhinged. More precisely, to assign the book to reviewers who proceed, one by one, to come unglued.
What’s got them so agitated? It isn’t the book itself. “The Crisis of Zionism” is a relatively slight volume, expanding on Beinart’s 2010 New York Review of Books essay, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” His basic thesis is that Israel’s West Bank occupation is eroding the country’s founding democratic values and alienating a younger generation of American Jews — and that the American Jewish community’s leaders and lobbyists respond with knee-jerk apologetics instead of fighting for their avowed liberal ideals. It’s been said before, but Beinart, an ex-New Republic editor and repentant Iraq War hawk, has brought a certain celebrity cachet.
...
The litany is remarkably unremarkable. It offers little more than fatuities trotted out as though they were settled facts rather than what they are: points of argument in a fierce trans-Atlantic debate. Nor do the reviewers bother to acknowledge that Beinart’s book actually considers most of their objections and answers them, agree or not. No, their goal is to show that they know what’s going on and Beinart doesn’t because he’s — well, that’s where the reviewers get creative. How many ways can they insult him?
Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page editor Bret Stephens, writing in Tablet magazine (reprinted on the WSJ website) says Beinart is “singularly intent on scolding Israel, like an angry ex who has lost all grip on the proportions of the original dispute,” a lazy reporter whose work is “hysteria-fueled,” “an act of moral solipsism,” “another squeaky note in the blasting chorus that is modern-day Israel bashing.” Tablet’s own editor, Alana Newhouse, claims in The Washington Post, that Beinart is actually running for “the job of spokesman for liberal American Jews” while leading his putative flock in “erecting their own self-satisfied and delusional monolith, calculated to appeal to disillusioned Jewish summer camp alumni, NPR listeners and other beautiful souls who want the Holy Land to be a better place but do not have the time or ability to study the issues, learn the languages or talk to the people on both sides…”
...
For seriously unhinged, though, nobody beats Rabbi Daniel Gordis, writing in The Jerusalem Post. He calls Beinart’s book an “Israel-bashing fest,” claims Beinart “actually detests Israel,” then says Beinart’s “problem isn’t really with Israel. It’s with Judaism.” American liberalism, with which Beinart “is so infatuated,” doesn’t have room for “Jewish ethnic nationalism.” Working up a lather, Gordis says he doesn’t know “which kiddush Beinart recited on the first night of Passover” (it shouldn’t be a mystery — Beinart, unlike Gordis, is Orthodox), what’s in Beinart’s Haggadah or whether he’s familiar with the Torah blessings. His point is that all these texts declare the Jews’ tribal separateness and rage against “the nations,” mandating a xenophobic rancor that Beinart somehow lacks. Gordis even quotes approvingly “the Talmud’s claim that ‘converts are as burdensome to [the people of] Israel as leprosy.’” Pour out thy wrath, indeed.
Maybe all those people honestly believe that Beinart is dead wrong? The American Jewish Left's emperor has no clothes? What a concept....
Peter Beinart indicts America's 'Jewish establishment' for not being critical enough of the Israeli government. In Beinart's view, the lack of support for Israel among young people in the US is a result of the 'Jewish establishment's failure to present a critical view of the State of Israel. Instead, argues Beinart, the establishment adopts the view of the Israeli government which, he laments, represents a long-term trend to the Right, both politically and religiously (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). Essentially, a key part of Beinart's argument is that Israel is too strongly (I think he would term it parochially) Jewish. Beinart is wrong on so many counts that a line by line 'fisking' would go on for pages and pages (his article goes on for three very long pages). But please allow me to present a few data points.
The reason American Jews don't support Israel has more to do with their lack of commitment to Judaism than with their lack of commitment to Israel. Among more committed Jews - including among committed Jews who are non-Orthodox - support for Israel is significantly higher. There is nothing Israel can do to win over people who lack a Jewish commitment other than to try to get them committed to some form of Judaism.
Second, any survey of American Jews necessarily includes people who are not Jewish under Jewish law. If those people were excluded, the surveys would show a higher level of commitment to Judaism and to Israel. It is questionable whether the 'Jewish establishment,' which is funded by the Jewish community across the board, ought to be including and providing services to people who are not Jewish. I would argue that other than welfare services they should not.
Third, among Jews who live in Israel, the commitment to Judaism is much higher. That includes the fact that there is a much higher percentage of Orthodox Jews in Israel than in the United States. In fact, for at least the last 30 years, the vast majority of immigrants from the United States have been Orthodox. It should be obvious why this is so. People who move from the United States to Israel usually make a significant sacrifice in their standard of living in order to do so. If one is not really committed to living in Israel, one is unlikely to be motivated to move here. It's not like moving from Boston to Baltimore. People who are committed to living specifically in Israel are more likely to do so because they feel a strong Jewish connection.
