NOVANEWS
- Propagandistic anti-Semitism report raises The Linkage Issue
- ‘The Nakba was our doing’
- Polish-Russian experience shows how hard it is to accept an empowered other
- Never ceases to fascinate me
- Where is the full-page letter in the NYT signed by prominent Jews supporting Obama re settlements?
- Kam affair reflects Israel’s post-Goldstone ‘crisis of legitimacy’
- This sounds racist to me, does it to you?
- Guess who’s coming to (Shabbat) dinner?
- Sea change: ‘Huffpo’ bannered Palestinian flag
- Loewenstein Gaza doc is on Australian national radio
| Propagandistic anti-Semitism report raises The Linkage Issue The Tel Aviv University/Stephen Roth Institute’s newly released study on anti-Semitism in 2009 is getting loads of media attention. Among the many outlets that have reported its findings are the AP, CNN, and Haaretz. “Anti-Semitic incidents Doubled Last Year,” blared the AP headline. Sponsored by the European Jewish Congress and produced with help from researchers around the world, including the Anti-Defamation League’s Aryeh Tuchman, the report’s release was timed to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Roth Institute’s director, Dinah Porat, who also sits on the board at the Israeli Holocaust research center, Yad Vashem, declared at a recent press conference that anti-Semitism is directly linked to anti-Zionism. This is also the conclusion of her group’s report, which focuses on the alleged connection between anti-Semitic acts and Israel’s assault on Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009. The Roth Institute identifies the UK and France as centers of anti-Semitism, but also centers in on American targets, including the widely praised Palestinian author Ali Abunimah and the Muslim students at UC-Irvine who heckled Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. Judge Richard Goldstone, a Jewish self-proclaimed Zionist, is also named among the Institute’s gallery of dangerous anti-Semites. “In November, extensive criticism of Israel in the media following the release of the Goldstone Report probably served as a trigger for another spike in hate crimes against Jews,” the report states. Since there is no evidence to back their claim up, the authors slipped in the word, “probably.” Mainstream Muslim groups in the US like the Islamic Circle of North America could not escape being tagged as Jew haters either, though the report once again provides no concrete evidence to support its characterization. Thus readers must accept on faith — or the basis of their preconceptions about Muslims — that members of the ICNA like to “rail against Jews.” The report accuses unidentified “contemporary youth” of exhibiting “rampant ignorance” by engaging in Palestinian solidarity activism. “An abundance of Muslim propaganda, well-financed by oil money, exploits this atmosphere, which law enforcement agencies refrain from countering out of ‘political correctness’ and respect for the right of freedom of speech,” the report’s authors write, suggesting that the First Amendment might pose a threat to Jewish life in America. The only actively organized anti-Semitic faction that the report’s researchers identify inside the US is the fringe-of-the-lunatic fringe Phelps family, which has picketed everything from soldiers’ funerals to the Sidwell Friends School, holding signs that take bigotry to the point of the sublime. The family’s satire of “We Are The World,” called “God Hates The World,” was so unintentionally funny it became a YouTube hit. Indeed, few outside the Phelps family take its bizarre street theater seriously. Despite the Roth Institute’s dire warnings, that is unlikely to change. Organized anti-Semitism seemed to have been so absent from American life in 2009 that the Roth Institute felt compelled to lard its report with accounts of murders of non-Jews by right-wing extremists. For instance, the report goes on at length about Richard Poplawski, a deranged young skinhead who killed three cops in Pittsburgh reportedly because he hated Obama and thought he sent the police to take his guns away. Unless Obama had secretly converted to Judaism (wasn’t he supposed to be a crypto-Muslim?), the designation of Poplawski’s killing spree as an anti-Semitic attack is a wild stretch. Turning its focus to Latin America, the Roth Institute predictably rehashes the widely repeated canard that Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is a hotbed of anti-Semitism. And like the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Institute appears to have studiously avoided any contact with the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela, the country’s main Jewish umbrella organization. That may because the Confederation has already repudiated the notion of a Chavez-incited campaign of anti-Semitism and has condemned the Simon Wiesenthal Center for not consulting it about the reality of Jewish life in Venezuela. Under pressure from Jewish groups in Venezuela, Jewish members of Congress torpedoed a 2009 House resolution to condemn Chavez for anti-Semitic incitement. The members of Congress who opposed the resolution included some of Israel’s