For those who aren’t familiar with Graham, a Democrat, here’s the bio that was distributed before the talk:

Senator Bob Graham is the former two-term governor of Florida and served for 18 years in the United States Senate. Graham was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, serving three consecutive terms. One of his most important contributions came during his last term, when he was named Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
He co-sponsored the bill to create the Director of National Intelligence position and co-chaired the “Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001.” Graham later authored 2004’s Intelligence Matters, revealing serious faults in the U.S. national security system. 

I should add that the senator is a graduate of Harvard Law School.
The talk was mostly what you’d expect. President Obama is great for everyone and the Cairo speech marked a turning point plus America cares about Muslims and people everywhere. I hope Senator Graham will forgive me if I didn’t adequately capture the thrust of his lecture, but that’s what I took away from it.
The talk ended after about forty minutes or an hour, and I was the first one to be called upon during the Q&A portion. That was probably because I was right up front in the third row. I had lots of questions about Iran, Hezbollah, American imperialism, and Senator Graham’s assertion that the greatest threat to America is the one posed by terrorists with biological or nuclear weapons. But I only managed to shoot off three. 
Now, I believe that the biggest threat to American interests in the region is the widespread perception of hypocrisy and the disjuncture between American words and deeds. I hoped to ask a few very loaded questions to express that point to the senator. 
Here are the questions that the senator was kind enough to take after asking for my name and what I did (he asked that of everybody): 
1 What’s your view of President Obama’s evident expansion of executive power, most notably his program focused on the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens in Afghanistan, as reported on extensively by Glenn Greenwald?
2 Is US complicity in the siege of Gaza and the collective punishment of the Palestinians there enhancing America’s capacity to pursue its interests in the region?
3 And as a follow-up, on what basis did the US reject the outcome of the Palestinian elections in 2006?
This is how Senator Graham responded:
1 He didn’t know anything about the program, and this was the first time he was hearing anything about it.
2 The US supports the two-state solution and the right of Palestinians to a state of their own.
3 The Palestinians elected a terrorist organization, etc… 
When Senator Graham was answering the third question, he repeatedly looked to the US ambassador in the front row who was nodding at him. That gave me the impression that some of these questions were anticipated and that he’d been coached. When in doubt, regurgitate a talking point. 
While many of the other questions were softball (lots and lots of sympathetic Americans in the audience helped me forget where I was for a moment) a few focused directly on AIPAC and the eighty-odd senators who signed the AIPAC letter to the president. Senator Graham did not dodge these questions and spoke guardedly about the role of special interest groups in American politics, and referred to AIPAC obliquely. He also said that Israel was asked to become a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty this week. 
Whatever I thought of most of what the senator had to say, this was progress.
Related posts:

1. Lindsey Graham Where Are You?
2. Paul Hodes could be 14th Jewish senator
3. Zakaria double-teams Barghouti with two Talking-Points-Zionists