Beinart is correct that Judaism as a whole - both in the United States and in Israel - is becoming more Orthodox. That's both because of the higher birth rates among the Orthodox and because Orthodox Jews - whether of the moderate or the ultra flavor - are less likely to leave the fold than their non-Orthodox counterparts. There are two solutions to this - and only two: Marry Jews and have more children. Otherwise, the only Jews left 50 or 100 years from now are going to be Orthodox. Is anyone really surprised at that?
As I have noted several times recently, I have stopped worrying about the level of American Jewish support for Israel. American Jews make up 1.7% of the population of the United States. While they do donate disproportionately to political campaigns, and they do make a difference in certain key cities and states in certain elections, they are not the reason that the United States supports Israel. The United States supports Israel because of shared values (much as Beinart criticizes our democracy, we are by far and away the most democratic country in this region), and because of religious Christians.
Beinart tries to indict Israel because our democracy is not the same as the United States. This is an issue that Daniel Gordis discusses at great length in Saving Israel. Gordis concludes that ultimately, we may need to recognize that Israeli democracy cannot be the same as the United States' because of where we live, with whom we live and the fact that Israel is meant to be a Jewish - and not just a democratic - state. For example, Gordis suggests that if we are going to be open to the idea of expelling Jews from their homes to create a 'Palestinian' state, we should at least be open to discussing the idea of transferring Arabs - or transferring territory on which Arabs live in exchange for territory on which Jews live - to a 'Palestinian' state. That's essentially what Avigdor Lieberman - who is lambasted by Beinart - proposed when he wanted to transfer the 'triangle area' to the 'Palestinians.' I'm not sure I agree with him, but I would not brand him a racist for suggesting it as Beinart has done. By the way, Gordis is clearly middle of the road and does not advocate transferring Arabs. He just says that the idea is one that is worthy of discussion and cannot be roundly dismissed as happens in politically correct circles.
Finally, Beinart's article is full of bias against Israel in nearly every story he tells. For example, he somehow manages to discuss Human Rights Watch (and to condemn the vast majority of Israelis who believe it is horribly biased against us) without mentioning Sarah Leah Whitson, Joe Storck or Marc Garlasco. As an exercise, you're each invited to find three more instances of bias in Beinart's article and to post them in the comments.
Sorry, Peter. The times are changing. I'm not happy that only strongly committed Jews are identifying with Israel. But the way to fix that isn't to change Israel. It's to get Jews to be more committed to being Jewish.
The picture at the top may have something to do with why most Israelis loathe the 'Palestinians.'
Daniel Gordis argues that Israel must acknowledge the reality that no one cares anymore that we are subject to a double standard and that we must do what we need to do to survive.
We're living in world operating according to rules that we're just beginning to understand. Convinced of the legitimacy of at least much of our position, for years we ignored the warning signs that the world was turning on us, that it has grown tired of the conflict in the Middle East, and that it believes we are the reason the conflict will not subside.
The world didn't change overnight. We simply weren't watching.
NOW THERE is no more denying the new ground rules. Barack Obama is not really changing them. Perhaps he is shifting America's position, perhaps not. But more than anything, he is simply articulating infinitely more clearly than anyone else has what it is that the world has come to believe. And we are going to have to learn to operate not in the world we wish existed, but in the world that does exist. And in this new world, Israel is going to be held to standards that are infinitely less tolerant than the standards to which the rest of the world is accountable.
Consider, after all, events of just the past few weeks. In the aftermath of the Iranian election, much of the world watched with admiration and hope as Iranians took to the streets to insist on their (supposed) democratic rights. When the Iranian government resorted to intimidation, silencing of the press, force and then murder, the world was horrified - but it was also quiet. Where were the mass rallies across Europe and on those North American campuses where students were still to be found calling for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to back down? Where were the heads of state clamoring to get in front of television cameras calling for a new election? To be sure, the world was unhappy, but this was hardly an outpouring of support or of condemnation.
Compare that to the world's reaction to the Gaza operation half a year ago. To be sure, the circumstances were entirely different. Iran's election is an internal matter, while the Gaza op was not. And other differences abound. But Israel was responding to eight years of shelling of its citizens in what is undisputedly its territory (unless one disputes the notion that any territory is legitimately ours - which, in fact, is exactly Hamas' position); nonetheless, even before the urban warfare began, the world was unanimous and vocal that the operation had to end.