most hardline allies in the House, from Rep. Gary Ackerman to Rep. Shelley Berkley. Apparently this news was not fit to print in the Roth Institute’s report. The Institute’s characterization of Chavez’s government recalls a failed Cold War-era tactic, according to the North American Congress on Latin American. In 1983, as the Reagan administration sought to topple the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, the ADL churned out a poorly-sourced report accusing the Sandinistas of inciting hatred against the country’s small Jewish community. The report was immediately discredited by American rabbis who had actually traveled to Nicaragua and by Reagan’s own ambassador to the country; he declared, “the evidence fails to demonstrate that the Sandinistas have followed a policy of anti-Semitism or have persecuted Jews solely because of their religion.” As for the accusations leveled against Chavez, the authors of the Roth Institute report seemed most incensed by his furious opposition to Israel’s assault on Gaza. While the threat of anti-Semitic attacks should not be dismissed, however random and rare they might be in Western society, the Roth Institute and its collaborators appear more interested in insulating Israel from scrutiny for its killing of 773 civilians in Gaza in 22 days than in generating education and dialogue to combat bigotry. Indeed, the main thrust of the report is consistent with one of the key objectives of the Netanyahu administration and its international supporters: to undermine the Goldstone Report and assail any public figures who support its findings. At the same time, the report appears crafted to prevent articulate Palestinian critics of Israeli policy like Ali Abunimah from gaining mainstream traction, speciously and scandalously conflating them with neo-Nazi street thugs and Holocaust deniers. Three years before Israel’s creation, Jean Paul-Sartre analyzed what he saw as a widespread resentment of Jews, describing it as a pathology rooted in class envy and self-loathing. In his book, “Anti-Semite and Jew,” Sartre impelled Jews to assert themselves through militant means, stopping only once they had won their place in a pluralistic society like France. Among the means he proposed that Jews employ was the founding of “a Jewish league against anti-Semitism.” Ironically, the Roth Institute’s Porat has rejected “the definitions of learned people” like Sartre. For her, anti-Semitism can be defined by simply describing the behavior of Israel’s critics, not by assessing the mentality of those who openly urge discrimination against Jews. Following Porat’s line, the Roth Institute report asserted that Israel’s assault on Gaza was practically the only factor driving the supposedly dramatic spike in anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in 2009. “We have never seen such a sustained, organized campaign being waged against Israel’s legitimacy and its supporters around the world,” lamented Arie Zuckerman, whose European Jewish Congress contributed to the report. But if Israel’s policies towards Gaza have fanned the flames of anti-Semitism, as the report seems to claim, the discussion must turn to whether Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is threatening the safety of Jews across the world. Is there a linkage? The Roth Institute and its collaborators should consider contemplating the troubling issue they have inadvertently raised. Then again, it might be more convenient for them to dismiss it as another anti-Semitic canard contrived by “contemporary youth.” |
| ‘The Nakba was our doing’ Several years ago, I introduced the idea of a Nakba commemoration to my progressive synagogue in Philadelphia. The response was a stunning barometer of the work ahead. “It’s too bad the Nakba has to fall on Israel Independence Day. That’s The Day for celebrating the Jewish state. It’s not a day to talk about Palestinians.” Fast forward six years: an orange flier neatly tucked inside this month’s synagogue newsletter is headlined “Yom Ha’Atzma-ut al Naqba Commemoration” on April 16, 2010. The winds are shifting, but the sailing is by no means smooth. Just yesterday attending a congregational bat mitzvah, I inadvertently seated myself among the pro-Israel camp. Greetings were strained. I like these people. Prior to my coming-out as an anti-Zionist, they liked me too. Now I am seen as one of “those people” who insists on bringing up the “N” word each year as we plan for Yom Ha’Atzmuut (Israel Independence Day). Like many Jews, even within the progressive community, my co-congregants may know but refuse to talk about the “N” word. The Nakba, or “catastrophe,” names the Palestinian experience in 1948. Expulsion and transfer from their homes in historic Palestine allowed for the creation of Israel as a Jewish state. Simply put, the Nakba was and is the dark side of Jewish statehood. Nakbaphobia – Jewish fear of acknowledging and taking responsibility for the irrefutable historical record of the Palestinian experience in 1948 – must be confronted. As victims of historic injustice, Jews resist seeing ourselves as perpetrators and oppressors. Our post-holocaust