ISRAEL: CHALLENGES TO LEGITIMACY AND PROSPECTS FOR PEACE
Israel has been singularly successful in ensuring her military, economic and political dominance in the region. In recent years, there have been fewer terrorist attacks on Israelis, Palestinians are badly divided, Israel enjoys solid support from major countries, and her scientists are among the Nobel Prize laureates.
Israel is about to be admitted to the OECD, the select club of wealthy nations, and her cooperation with NATO augurs well for Israel’s eventual integration into this military alliance. Yet, in spite of these remarkable achievements Israel remains insecure: she fears delegitimation. 
A few months ago, a veteran Israeli journalist observed that Israel’s legitimacy “has been worn away, and the idea of a Jewish state is now open to attack. The Jewish people’s right to sovereignty and self-defence is now controversial. Paradoxically, as Israel gets stronger, its legitimacy is melting away. A national movement that began as “legitimacy without an entity” is becoming “an entity without legitimacy” before our very eyes.” Earlier this year, Israel’s Reut Institute, a nationalist think tank, issued a similar warning:
“Israel is facing a dramatic assault on the very legitimacy of its existence as a Jewish and democratic state. The groups promoting this delegitimacy aim to isolate Israel and ultimately turn it into a pariah state.”
INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES
What are the main elements of this seemingly paradoxical delegitimation? Reut lists five: legal, economic, academic, cultural, and military. Firstly, legal challenges have been brought against Israelis on foreign trips, including military officers and ministers. They may be subject to prosecution as war criminals in countries like Belgium, Spain and Britain.
Zionist fund-raising agencies, such as the Jewish National Fund, which owns most lands in Israel and leases it exclusively to Jews, are threatened with removal of its tax-exempt status in several countries. Law suits have been filed, including one in Quebec, against companies accused of “aiding, abetting, assisting and conspiring with Israel, the Occupying Power in the West Bank”, in colonization of the territories conquered in 1967.
Secondly, on the economic arena, Israel has faced boycott of its exports, particularly those produced in Zionists settlements in the territories. These actions are yet to have a significant economic effect, but they are spreading. Trade unions such as CUSATO (the Congress of South African Trade Unions) and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers are at the forefront of these actions.
This can be seen as an example of the shift – from left to right – in international support for Israel in the course of her short history. The first country to grant Israel de-jure recognition in 1948 was the USSR, which promptly supplied the new state, via Czechoslovakia, with badly needed arms. Socialist parties around the world, impressed by her collective agricultural settlements (kibbutz) and socio-economic equality, used to offer Israel solid political support.
Conversely, Israel’s supporters today tend to come from wealthier and more conservative circles while trade unions and students organizations are at the forefront of the delegitimation campaign. It is also among conservative Christians that one finds Christian Zionists, who are four to five times more numerous than the entire Jewish population of the planet.
Unlike the profoundly divided Jews, Christian Zionists offer Israel religiously unanimous and unconditional support. Zionist churches have become a major source in providing political, moral and financial succour to Israel, and in particular to Zionist settlers in the West Bank.
Thirdly, academic boycott of Israel has been on the table for several years, and it is supported by a number of British and American Jews as well as Israeli academics. Israeli universities are portrayed as major contributors to Israel’s military power used against the Palestinians.
Fourthly, cultural events, such as the recent Toronto film festival, which the Israeli government has tried to use in its effort to “re-brand” Israel as a modern sophisticated country, have been disrupted by withdrawal of prominent participants protesting Israel’s action in the territories occupied in June 1967. Here again, prominent Jews such as the Canadian author Naomi Klein led the campaign.
Finally, Israel’s preeminent position as the world’s largest exporter of arms and security equipment (in proportion to its population and GNP) has attracted its share of hostile attention. There is a consistent effort to expose deals with Israel, which tends to lead to their cancellation or at least deters their renewal. 
Comparisons of Zionism with apartheid and of Israel with racist South Africa constitute, perhaps, the most potent strategy in the delegitimation campaign. One may recall the decision to consider Zionism a form of racism that was passed by the UN General Assembly in 1985 and revoked several years later. Students on dozens of campuses around the world organize the Israel Apartheid Week, activities which feature prominent speakers and otherwise distribute information damaging Israel’s reputation.
It is noteworthy that Jews play a growing role in this and other activities that present Israel in unfavourable light. Their participation has at least two consequences: it undermines Israel’s claim to speak and act on behalf of world Jewry and it casts doubts on accusations made by Israel and her advocates around the world that all opposition to Zionism is antisemitic. We shall later return to the issue of Israel as “the state of the Jewish people”.
Comparisons with apartheid gain particular credibility when made by personalities such as South Africa’s Nobel peace prize laureate bishop Desmond Tutu: 

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. … This humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.