An almost deadening silence in one instance. And deafening outcries of excessive force in the other. Welcome to the new world.
Gordis provides only a very brief prescription for what Israel can do.
In this new world, the spotlight will almost always be on Israel. Settlement building. Roadblocks. Lieberman. We're going to have to learn to alter that. Make some accommodations, but demand - clearly and unequivocally - that the Palestinians do the same. Netanyahu, or whoever follows him, is going to have to learn to keep the ball, and the world's attention, squarely in and on their court. Like it or not, Israel needs to take the initiative, time and time again - because nothing else will work.
I believe Gordis has nailed it. He could have added what's going on in Honduras to the equation. The latest story has Nicaragua moving troops to the Honduran border (Hat Tip: Jonah Goldberg).
Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti said on Sunday Nicaraguan troops were moving to the mutual frontier and urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respect Honduran sovereignty.
He gave no further details about troop movements in Nicaragua which shares a border with Honduras to the southeast of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa. His comments came as ousted President Manuel Zelaya attempted to fly home a week after he was ousted in a coup. Zelaya is a left-wing ally of Ortega and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
The situation in Honduras is frightening. The country's President attempts to turn himself into a dictator, is blocked by the courts and the army, and instead of the United States backing a democracy, it allows Honduras to be expelled from the OAS and chooses to back the Marxist friend of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Cuba's Fidel Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega? Does anyone still believe that Samantha Power's scenario of sending US troops to establish a 'Palestinian' statereichlet is so far-fetched? A new world indeed.
Giulio Meotti's blasts Daniel Gordis for supporting ethnic cleansing of Jews
I wasn't the only one who was upset to see Daniel Gordis joining the Leftists to urge Prime Minister Netanyahu to bury the Levy report. So was Giulio Meotti, who was published an open letter to Gordis.
Here's some of it. Daniel, isn't ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria, using political, diplomatic and economic pressure - such as denying them government land, forbidding building, abolishing town planning - illegal, constituting a breach of the settlers' human rights, as well as a betrayal of Judaism?
Unfortunately, even important Jewish intellectuals like you are sending out the message that the blood of those living on the wrong side of an imaginary line on a map is not as red as that coursing in the veins of their fellow countrymen in Tel Aviv.
Daniel, where the Israeli media will stop to use the dehumanizing, dejudaizing language to distinguish between Jewish and Arab residents of Judea/Samaria? The "settlers" are not even qualified by the adjective "Jewish", while the Palestinians are "local residents". A "settler", of course, is meant to suggest an alien interloper who will be sent back where he came from; a "local resident" is supposedly an indigenous citizen.
Daniel, why do you repeat the canard that without Israeli concessions, the "Palestinian problem" will never be resolved and the Arab-Israel conflict will continue ad infinitum? It's like Hitler Big Lie. For the Islamic world everything Jewish is “illegal”. Everything is “stolen land”.
Peace can only be true if the Jews are no longer characterized as foreign occupiers, but as native sons who have returned home.
Destroy the outposts and you will see the domino effect: all Israel will be in lethal danger. "The colonist" is a very tiny figure in the Middle Eastern conflict, but for many reasons the civilization's future lies on his shoulders.
Moshe Arens raises an unpleasant topic for Israelis: The 'Israeli Arab' population and what to do about them. The topic is particularly prescient because on Tuesday, an 'Israeli Arab' was sentenced to nearly six years in jail for taking advantage of the fact that he belonged to the same gym as IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi in order to commit espionage on Hezbullah's behalf. Here's Arens:
All evidence points to the fact that the Islamic Movement's northern branch is a subversive movement whose aim is the destruction of the State of Israel. Yet it has been permitted to spread its poisonous propaganda, exploiting Israel's democracy, which it vilifies and seeks to destroy. The government's neglect of the Arab sector leaves fertile ground for those dedicated to preaching hostility toward Israel. So far no measures have been taken to restrain the northern branch's dangerous activity, even though there seems to be full justification to declare its activities illegal. What is the reason for the seeming impotence of the Israeli legal system in this matter?
One should not underestimate the negative effect that such inaction is having on Israel's Arab citizens. Many interpret it as a sign that anyone can feel free to engage in anti-Israeli activity and that the state finds no reason to actively discourage it, or is incapable of doing so. Arab citizens who have moderate views and do not identify with Israel's enemies feel increasingly isolated, as the Islamic extremists seem to be capturing the mainstream of Israeli Arab society. This is happening while the Bedouin in the south, for years neglected by the government, easily fall prey to the preaching of radical Islam.