mantra “Never again,” has emboldened Israeli militarism while numbing our senses, blinding much of the Jewish community to the ethical tradition of Judaism as well as the humanity of Palestinians. The systematic plan to depopulate the land of Arabs in order to secure a Jewish national homeland has over time morphed into an effective apartheid state in the territory between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and the continuing exile of Palestinians in Diaspora who now number in the millions. Technologically as well as culturally rich, Israel holds itself out as a homeland for Jews worldwide. Third generation Palestinians grow up in refugee camps or live under a brutal military occupation. And Palestinians within Israel are governed by separate but unequal laws, schools, and social services. In broad daylight the whole world watches an ongoing Nakba in 2010 – Israeli confiscation of Palestinian land, resources and culture. The success of the Zionist project has been accomplished and is maintained by U.S. tax dollars and at the expense of the Palestinian people. An Orwellian reframing of reality defines as necessary for its security the very ‘facts on the ground’ that make Israelis unsafe. The routine mistreatment and collective punishment of Palestinians is immoral, illegal, and unjustifiable. Further, to not see the humanity of an entire people is blatant racism. The concern for Jewish survival which catalyzed the early Zionist movement is a concern in 2010, but for very different reasons. The big lies embedded in the foundational myths of 1948 have been passed down as historical truth. In addition to causing irreparable harm to Palestinians, this denial of historical truths and perpetration of current injustice corrode the integrity of Judaism and imperil Jewish survival. Zionism is not Judaism, never was, and becomes less so every day. By conflating Zionism and Judaism, the deck is stacked against truth-telling as well as justice. And both Zionism and Judaism each suffer from having lost its moral compass. Jewish statehood was achieved through the ethnic cleansing of another people. To celebrate Israel without regard for its impact on the indigenous people of Palestine is un-Jewish. It is indeed challenging for our psyche to accommodate both the Nakba and Israel Independence Day. Yes, of course Jews who commemorate the Nakba spark cognitive dissonance that likely diminishes the celebratory spirit of Israel Independence Day. As well it should. “I’m sorry!” is bedrock in Jewish tradition. Taking responsibility for Israeli actions in 1948 is an al chet moment. Naming what we are sorry for, the wrongs we have committed, and turning toward healing is what Jews have done on Yom Kippur for millennia. Doing so in this instance would not diminish Israel. Rather, by claiming our collective humanity, we increase the likelihood of a just peace with our neighbors. What I want to say to my Jewish friends is this: What was done to the Palestinian people in 1948 was not okay. The Nakba was our doing. Failure to name it, to take responsibility for it, to apologize, and to find a different path, may yet be our undoing. And as for the Nakba remembrance that I mentioned at the start: It is a Kabbalat Shabbat Service at Congregation Mishkan Shalom in Roxborough, PA, entitled “The Power of Memory.” The title has caused a LOT of reactions as you might guess. It remains to be seen what the program will be like, who will come, etc. But this is a huge step! The flier reads “Were you present on the day in 1948 when the State of Israel was declared an independent state? Do you have family stories about the day? 5 Iyar, 5708 (May 14 1948) was experienced by many Jews as a day of overwhelming joy, by some as a day like any other, and by some as a worrisome moment in our history. By many Palestinians, it was seen as al-Naqba,a day of catastrophe, of being forced to leave their homes and communities. Each year we try to honor the experiences that diverse people had as we reach this day on our calendar. On Friday, April 16, we will open the floor to those who want to share their own memories, the memories of others they know or have learned. Join us to share your stories and to honor the memories of others.” |
| Polish-Russian experience shows how hard it is to accept an empowered other Yesterday I did a post on Roger Cohen’s piece that used the Polish air-crash tragedy, and the Russian response to it as evidence that all intractable struggles can be healed–and Israel and Palestine should learn something about giving up historical grievance. Mark Wauck, who is of Polish ancestry, commented to me on it, and I asked him about the Polish experience and whether it’s a lesson for the Middle East. The response of the Russians – showing Wajda’s film [about the Katyn massacre by the Russians at the beginning of WW2] on prime time gov’t tv, etc. – has been heartening and has deeply impressed the Poles. Good may come of this yet. Poland could ultimately unite Russia to the west and help Russia overcome its own tragic history. I’ve read so much about this Polish thing that I’m on overload right now. One remark