Israeli supporters prefer to ban, rather than argue about, comparisons of Israel with apartheid South Africa. To do so, they conflate opposition to Zionism with antisemitism, and try to discredit those who make such comparisons as inveterate antisemites. 
Advocates of Israel accurately argue that she is not the worst violator of human rights. But they are less convincing when they explain the focus on that one country is a sure sign of antisemitism or Jewish self-hate. Rather, many Jews respond to the traditional urge to assume moral responsibility. They aim at preventing what Jewish tradition calls “profanation of the Divine name”, in other words, criminal and deplorable acts to be committed by Jews. “My anguish and anger in the Middle East focuses on Israel precisely because I am a Jew.
It is the same Jew in me that is more outraged by a Bernie Madoff [a financier who stole over $60 billion from his clients] than I would have been had this criminal been named Kelly or Rodriquez.”
Without assuming any moral superiority, Jews were disproportionately active in the struggle against apartheid and Vietnam War, and nowadays they speak and act against injustice in Israel/Palestine well beyond their relative numbers. According to Richard Falk, a Princeton don and currently UN Rapporteur for Palestine, “a Jew must honour conscience and truthfulness above tribal identities should these conflict”. 
Quite a few Jews, in Israel and elsewhere, feel torn between these two allegiances and must eventually come to terms with the contradictions between the Jewish moral tradition they profess to uphold and the Zionist ideology that has in fact taken hold of them. According to Marc Ellis, American Jewish theologian, ““Jews are being split less in terms of their experience of Israel and America than in relation to conscience and what Jews are willing to do and what they will refuse in terms of Jewish history and memory. Instead of splitting apart around issues of geography and culture, a civil war of conscience has begun.”
This specific moral compunction felt by Jews, precisely because Israel claims to act in their name, is compounded among many Christians with a pronounced interest in the Holy Land whose image they find tarnished by violence, particularly when perpetrated by tanks and gunships bearing the Star of David that used to be associated with Judaism and its commandments. In neither case antisemitism seems to be the motive force behind opposition to Zionism. 
Just how seriously Israeli elites take the attempts to portray their country as the last bulwark of European colonialism can be seen in a speech of Benjamin Netanyahu at AIPAC, a major constituent of the Israel lobby in the United States, earlier this year:

But Israel should be judged by the same standards applied to all nations, and allegations against Israel must be grounded in fact. One allegation that is not is the attempt to describe the Jews as foreign colonialists in their own homeland, one of the great lies of modern times.
In my office, I have a signet ring that was loaned to me by Israel’s Department of Antiquities. The ring was found next to the Western wall, but it dates back some 2,800 years ago, two hundred years after King David turned Jerusalem into our capital city.
The ring is a seal of a Jewish official, and inscribed on it in Hebrew is his name: Netanyahu. Netanyahu Ben-Yoash. That’s my last name. My first name, Benjamin, dates back 1,000 years earlier to Benjamin, the son of Jacob, One of Benjamin’s brothers was named Shimon, which also happens to be the first name of my good friend, Shimon Peres, the President of Israel. Nearly 4,000 years ago, Benjamin, Shimon and their ten brothers roamed the hills of Judea.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel cannot be denied. The connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem cannot be denied. The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital. 