The government seems to show little interest in Israel's Arab citizens, who represent nearly one-fifth of the country's population. Rarely does a cabinet member or the prime minister visit Arab towns and villages. Minority Affairs Minister Avishay Braverman's proposal to grant financial assistance to some Arab municipalities represents a modest beginning in dealing with the challenge of integrating Israel's Arab citizens into society.
But this only scratches the surface. Should the government seriously consider the subject, it must adopt a two-pronged policy. It needs a long-term program that will benefit Israel's Arab citizens, one that would include improving Arab schools, affirmative action for the Arab community in employment, incentives for doing military and national service, and an emergency program to deal with the Negev Bedouin, the most disadvantaged sector of Israeli society. At the same time, legal measures need to be taken against seditious and subversive organizations preaching violence and support for Israel's enemies. It is late, but not too late.
Arens doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of the problem. I am currently reading (nearly finished) Daniel Gordis' Saving Israel, and he spends an entire chapter (Chapter 9, beginning on page 148) on the 'Israeli Arab' problem. Here's some of what he says.
The continuation of the chapter is not online. In the continuation, Gordis argues that the notion of 'mass aliya' is unrealistic. He demonstrates that - to the disappointment of Israel's founders - most Jews who make aliya do so out of compulsion. Thus we have lots of Russians and recently many French Jews but very few (percentage wise) Americans or Brits. At this point, the bulk of diaspora Jewry is in the United States. Sadly, most of those people are not going to pick themselves up and make aliya in the foreseeable future (although another Obama term might convince some of them).
Gordis goes on to argue that under any 'settlement' with the 'Palestinians' it is likely that Jews will be transferred from their homes back to within green line Israel. He argues that if it's okay to transfer Jews, it ought to be okay to transfer Arabs too. He discusses two types of transfer - one is the actual transfer of 'Palestinians' to Arab countries and the other is the transfer of territory (specifically the triangle area, which is the Wadi Arab Valley) to a 'Palestinian' entity.
The main reason that a resolution of the 'Israeli Arab issue is almost never seriously discussed in this country is that there is a double standard with respect to transfer - it's considered okay to transfer Jews but anathema (even among Jews) to discuss transferring Arabs as Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D (may God avenge his blood) discovered in the mid and late 1980's.
For those of you who are interested in the topic, I urge you to buy the book (it's excellent anyway and discusses a lot of other hard questions that the country confronts in a balanced manner).
Tonight is Israel's 62nd anniversary. If 60 today is like 40 used to be, we have just hit middle age. And we are still having a midlife crisis or two.
So here's Israel's National Anthem - HaTikva.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Lance K). An interesting note follows.
I recently finished reading Daniel Gordis' Saving Israel. Interestingly, he points out that HaTikva is a takeoff on Ezekiel 37, which says that we have no hope left, shortly before God brings the valley of dead bones to life. Gordis claims that it was an implicit dig at religious teachings. In fact, he claims that HaTikva is full of digs like that, but you have to know the bible really well to find them. I know Ezekiel 37 quite well (because it's read in the synagogue on Passover) and had I not seen Gordis' book, I would have no clue that was the intent.
I want to call your attention to a special program that is taking place in Toronto on Thursday night.
Zion: Home or Harm to the Jews? A public discussion
Rabbi Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinart
Thur. Oct 28, 2010 at 8 p.m.
In this current difficult and contentious moment, are North American Jews feeling harmed by the State of Israel, rather than seeing her as our second home, the Jewish homeland of which we are proud? Id so, is that fair? And is Zionism antithetical to the next generation or still a possibility, perhaps even a necessity?
Rabbi Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and is the author of several popular books on Jewish thought and current events in Israel.
Peter Beinart, is the former editor of the New Republic. His article, “The Failure of the American ish Establishment” in the New York Review of Books set off a major debate among Jews this past spring.
I've discussed Dr. Gordis' book many times on this blog, and I wrote a(n uncomplimentary) response to the Beinart essay when it first came out.
This is taking place at the Holy Blossom Temple, To register please call 416-789-3291 (ext. 532). Please check http://www.holyblossom.org for more details.
Colindale London reviews Daniel Gordis' Saving Israel.
'Only when Judaism returns as the centerpiece of the Jewish state can Zionists articulate the purpose of Israel.'