that I recall but can’t place spoke of the Russian outpouring of sympathy for Poland as not only freeing them from their past attitudes toward Poland but also – because of the unique nature of Katyn in history – as perhaps freeing the Russians to confront their own history. And that was not meant invidiously, as if anti-Polishness is the sum total of Russian history, or as if there isn’t another side to that narrative as well. Katyn was an NKVD execution site [Russian secret police] years before the tens of thousands of Polish officers were shot in the backs of their heads and dumped into pits. Some (like Putin) say that the Russian dead at Katyn even greatly outnumber the Poles. The symbol of the geographically-shared tragedies and the bodies in the common pits is very powerful. However, as important is the gradual recognition that both countries need a way forward and that they can help each other. Over the years I’ve been impressed with the willingness of the Poles to forgive Germans and Russians if those nations can accept Poland. The time may be coming when that is reciprocated. Remember though how long this has taken. Poles have had to accept an empowered Russia (after centuries when Poland was regional top dog) and now Russians have had to become accepting of an empowered Poland again – at least to a degree. Not easy. I think WWII and the Cold War finally convinced most Poles that there was no going back, that nationalist Romanticism was a dead end. And now they’re finding that the future is bright, after a helluva slog through history. Perhaps that example has stirred something in the Russian soul. I’m afraid the situation in the Middle East isn’t ready for that. It’s clear to me that Muslims can’t accept empowered Jews. I believe there are other reasons for that than simply Palestinian grievances. The increased intolerance toward the two millenium old Christian ME communities is surely an indication – especially as that intolerance is accompanied by a shocking degree of historical ignorance that cannot be overcome in less than generations. You’re a better judge of whether Jews can become more accepting of their own history rather than wrapping it in mythology (as Poles and Russians have done for so long re their own histories – think of Poland’s self identification as the crucified nation, etc. Mythology serves a legitimate purpose, especially when national survival is the issue, but at some point it can also become self destructive.) In coming to terms with their own history, Jews will need to see “the other” more clearly as well. Since I mostly interact with Zionist types, I’d have to say that I see hardly any promising signs. The denial is almost complete. You’ll have to judge of the larger community. Certainly there appear to be some Israeli voices (Burg, Sands) of reason, but can even they elicit a response from either warring side? A tall order, and reason for pessimism for some time to come. |
| Never ceases to fascinate me Here’s J Street touting a Jewish democracy in the Washington Post. And here’s the ADL quoting Justice Stevens on the separation between religion and government. |
| Where is the full-page letter in the NYT signed by prominent Jews supporting Obama re settlements? During the AIPAC conference last month, speakers repeatedly called on Obama to have his differences with Netanyahu in private. The congressional letter to Hillary Clinton about the faceoff made the same point: “The proven best way forward is to work closely and privately together both on areas of agreement and especially on areas of disagreement.” As if the privately-monitored peace process has produced anything but more settlements. One day outside the AIPAC conference, Alan Dershowitz angrily called on J Street to join AIPAC because Jews shouldn’t air their differences publicly. They must speak with a “unified voice” to power, he said. This is a central issue in the Jewish community: When we speak about Middle East policy to non-Jews, we must do so as a monolith. Otherwise we lose whatever little power we have. I saw the lobby acting this way before my eyes at Columbia University a couple of years ago, when a woman from the Zionist Organization of America hectored student leaders for having invited Breaking the Silence to describe the horrors of the occupation to an American audience. It’s fine if people do this in Israel, she said, but not here. I saw it for myself when my editors at mainstream publications told me there was no room for my dissenting views; why, because they could damage the effort to guard Israel’s survival in the U.S. So it is a matter of survival– and even thoughtful liberal Jews are agonized by this commandment from the community not to battle publicly. How else can you explain the fact that Americans for Peace Now is on the board of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations? A liberal group that has done important work exposing the colonization process is in bed with people who defend the settlements night and day– out of Jewish solidarity. Or there’s my brilliant college professor Michael Walzer. A year ago he saw the crisis looming in the Jim Crow