In essence, the Prime minister affirms the historical, linguistic and religious continuity of the state of Israel, an heir to the Kingdom of David and other protagonists of the Bible. He appears alarmed by recent scholarship, produced by Jews and Israelis, that challenges his view in all the three aspects of continuity. 
JEWISH CHALLENGES
In terms of ethnic connection, Zionists postulate that Jews from countries as different as Poland, Yemen or Morocco belong to the same people. Many, including Israel’s Prime minister, believe them to be descendents of the Biblical Hebrews. In his recent book Professor Shlomo Sand of Tel-Aviv University challenges these beliefs, arguing that the Jewish people, as an ethnic concept, has no historic legitimacy and was simply “invented” for the needs of Zionism in the late 19th century.
Any nationalism needs a nation to begin with. Interestingly, even Sand’s scholarly critics agree that the claim to ethnic continuity of the Jews through millennia is simply not serious.
Moreover, Sand shows affinity between Zionist and antisemitic ideas. Zionism affirms the ethnic definition of the Jew modelled on Eastern European prototypes. Thus Zionists accept the antisemites’ view of the Jews as a distinct and therefore alien people or race. This is why most Jews rejected Zionism from the very beginning.
They saw that Zionists played into the hands of their worst enemies, the antisemites: the latter wanted to be rid of Jews while the former wanted to gather them to Israel. The founder of Zionism Theodore Herzl considered antisemites “friends and allies” of his movement. This makes it hard to argue that Israel was meant to be a bulwark against antisemitism, and, sadly, only in Israel a Jew is likely to be killed simply because of being Jewish.
No wonder that, in spite of consistent efforts by Zionist organizations, most Jews have chosen to live outside Israel, including those Jews, who change their country of residence. This weakens the claim to be “the state of the Jewish people” that is the ideological foundation of the current state of Israel. / In fact, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians threatens not only Israelis but also Jews the world over.
Israel’s Roth Institute found that Israel’s attack on Gaza was practically the only factor driving the dramatic spike in anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in the world in 2009. These findings conflict with Israel’s claim to be the ultimate protector of Jews all over the world, a crucial argument in favour of Zionism.
From the language perspective, Gil’ad Zuckermann, an Israeli linguist teaching in Australia, tries to shake another pillar of Zionism – the rebirth of the Hebrew language. He finds that the language created by Zionists is not Semitic but Indo-European. This should not be surprising since the pioneers of the new vernacular were mostly Eastern European immigrants, whose native tongues were Russian, Polish and Yiddish.
It is these pioneers (whom Shlomo Sand considers “the Yiddish people”) that created “the Israeli language” as Zuckerman prefers to call it. He argues that the use of Hebrew roots and words is overshadowed by massive structural and syntactic influence of the European languages and by a consistent effort at secularization of the religious idiom.
The modern Hebrew language appears as “invented” as the transnational “Jewish people” investigated by Shlomo Sand, and this casts doubt on the linguistic continuity of Zionism invoked by the Israeli Premier.
Finally, there remains the claim to spiritual legitimacy of Zionism as an heir to Judaism and Jewish tradition. Religious concepts such as the Holy Land, the Promised Land and the Chosen People have become the essential part of the Zionist vocabulary.
However, the founders of the Zionist state were profoundly secular, and so is the majority of Israeli Jews. According to a sarcastic remark of the Israeli scholar Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, “ our claim to this land could be put in a nutshell: God does not exist, and he gave us this land. ”
In fact, Zionism has provoked most durable opposition precisely from the traditional Jewish circles, whose commitment to Judaism is beyond doubt. This Jewish opposition reflects the fact that Zionism has been a break with the past, one of the last revolutionary movements seeking to transform man and society. 
Thus on three fundamental accounts – religious, ethnic and linguistic – the historical legitimacy of Zionism is seriously contested. The Israeli historian Boaz Evron reminds us that:
The State of Israel, and all the states of the world, appear and disappear. The State of Israel, clearly, will disappear in one hundred, three-hundred, five-hundred years. But I suppose that the Jewish people will exist as long as the Jewish religion exists, perhaps for thousands more years. The existence of this state is of no importance for that of the Jewish people…. Jews throughout the world can live quite well without it. 
Decoupling the fate of the state of Israel from the future of the Jews opens possibilities for a more rational political approach to the conflict in Israel/Palestine. 