Why has it taken so long for anyone to recognize the obvious? Israel is a secular state, virtually no one goes to a synagogue other than the ultra orthodox. So how on earth can Israelis and AIPAC claim that Zionism equals Judaism? It's a complete nonsense, always was and always will be. Judaism is an ancient, beautiful religion as practised by my family for many generations.
Zionism is a brutal, political movement.
Up to that last sentence, I agreed with him. Zionism is not a 'brutal, political movement.' (Political yes, brutal no). But Zionism without Judaism is like a body without a soul. Too many of Israel's early leaders believed that they could abandon Judaism and subsist on 'Israeliness.' They were wrong - horribly wrong. We are paying for their mistakes to this day.
As I understand Gordis' argument, it's that the only way that Israel will survive is for us to return to our Jewish identity. Unfortunately, many Israelis are so hostile to their Jewish identity today that it will take a miracle for them to return.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni spoke on Monday night at the 12th annual "Tonight we do not learn Torah" conference in Tel Aviv, and claimed that although she is not religious, her umbilical cord is attached to the Temple Mount, and that Israel needs to define what a Jewish state is outside a religious context.
The Kadima party chairwoman noted that “one does not have to choose between intense secularism and extreme hareidi-religious observance. There is a large middle ground, and a very large public out there that is not necessarily observant but nevertheless has a Jewish connection, one that is wider than you are told about, and means more than what is written on identity cards. It is not connected to the hareidi religious Jews, it has nothing to do with them; it's about us, we who are not extremists. It's not a favor to anyone else.”
She added that the religious Zionist political parties do not work on a common denominator for all of us because of political power struggles and a terrible system of government that gives too much power to hareidi-religious parties. “There are payments that give a monopoly on Jewish content to political parties that pull in their direction and theirs alone, and everyone pays the price,” Livni said. “The conversion law is one recent instance of that – where not relating to the common denominator is causing us to lose it.”
She argued that it is time to set the parameters that define a Jewish state. “It is clear what a democratic state is,” she said, “but less clear to everyone exactly what a Jewish state is. We are very close to the point at which we will no longer be able to do that,” Livni warned. “It would not be good if we split into separate societies, each of which does whatever it pleases on traditional occasions – Israel would lose her Jewish character, both nationally and religiously in the process.”
Livni also discussed her connection to Jerusalem, saying “I live in Tel Aviv, but my umbilical cord indeed is connected to the Temple Mount, both from a personal perspective, and in my national, public life as well. The feeling of belonging to Jerusalem is not necessarily related to observance of the mitzvot (commandments), she added, “although I regret it is weakening with the passage of time. The way to reconnect", Livni said, is “through Jewish continuity on the national, and not the religious level.”
"Jerusalem must be returned to the younger generation", she said. "Jerusalem is in difficulties and needs treatment. There is a need to educate the younger generation all over the country to feel a connection to Jerusalem. Education in Israel today lacks the connection with the history of the Jewish People and specifically with Jerusalem,” she asserted.
She's actually right about some things here. But she's wrong about a whole lot of other things, and characterizing people who are religiously observant (and she doesn't mean Neturei Karta types) as 'extremists' isn't going to help solve the problem.
Yes, it's time to define what a Jewish state is (Daniel Gordis makes that argument quite eloquently), but divorcing the concept of a Jewish state from Jewish religious observance has been tried and failed miserably. Zionism without Judaism is like a body without a soul. Too many of Israel's early leaders believed that they could abandon Judaism and subsist on 'Israeliness.' They were wrong - horribly wrong. We are paying for their mistakes to this day. In fact, the reasons why much of secular Israel's connection to Jerusalem is 'weakening with time' is that it has no connection to Jewish observance.
I'm reminded of a story that Gordis tells in his book. He writes that his son was in a pre-army program in which religious kids and secular kids study Jewish subjects together so that they have a background of why they are going out to defend the Jewish state. They were taught Gemara (Talmud), and because of the difficulty in studying Gemara, each boy who had studied Gemara in high school was paired with a boy who had not. They studied the very first page of the very first tractate (Berachoth). The tractate starts by asking from when we read the Shma prayer in the evening. The Shma prayer is the most basic prayer in Judaism. Gordis' son's study partner - who grew up in Israel - had no clue what it was.
Is that what Tzipi Livni considers a connection to Jerusalem? When it comes to Jewish observance, she'd like us all to be 'outies.'
Beinart’s problem, most fundamentally, is that the American liberalism with which he is so infatuated does not comfortably have a place for Jewish ethnic nationalism.