West Bank and he called for rightthnking people to “defeat” the settler movement. But he did so in a Jewish space, Dissent magazine, and he wrung his hands about the issue of speaking out against other Jews. “Why should we start a fight among ourselves [?]” he anguished. Well, the stakes were too high not to take on the settler movement, he said. I write this post in disappointment. You routinely see the Jewish community locking arms to protect Israel– as it did in the anti-BDS statement that unified everyone from the ADL to J Street— but you rarely see community statements of criticism of Israel. I was glad to see J Street issue support for Obama when he confronted settlements; but even that statement was lukewarm and the emphasis was, Now’s the time to establish borders, i.e., it wasn’t anti-settlement per se, didn’t harp on the ethnic-cleansing of East Jerusalem. I seem to remember J Street being far more critical of settlements a year or so back; I wonder if all the spankings it has gotten from the old-line lobby has helped to bring it into line. And I wonder why Michael Walzer and other prominent liberal Jews have not put a full-page ad in the New York Times to say that the settlements in East Jerusalem are illegal and are destroying the prospect for a viable Palestinian state. I’m not sure what I think about partition; but if you’re for it, then you must oppose colonization. Well, I don’t see vehement opposition within the Jewish community. And I know the answer why: Jewish omerta, a fear that if you break with the community publicly, you will hurt our small, outsider community. This code of silence is based on traditional and outmoded ideas: that we are outsiders in society, that we must rely on powerful intercessors in the corridors of state, that we are persecuted. I know the fears. I grew up with them. They in no way reflect the 2010 reality: the two offices closest to Obama’s are manned by Jews; we are a powerful community that over decades has repeatedly acted to prevent self-determination by the Palestinian people. A little knowledge of who we are would go a long way toward generating openness and even progress. As matters stand, the liberal Jews who claim to be against settlements are giving Obama very little political cover. |
| Kam affair reflects Israel’s post-Goldstone ‘crisis of legitimacy’ Jared Malsin, no stranger to Israel’s view of a free and independent press, reports on the Anat Kam scandal for the Huffington Post. He ends with a comment from historian Avner Cohen who puts the episode in a broader context:
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| This sounds racist to me, does it to you? Here’s something I find disturbing. MJ Rosenberg recalls an anecdote about Robert Satloff of WINEP, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy:
I don’t think this is trivial. It is (I bet) a racial form of discrimination and reminds me of the piece in the Forward a couple weeks back about “delegitimization” of Israel, in which Nathan Guttman only quoted Jews. Why didn’t he call Ali Abunimah, or some other Palestinian-American? They’re important voices in this trend. |
| Guess who’s coming to (Shabbat) dinner? Sam Green in New Voices, the Jewish student magazine, pleads with anti-Zionists to get in line (and even join J Street):
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| Sea change: ‘Huffpo’ bannered Palestinian flag Didn’t get to this last week. But when the Times ran that front page story on non-violent resistance by Palestinians, Huffington Post picked it up and this was the image at the top of its page for a while, a truncation of the foto in the Times. |
| Loewenstein Gaza doc is on Australian national radio Last December I attended the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo to highlight the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. For the last months I’ve worked on a radio documentary feature for ABC Radio National’s 360 program, Australia’s finest space for long-form radio work and the equivalent of NPR. I aimed to create an essay that discussed both the event itself and wider issues about Zionism and Judaism. The march was chaotic, inspiring, frustrating and positive. Never before had so many come from so far to stress the importance of ending Israel’s siege on Palestine. Times were changing and I wanted to be a part of it. This documentary examines the rise in Jewish dissent globally, the importance of questioning traditional Jewish identity and the failings of Zionism to even moderately address the profound inequalities in the Jewish state. My photographs from Gaza and Cairo are also published by the ABC. Here’s the blurb for the show:
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One thought on “MONDOWEISS WEEKLY NEWSLETTER”
Hello there, I was reading something different about this on another blog. Interesting. Your perspective about it is diametrically contradicted from what I read earlier. I am still pondering with the opposite points of view, but I’m leaning to a great extent toward yours. And irrespective, that’s what is so perfect about modern-day democracy and the marketplace of ideas online.