PROSPECTS FOR PEACE 
These two challenges to the Zionist character of Israel – international and Jewish – must be seen in the context of current efforts to bring peace to the embattled Western Asia. President Obama tends to rely on legal principles in his search for a negotiated settlement.
When Israeli politicians accuse Obama’s two close advisors of being self-hating Jews, they weaken the emotional view of Israel as the “the state of the Jewish people”. 55 percent of American Jews approve of the way the Obama administration is handling U.S.-Israel relations, (compared to less than 10 percent of Israeli Jews), this emphasizes the serious split that Israel and Zionism have fomented among Jews. This split makes it possible to treat and discuss Israel as any other state, on its merits, rather than with emotional references to Jewish history.
The founding fathers of Zionism dreamt of building “a normal country”. They built Israel into a mighty regional power armed with nuclear and other sophisticated weapons. The current Prime minister also argues that Israel “should be judged by the same standards applied to all nations.”
Indeed, Israel should be judged according to accepted international standards as a major military power, rather than as a collective victim of past persecutions of Jews in Europe. / Israel was founded as a revolutionary break with the past, and there is no historical, religious or moral reason to accept her claim to exceptionalism. Recent statements by U.S. military and diplomatic experts show that this normalization has begun.
General David Petraeus in testimony before Congress argued that the continuing conflict in Israel/Palestine harms U.S. security interests. No less importantly, the percentage of Americans who consider Israel is an U.S. ally has fallen from 70% in August 2009 to 58% in March 2010. 
An eventual return to normalcy and rationality in analyses of Israel/Palestine may help in the search for peace. Afrikaner nationalists also used to consider themselves “the chosen people” and related to their colonization of South Africa’s interior as a religious obligation. They too feared the prospect of “being thrown into the sea” should their dominant position vanish.
Yet, a peaceful transition took place, and one of its architects sees in it a hope for the Holy Land. Bishop Tutu remarks that: It is not with rancour that we criticize the Israeli government, but with hope, a hope that a better future can be made for both Israelis and Palestinians, a future in which both the violence of the occupier and the resulting violent resistance of the occupied come to an end, and where one people need not rule over another, engendering suffering, humiliation, and retaliation.
True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. “ 
Significantly, the main Jewish newspaper in South Africa recently published an editorial, which concluded with a question: “Will the Israeli-Palestinian bloodletting go on, tragically, until there is “no choice” but a settlement as happened in South Africa? Given the strength of both sides, that will be long time coming. In the meantime, how many lives will be lost and how much destruction caused?”
Leo Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with these words: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. His observation applies to states no less than to families. No two states’ predicament and history are the same. Yet some parallels are not only unavoidable but can also be instructive and even hopeful.
Comparisons of Zionist practices with apartheid in South Africa are not only attempts to delegitimize Zionism, but may also be seen as road signs towards a more inclusive and therefore less violent political framework. In other words, the ongoing delegitimation of Zionist Israel may stimulate a non-violent emergence of a pluralist and democratic Israel, living in peace with her citizens and neighbours. The impasse of the U.S. sponsored road map towards the two-state solution makes such evolution more probable.
Richard Falk seems to recognize peace-enhancing aspects of the attempts to delegitimize the Zionist character of Israel. To face this challenge to its legitimacy, writes Falk, “it would seem to require an Israeli willingness to abandon the core Zionist project to establish a Jewish state, and that does not appear likely from the vantage point of the present.
But always the goals of a legitimacy war appear to be beyond reach until mysteriously attained by the abrupt and totally unexpected surrender by the losing side. Until it collapses the losing side pretends to be unmovable and invincible, a claim that is usually reinforced by police and military dominance. This is what happened in the Soviet Union and South Africa, earlier to French colonial rule in Indochina and Algeria, and to the United States in Vietnam.”
During his exile, less than a decade before the end of the USSR, the Soviet dissident and father of the H-bomb Andrei Sakharov remarked: “I do not have any hope for democratic change in the near future. But the mole of history digs invisibly, and we know that historical changes occur suddenly”.
Related posts:

1. Did Jewish Identity Stand in the Way of the Peace Process at Camp David?
2. ‘Peace Now’ suggests that election will stymie ‘peace process’
3. Jewish Soldiers Protecting Arab Olive Harvest Provide Glimpse of One-State Future

Student: “So, is Alan Dershowitz going to be here?”
Akiva Tor, Israeli Consul General: “I hope not.”

Related posts:

1. Berkeley student senate votes for divestment, 16-4
2. First calls to students who spearheaded Hampshire divestment came from an angered Alan Dershowitz
3. UC Berkeley divestment vote–it isn’t over yet

As my colleague Sydney Levy said, “The movement grew by an enormous leap today.”
First, the vote itself: after the UC Berkeley Student Senate originally voted on March 18, by a margin of 16-4, to divest from companies that profit from the occupation, that vote was vetoed by the Senate president. The Senate needed 14 votes to overturn his veto, but early this morning, after an epic 10 plus hour meeting, senators found they had only 13 yes votes with one abstention.
So the students tabled a vote to overturn the veto. This means the veto stands but can still be overturned later–there will be much continued lobbying and activism in the coming weeks. (Meanwhile, some weeks ago AIPAC openly threatened to take over the UC government to block the bill.)
But in many ways, the vote itself was not the star of this story. For anyone who was there last night and until 7:30 this morning when the forum ended, it was clear what the future looks like.
For one, the smart money is on the members of UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice with Palestine (SJP), the group leading this effort. They are a remarkable multi-ethnic group that seemingly includes every race, religion and ethnicity including Muslims and Jews, and Israelis and Palestinians. They are just brilliant thinkers and organizers and driven by a clear sense of justice and empathy.
They spent a year researching and writing the divestment bill, and I can’t express how much I love and respect them and how much hope they make me feel. And there are students just like them on every other campus in the world.
Second, the feeling on campus and in the room was electric. We filled an enormous room that fits 900. Most stayed through the entire night. If you can imagine, the evening started with remarkable statements by divestment supporters Judith Butler, Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, Richard Falk, Hatem Bazian and George Bisharat. And then the extraordinary parade of students and community members who spoke on both sides of the issue until it was past sunrise.
And though the final vote still hangs in the balance, the fact remains that the vast majority of the Senate voted to divest. The bill garnered the support of some of the most famous moral voices in the world, a good chunk of the Israeli left (9 groups and counting), nearly 40 campus groups (almost all student of color groups and one queer organization) plus another 40 US off-campus groups.
In addition, the room was filled with Jewish divestment supporters of every age including grandmothers and aunts and uncles and students. Our staff, activist members, and Advisory Board members like Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Noam Chomsky each played critical roles in the effort. And of course, all of you who generated over 5,000 letters of support.
So much has changed since Gaza. Just 2 years ago we secured only 4 pages of Jewish endorsement letters for a similar selective divestment effort. This time, we put together 29 pages of major Jewish endorsement statements (which you can download here), and the list continues to grow by the day. We also made 400 bright green stickers that said “Another (fill in the blank) for human rights. Divest from the Israeli occupation” and gave every single last one away.
As attorney Reem Salahi said to me, “When I was a student here in law school 2 years ago, no one spoke about divestment. Now everyone is talking about it.”
For those of us there, it was clear–the room was with divestment. The senators were with divestment. And given the endorsements that kept pouring in up to the last second, from Nobel prize winners, from Israeli peace groups, from leading academics and activists–it seemed like the whole world was with divestment.
There were a number of Jewish students who expressed seemingly real discomfort if the divestment bill should pass. (As it turned out, they were repeating these talking points almost verbatim, with histrionics encouraged.) Many said they wouldn’t feel safe on campus, others said they would feel silenced, a few said young Jews would no longer want to come to UC Berkeley.
While feeling for their discomfort, it was difficult to watch how speaker after anti-divestment speaker seemed unable to distinguish between the discomfort of infrequent dirty looks, and rare nasty or bigoted name-calling, and the “discomfort” of having your home demolished or of having only toxic water to give to your family or of being shot or stuck at a checkpoint for hours in the sun.
They were unable to make the distinction between “feeling silenced” because the bill might pass against their wishes, and being silenced because you are jailed for your nonviolent activism or because you can’t get a visa to travel or because your story is virtually invisible in film, in history books, in the mainstream media, everywhere.
I of course wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Students of color, and one student senator in particular, beautifully articulated what it meant to come to campus “already marginalized.” That is certainly a part of why so many student of color campus groups support the divestment effort, and why the links between being anti-racist in Israel/Palestine and anti-racist in the U.S. (and elsewhere) are particularly strong, clear, and important — and these students know it.
Which makes the statements of the anti-divestment Jews all the more striking in juxtaposition to the statements of the many Jewish students who supported divestment, each of whom said, “I feel safe on this campus.” And the progressive Jewish UC-Berkeley senator who said, “this divest bill will actually make me feel safe” and “this [bill] is creating space for Jews to have a community here. I’ve never been prouder to be a Jew.”
And that, if anything, suggests the most exciting part of what happened here.
It’s so clear to me how the organizing itself, and the ways it brought all of us, but especially Jews and Muslims and Arabs of every age together, is the solution. When peace happens, it will radiate outward from these relationships, mirrored in the Israeli-Palestinian relationships in places like Bil’in and Sheikh Jarrah.
This was so apparent when I saw, on one side of the room, Jewish and Palestinian and Muslim students literally leaning on each other and holding hands for support–and on the other side of the room, a relatively small (and by their own admonition, fearful) group of Jews that seemed to mostly have each other. It was very jarring and poignant and deeply sad.
The future is clear and it’s already here. It is a multicultural (and queer-integrated) universe bound together by a belief in full equality. Period.
Silence and apathy are the friends of the status quo. Sunlight, debate, facts, passion- these are what justice requires to grow. Open debates like the one UC Berkeley held last night simply must happen at campuses everywhere. The students of SJP have already won by making this debate happen.
The whole campus is talking about Israel and Palestine. Last night’s forum and vote will forever impact the lives of every person who was in that room. And the new connections made have strengthened the movement in ways none of us imagined.
No wonder Israeli Consulate General Akiva Tor stayed for the entire vote. If I were he and it were my job to protect Israel’s occupation, I’d be worried. Very worried.
This morning, not hours after the meeting ended, I found an email in my inbox from an SJP group at another campus. “We want to introduce a divestment bill on campus and were wondering if you might assist us with speakers…”
Let this new stage begin.
Cecilie Surasky is the Deputy Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Related posts:

1. Anti-divestment talking points: Avoid the facts and claim victimhood
2. Berkeley student senate votes for divestment, 16-4
3. Follow the Berkeley divestment debate live

An agreement with the family, that Goldstone would not be in attendance at the synagogue service, was reached after negotiations between the SAZF and the Sandton Shul, where the event is due to take place. Avrom Krengel, chairman of the SAZF, who was reportedly not keen to reveal much, said: “We understand there’s a barmitzvah boy involved – we’re very sensitive to the issues; at this stage there’s nothing further to say.”
While Krengel said the SAZF had interacted on the matter with the chief rabbi and others, his organisation was “coming across most forcefully because we represent Israel”. Goldstone was reluctant to reveal further details, and is reported to have said: “In the interests of my grandson, I’ve decided not to attend the ceremony at the synagogue.”
This decision was so shocking that the South African religious leadership is now backing away from any responsibility in the matter. Thus Zev Krengel, national chairman of the Jewish Board of Deputies. Notice the prevarication near the end of the statement:

Dear Community Member
It has been widely reported in the media that Judge Richard Goldstone has been barred from attending his grandson’s barmitzvah as a result of pressure from certain sectors of the Jewish leadership. While it has not been involved in this matter, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies was concerned that it would turn into a divisive issue within the Jewish community, and has therefore carefully investigated it to establish the correct facts. 
What has emerged is that, contrary to what many media reports alleged, at no time was Judge Goldstone prohibited from, or even requested, not to attend the bar mitzvah ceremony by any organisation or individual. Rather, this was a decision voluntarily taken by the Goldstone family and the other respective parties.
Certain senior Jewish communal and religious leaders were certainly involved in the discussions around the topic, but in no way did they attempt to dictate to or otherwise pressurize the family into arriving at their decision.
… At the same time, the right to freedom of expression needs at all times to be exercised with sensitivity, with due regard to the appropriateness of the forum and occasion. Taking into account, with due sensitivity and understanding, the feelings of others goes a long way towards preventing unnecessary conflict. 
Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom.
ZEV KRENGEL NATIONAL CHAIRMAN

Related posts:

1. Judge Goldstone barred from grandson’s bar mitzvah
2. Goldstone explains why Israel is being singled out (after South Africa and Serbia)
3. Conservative rabbis call on American Jews to sing Israeli anthem in synagogues to battle Goldstone!

Though Mamilla is in West Jerusalem, Israel is rapidly colonizing and consolidating as much of the city as it can, as Jewish, because under the Clinton parameters of 2001, Jewish areas are to go to Israel and Palestinian areas to the Palestinian state. Well, if Israel has transformed Arab neighborhoods like Silwan and el Walaja and greater Bethlehem into Jewish neighborhoods, then presto, that’s the Jewish state.
Here at Foreign Affairs, Khalidi expands the analysis to show that Jerusalem is at the heart of the dispute, and that anyone who endorses the two-state solution must abide by long-dishonored principles regarding the city: that it is international in character, that its Arab population must be able to come and go freely.