Throughout the book, the words “liberal” or “democratic” are always positives. And what means “negative” or “shameful”? In Beinart’s book, the word is “tribal.” Every time he uses the word “tribal,” he means “distasteful.” “Liberalism was out,” he laments early in the book, and “tribalism was in.” Or “ethically, the ADL and AJC are caught between the liberalism that defined organized American Jewish life before 1967 and the tribalism that has dominated it since.” “Among younger non-Orthodox Jews,” he later says smugly, “tribalism is in steep decline.” What is wrong with the settlers is that they have “tribal privilege” much “like the British in India, Serbs in Kosovo, and whites in the segregated South.”
Really? Israel, in which Beduin women graduate from medical school, is like the segregated South? Surely Beinart knows better. So why the relentless attack?
BEINART’S PROBLEM isn’t really with Israel. It’s with Judaism. Bottom line, what troubles Beinart isn’t what’s happened to Zionism. What troubles him is the dimension of Jewish life that he can’t abide, but of which Zionism insists on reminding him. And that element is the undeniable fact that Judaism is tribal.
...
Beinart’s real problem is that Israel is not, and was never meant to be, a felafel-eating, Hebrew speaking version of the United States. It is not ethnic-neutral. It was created, and our children die for it, not simply so there can be another democracy in the Middle East. Is one more democracy worth my soldier son’s risking his life? No, it’s not. Israel is about the revitalization of the Jewish people. It is, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, “of the Jews, by the Jews and for the Jews,” all while protecting and honoring those who are not Jewish. Are we perfect? Hardly. But do we aspire to America’s ideal of a democracy? Not at all. We’re about something very different.
As Beinart himself admits, his cadre of mostly young American Jews is essentially Jewishly illiterate. They know nothing of Judaism’s intellectual depth, can say nothing about the classical Jewish canon, have no sense of what great ideas Judaism has brought to the world. They are thus utterly incapable of articulating what a Jewish state not committed to America’s ideals might be about. Confused and disappointed, they grow ashamed of us. For us to fit their universalistic world, in which nothing Jewish is of supreme value, they need us to be perfect. When we’re not, they cannot abide us.
...
It is no accident that Beinart’s book is among the most discussed – and reviled – in recent memory. For the book is not really about Israel. It is about the unsustainable new Judaism of which he is a selfappointed prophet, and to which, sadly, many young American Jews seem to be attracted, its self-consuming malignant core notwithstanding.
Daniel Gordis defends his signature on a letter to Prime Minister Netanyahu. Significantly, he does so at Haaretz - Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily - and not at the Jerusalem Post where he normally writes his op-ed's (Hat Tip: My Right Word) (Full article here).
The question is how Israel should conduct itself in the face of that stark reality. A wise Israeli leadership would do everything in its power to communicate to the world that beyond those two existential issues, which are not negotiable, Israel will discuss virtually anything. There are matters on which Israel will compromise, and others on which it will not. Israel, though, must continually and publicly urge the Palestinians to come to the table; and when they refuse, Israel’s leaders must then make clear that it is the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who are the obstructionists.
Adopting the Levy Commission report would make it impossible for Israel to make that point. While the Levy Commission insisted that its findings were legal and not political, that distinction would be utterly lost on the international community. Observers everywhere would read the adoption of the Levy report as tantamount to annexing the West Bank. It would be read as putting the Palestinians on notice that Israel plans never to evacuate any settlements, and that hopes for a Palestinian state are dead. The damage to Israel – in the international community and even among more Zionists than this government realizes – would be profound.
Internally, the damage would be no less significant. Israel today faces a profound educational challenge, one that it has not even begun to address. Intentionally or not, adopting the Levy Commission report would signal to Israelis that their political leadership believes that the status quo is actually the ideal and that young people should give up even dreaming that the conflict might, one day, be behind us. Can we imagine ourselves in an interminable conflict without numbing our moral sensibilities? How do we encourage our citizens to be willing to fight for this country, without making hatred of our enemy a foundation of their Israeli ethos? Israel needs to educate a generation of young people and new leaders passionately committed to the proposition that a Jewish State needs to be defended vigorously, all the while hoping that our enemies might someday become simply neighbors.
I cannot buy into Gordis' argument for three reasons.
First, because a report issued by a former Supreme Court Justice that asserts our legal rights certainly does not close the door to the sovereign State of Israel deciding on its own and of its own volition to waive some of those rights. The current situation - in which we stand silently as the world asserts that we have no rights - just encourages the 'Palestinians' and their Arab, Muslim and European sponsors to maintain their maximalist demands.
Second, because the 'two-state solution' is not a holy grail and has no rights of exclusivity. There are other possible ways to resolve or live with the conflict - yes, including the status quo - that are less risky to the lives and livelihoods of Israelis. From 1967-93, almost no Israelis advocated for a 'two-state solution.' Even in Prime Minister Rabin's last speech to the Knesset in 1995, he said that there would be no 'Palestinian state.' And in the time in which Israelis have declared themselves open to a 'Palestinian state,' the 'Palestinians' have asserted and proven time and time again that their intention is that a 'Palestinian state' be a stepping stone to the replacement of the State of Israel, and not a final result of coexistence. It is time for Israelis to acknowledge that reality and act accordingly. It is time to move on from the Oslo paradigm.
Third, the truth is that we ought to annex Judea and Samaria. Now. What form that annexation should take - whether it ought to include the Arab population that lives there today or only the Jewish towns and the land on which they sit plus access roads to them - is a matter for discussion. But we ought to annex Judea and Samaria if for no other reason than once we have done so, it will give the 'Palestinians' an incentive to compromise on their outrageous demands. We have expelled Jews from their homes before for the sake of an illusory peace. No one should doubt that Israel would expel Jews from their homes (hopefully in a more humane way that was done until now) for the sake of a real peace. But we have to acknowledge that a real peace is nothing but a pipe dream today and to stop living in FantasyLand and ignoring reality.
For the last 19 years, we have gone around in circles and have sacrificed over 1,500 Israeli lives to 'Palestinian' terrorism while pursuing a 'two-state solution.' It is time for another solution.
Daniel Gordis has a thought provoking essay on the need for American Jewish support for Israel and how to keep it. I suggest that you read the whole thing, but I'd like to highlight a couple of points and make a couple of comments.
The evidence is virtually limitless. We’re witness to a tectonic shift in American Jewish life, but many people would rather ignore it than face the serious work that lies ahead. Thus, when I pointed out (“If this is our future,” Jerusalem Post, May 7) that following Brandeis University’s invitation to Ambassador Michael Oren to be its commencement speaker, the public discourse was captured by those opposed to his invitation, some people responded by pointing out the (obvious) fact that many Brandeis students (and probably the majority) supported the invitation. A petition in favor, signed by 5,000 people, was also reported. And a small number of articles in the Brandeis paper, opined one faculty person in a response to the Post, ought not be taken out of context. “Imagine someone telling you it’s pouring rain outside and you stick your head out the window and see there are just a couple of clouds in the sky,” he wrote.
But what we’re facing would be “just a couple of clouds in the sky” if the story that mattered was about Brandeis, which it obviously is not. Everyone knows that Jewish life on campus doesn’t get better than Jewish life at Brandeis. So why pretend that Brandeis is the issue? What is significant is that even at Brandeis, one of the crown jewels of American Jewish academe, as of the publication of my previous column, there had been four pieces in the student newspaper about the Oren invitation. The Justice’s official editorial and the head of the campus J Street chapter weighed in opposed. So, too, did a member of the computer science faculty. And a student representative to the Board of Trustees aimed to defend the invite by suggesting that Oren was being asked to campus not as a representative of the State of Israel, but as an academic.
WHY DOES any of this matter? Because in not one of these pieces did any of the four writers have a single positive thing to say about Israel. That, not Brandeis, is the story.
He's right, but I don't believe the shift in American Jewish thinking is limited to Israel. What we're really seeing - in the long run - is the separation of American Conservative and Reform Jews from Orthodox Jews. This has been a long time in coming.
Survey after survey shows that Conservative and Reform Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic and place Israel far down on their priority list. Orthodox Jews are voting more and more Republican and tend to place Israel as a much higher priority even if they won't consider living there ('parnassa' - making a living - 'you know'). I'm not sure there's much we can do to stop the coming fissure among American Jews.
From a political standpoint, I would argue (and have argued) that Israel doesn't need the support of the American Jewish community, because the Christians support us and that is more than enough. But the Christian support is not guaranteed. And the implications of Israel losing the political support of the American Jewish community go far beyond the political.
What we're witnessing is a fissure within the American Jewish community. It's not just about Israel. It's about all the people who would rather that their kids intermarry than become Orthodox. In a way, this was almost to be expected. Throughout Jewish history, those movements that varied from the Torah as taught by the rabbis have been destined to leave the Jewish people altogether. The Karaites, the Sadducees, the followers of Shabtai Zvi - they all disappeared or assimilated into the surrounding non-Jews. Are Conservative and Reform Jews in the US (where they are a much greater percentage of the population of Jews than anyplace else in the World) headed in the same direction? And by the way, how many Halachic (under Orthodox Jewish law) non-Jews are being counted in all the surveys that show declining support for Israel among American Jews?