One telling problem was the media’s widespread use of the Israeli terms “disputed” and “neighborhoods” to describe East Jerusalem’s status and the illegal Jewish-only settlements proliferating there. There is nothing disputed about East Jerusalem’s status under international law as understood by every country besides Israel: it is universally considered occupied territory.
Similarly, Israeli settlements in the parts of the city that lie across the Green Line are in clear contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids an occupying power from moving its own population into occupied territory.
Jerusalem is the slated location for the capital of an independent Palestinian state, and this is not a matter to be haggled over as far as the Palestinians and Arab and Islamic leaders are concerned. At least 40 generations of leading figures in Palestine’s and the Islamic world’s political, military, religious, and intellectual history — ranging from generals in Saladin’s armies and Sufi saints to great scholars and distinguished judges — are buried in the ancient Mamilla cemetery, located in present-day West Jerusalem.
Part of this great historic landmark is now being excavated in order to pave way for a “Museum of Tolerance” to be built by the Los Angeles–based Simon Wiesenthal Center, despite the protests of the families of those buried there and of many leading Israeli academics and organizations. Its completion would erase not only part of Jerusalem’s Palestinian and Islamic heritage but also part of the heritage of all mankind that makes this city so important to the entire world.
Today, Jerusalem is the geographic center and communications hub of the West Bank. By walling the city off from its Arab hinterland and building fortresslike settlements in concentric rings around the city — and, increasingly, within its remaining Arab neighborhoods — Israel has succeeded in fragmenting and isolating Arab population centers within the city.
These settlements also hinder the flow of north-south traffic through the West Bank, leaving Israel as the master of a terrain speckled with tiny Bantustan-esque islands of Palestinians….
When it comes to Jerusalem, a final-status negotiation that begins from the status quo — the result of successive Israeli governments establishing settlements as faits accomplis — will be unacceptable to any Palestinian leader.
Even a return to the status quo ante of 2000 is insufficient, given Israel’s aggressive reshaping of Jerusalem’s surface and subterranean landscape since the 1980s. One need only walk through the streets of Jerusalem with a sense of what they once looked like to understand how takeovers of key buildings; strategically placed new housing developments, roads, and infrastructure; extensive archeological excavations; and the digging of a vast network of tunnels under and around the Old City were intended to fragment Arab East Jerusalem and permanently incorporate it into Israel.
In the end, only a negotiation in which all of Jerusalem is placed on the table will suffice.

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She added: “But we believe that through good-faith negotiations, the parties can mutually agree to an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the ’67 lines, with agreed swaps, and Israel’s goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israel’s security requirements.” 

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Haneen Zoubi, an MP who previously headed an Israeli media-monitoring organisation, said it was “outrageous” that the suppressed report was still secret so long after the Gaza attack. She is to table a parliamentary question to Ehud Barak, the defence minister, today demanding to know why the army suppressed the article and what is preventing its publication now.
Mr Barak must respond within 21 days.She said publication of the article was important both because Israel had been widely criticised for killing many hundreds of civilians in its three-week assault on Gaza, and because subsequent reports suggested that Israeli commanders sought legal advice months before the operation to manipulate the accepted definitions of international law to make it easier to target civilians.
“There must be at least a strong suspicion that Mr Blau’s article contains vital information, based on military documentation, warning of Israeli army intentions to commit war crimes,” she said in an interview.
“If so, then there is a public duty on Haaretz to publish the article. If not, then there is no reason for the minister to prevent publication after all this time.”
Ms Zoubi’s call yesterday followed mounting public criticism of Haaretz for supporting Mr Blau by advising him to stay in hiding and continuing to pay his salary. In chat forums and talkback columns, the reporter has been widely denounced as a traitor. Several MPs have called for Haaretz to be closed down or boycotted.
A Haaretz spokeswoman refused to comment, but a journalist there said a “fortress mentality” had developed at the newspaper. “We’ve all been told not to talk to anyone about the case,” he said. “There’s absolute paranoia that the paper is going to be made to suffer because of the Blau case.”
Amal Jamal, a professor at Tel Aviv University who teaches a media course to professional journalists, said he was concerned with the timing of the Shin Bet’s campaign against Mr Blau. He observed that they began interviewing the reporter about his sources and documents last summer as publication neared of the Goldstone report, commissioned by the United Nations and which embarrassed Israel by alleging it had perpetrated war crimes in Gaza.
“The goal in this case appears to be not only to intimidate journalists but also to delegitimise certain kinds of investigations concerning security issues, given the new climate of sensitivity in Israel following the Goldstone report.”
He added that Mr Blau, who had quickly acquired a reputation as Israel’s best investigative reporter, was “probably finished” as a journalist in Israel.

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