To me it seems patently obvious that the secure, confident and creative Diaspora community that many American Jews now take for granted is directly dependent on a vital and flourishing State of Israel. Today’s young American Jewish leaders can neither recall nor imagine the days in which Jews hesitated to march on Capitol Hill, or the days in which one could not get a job on Wall Street wearing a kippa. That confidence is the product of Israel, and of the formative experiences that many American Jewish leaders have had in the Jewish state. The image of the Jew, no longer one of victim, but of utter confidence, was born in June 1967. In Israel.
Though many will disagree, it seems equally clear to me that were the State of Israel to be vanquished, the vibrant American Jewish life that we now too easily take for granted would wither away within a generation. And if that were to happen, the two great centers of world Jewry – Israel and America – would each essentially be gone.
I believe that a vital and flourishing State of Israel is a tremendous help to the American Jewish community. But I don't believe that American Jews would necessarily stop marching on Capitol Hill or stop wearing kippot to work on Wall Street (which you couldn't do on Wall Street when I got out of law school in 1984) if God forbid Israel ceased to exist. And I don't believe Jewish life in the US would wither away within a generation. But I do believe that Israel's disappearance - God forbid - would accelerate the creation of a chasm between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox streams. Quite simply, to the extent that they agree on support for Israel, it's often the only thing on which they agree. I also believe that by the time my and Gordis' generation reach our eternal resting places, either the problem will be solved or it will be unsolvable (Gordis is two years younger than I am). We are members of the last generation in which non-Orthodox American Jews instinctively support Israel. Perhaps that's because we do remember 1967.
And I believe that Israel’s military might, cultural flourishing, strength of spirit and more, important though they all are, are not sufficient to sustain the country. America’s support – financial, military and in the increasingly hostile court of international public opinion – is critical. Yet that support would be much endangered without an American Jewish leadership that instinctively feels deeply connected to Israel, that doesn’t ask, “What does any of this have to do with us?”
Today, we have that leadership. But the future is not as secure as many would like to believe. Nor is that future very far away.
I agree with everything he writes here except that I am not sure that Israel cannot obtain that support without an American Jewish leadership that instinctively feels deeply connected to Israel. And I think that Israel ought to be preparing itself for the day when that type of American Jewish leadership is not there. That day seems to be coming.
Daniel Gordis is spot-on with this article about the type of opposition Israel really needs.
A couple of weeks ago, I sent a friend in the States a link to an article by Prof. Benny Morris entitled “Bleak House,” which argues that the prospects for peace have rarely been grimmer. It’s really a distillation of Morris’ book, One State, Two States, in which he claims that the Palestinians are no closer to accepting a division of the land than they were in 1948. Therefore, Morris claims, the two-state solution is essentially dead. I sent her the link because she’s a respected leader of American Jewish life, associated with the “get out of the territories and make peace” camp. I wanted to see if Morris’ article might enable her to at least understand those who espouse very different positions from hers.
“This is the most dismal and depressing analysis I have seen in a while,” she replied. “I’m not convinced that Morris is right... but assuming for the moment that he is, what are we left with? What are we to do? I know you think a lowlevel conflict can simmer for the next 100 years, but I don’t think Israel’s soul can sustain that... [I]f he’s right, how can we not despair?"
Despite her gentle dig at me, I was thrilled by her response. Because I do think that Benny Morris is right, when I find myself listening to the standard “end the occupation” mantra of the American Jewish opposition, I feel like I’m watching kids squeezing their eyes tightly shut, hoping against hope that this night, the tooth fairy really will come after all.
Our presence on the West Bank may be necessary, or it may be foolhardy; about that, reasonable minds can and do differ. But the notion that our presence on the West Bank is the prime impediment to peace is sheer myopia.
That is why it is so important that the peace camp, despairing of a country that it believes no longer cares about peace, reads Morris carefully. Because once it does, as my friend’s reply demonstrates, it can start asking the questions that truly matter, and it can become the kind of opposition that Israel desperately needs.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
As I noted more eleven days ago, Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times calling for an international boycott of Israel. Facing outraged donors, particularly in the Los Angeles area, university President Rivka Carmi penned an article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times, in which she blasted Gordon, but claimed that she is powerless to fire him. 
