Thursday, May 22, 2008

American Jews and Israel: Last week on NPR's KUOW

Last week, I joined Rabbi Anson Laytner of the AJC and Wendy Somerson of Jewish Voice for Peace on the Steve Scher show, Weekday. Michael Oren also contributed to the program via tape from his home in Jerusalem, speaking with authority on what it's like to be American born and Israeli by choice, having lived in Israel since 1979 (he also spends time in the States, teaching, lecturing and traveling the country last year as part of his book tour).
Towards the end of the broadcast, Ms. Somerson made the claim that Israel still maintains an active occupation over Gaza, controlling the air space, water, and border crossings. That Gaza is a 'power-cooker' where the Israelis control the fuel, are strangling the Gazans, and have taken away their electricity. For Ms. Somerson, then, it's no surprise that there are rockets regularly launched into Israel proper. The solution is simple: "Start negotiating."
Never mind that Hamas refuses to: renounce violence, recognize Israel's very right to exist, or respect existing agreements.
Apparently, Ms. Somerson is also unaware of the fact that the Hamas leadership is very adept at orchestrating humanitarian crises in order to manipulate world opinion against Israel. Aside from stealing the fuel supplies that are earmarked for Gazan hospitals, schools and what industry still exists (aside from bomb-making), Hamas and its co-conspirators continue to attack vital crossing points and energy supply lines along the Gaza-Israel border.
Just last month, suicide bombers drove 3 explosives-laden vehicles into the Kerem Shalom crossing. Thirteen Israeli soldiers were wounded in the attack. At least a couple of hundred trucks providing essential food and medical supplies pass through this crossing each week.
Two weeks prior to that, terrorists attacked the Nahal Oz fuel terminal, which delivers almost 800,000 gallons of fuel every week to Gazan hospitals and to the Gaza City power station. Two Israeli workers were killed in that "negotiation," civilians who are there to facilitate the delivery of the fuel to Gaza. On May 4th, the IDF had to stop food and fuel shipments because the delivery vehicles came under heavy mortar fire. And early this morning, a Palestinian suicide truck packed with 4.5 tons of explosives blew up just outside the Erez crossing. Islamic Jihad said it and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade cooperated in the attack.
These are but a sampling of the facts on the ground. But all this escapes the notice of Ms. Somerson, perhaps because, as she sheepishly admitted at the beginning of the broadcast, she has actually never even stepped foot in Israel, the West Bank or Gaza. She'd like to go someday, though.
david brumer
seattle
The full podcast is available below.


http://www.kuow.org/defaultProgram.asp?ID=14925
Thursday on Weekday at 9:00 a.m.
5/15/2008 at 9:00 a.m.
Go to 10:00 a.m.
Photo by tina.gao


American Jews and Israel
RealAudio MP3: high low
Israel celebrates the 60th anniversary of its independence this month. President Bush is in Israel along with other world leaders. Many American Jews are celebrating, while some stand in solidarity with Palestinians. Today we speak with leaders in Western Washington's Jewish community across the political spectrum. What does Israel mean to American Jews? What does it mean to be pro–Israel? What should America's relationship with Israel be, and what role do American Jews have in shaping it? What role have American Jews had in shaping Israel itself?


Guests:Rabbi Anson Laytner is executive director of the American Jewish Committee's Seattle chapter. He is an adjunct theology and religious studies professor at Seattle University.

David Brumer is on the Executive Committee of StandWithUs Northwest, a group dedicated to "promoting greater understanding and support for Israel in the Pacific Northwest." He is a member of the Israel Bonds Speakers Bureau, and as such promotes investment in securities issued by the State of Israel. He writes the blog BRUMSPEAK and has a day job as a geriatric social worker and psychotherapist.

Dr. Wendy Somerson helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP "supports the aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians for security and self–determination" and calls for "an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem." The group is a member of the Al–Nakba coalition, which held an event May 10 to commemorate Palestinian resistance. Dr. Somerson has a PhD in English from the University of Washington and has written curricula on Jews' ethnic diversity for the Jewish Federation in Seattle.

Michael Oren is a Senior Fellow at the Shalem Center, a research center in Jerusalem. He's the author of Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present. He grew up in New Jersey and moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served in the Israeli army during the first Lebanon war.

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Sunday, May 4, 2008

Incontrovertible 'Right to Exist': Israel at 3,060

It's sad that a piece like this even needs to be written, defending the very 'right to exist' of a sovereign nation, or as Cynthia Ozick puts it, "the scandal of calling into question a living nation’s existence—ought to shame the prevaricators and defamers, whether they be professors in universities, media distorters, ‘peace activists’ who justify terror, morally deformed intellectuals, self-deceiving unconfessed haters, or merely the herd of the easily led."
Since the 'cat is out of the bag' though, and the prevaricators and defamers are making their case for raising this as a legitimate debate, here is my response. The original, longer version that was not published, is included in the "read more" link, as is the article as published in its entirety.
david brumer
seattle

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/361594_israel04.html
Israel's incontrovertible right to exist

BY DAVID BRUMER
GUEST COLUMNIST
The creation of Israel, the modern flowering of an ancient people, was one of the few redeeming acts in a century of atrocity and shame. Yet, as the Jewish state celebrates its 60th birthday, a chorus of defamers sees the modern incarnation of the Jewish people in their homeland as a historic injustice. For some in academia, the media and even the United Nations, Israel's very "Right to Exist" is considered a subject for legitimate debate. It's ironic, too, since few nations can claim the kind of historic legitimacy and connection to a place as can the Jewish people.
For more than 3,000 years, Jews have been spiritually as well as corporeally bonded to the land of Israel. In 1921, Winston Churchill proclaimed, "It is manifestly right that the Jews, who are scattered all over the world, should have a national center and a national home. And where else could that be but in this land of Palestine, with which for more than 3,000 years they have been intimately and profoundly associated?" For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the recreation of a sovereign Jewish state "is the most significant event of the 20th century." He described Israel's re-establishment as "the 20th century's miracle" and noted that "defending its existence is an international duty."
So why, 60 years later, or 3,060 years, if you will, is Israel living under such a barrage of existential threats? Why does Israel still have to prove itself worthy of being included in the family of nations? Why indeed is Israel singled out as the one nation on Earth whose very existence is questioned? Cynthia Ozick bristles at the "the scandal of calling into question a living nation's existence ... The Big Lie that demonizes Israel and contaminates the viler estuaries of what is nowadays dubbed 'the international community' ... ."



Yet among "progressive" intellectuals, especially in Europe, it is axiomatic that Israel is not merely "not doing enough to for peace in the Middle East," but is responsible for Islamist "outrage" against the West; that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains at the core of the Arab world's grievances, and, if only this conflict could be solved, peace would ensue. Leaving aside the illogical nature of this proposition (al-Qaida and other radical Islamists have as much a gripe against Christian nations whom they see as usurping their place in history), it is hard to find a country that has striven more for peaceful co-existence with its neighbors than Israel. No nation has taken more demonstrable risks for peace. Israel proved its intention to live in harmony with its neighbors when it enacted peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Israel has shown its willingness to make painful sacrifices in the name of peace, withdrawing from all of Gaza in 2005 while evacuating more than 8,000 Israeli citizens from their homes.
Israel has said yes to virtually every partition plan put forth in modern times while the Palestinians have said no, starting with the Peel Commission in 1937, which would have given the Palestinians nearly 80 percent of the land between the "River and the Sea." In 1947, the Palestinians again rejected statehood on 45 percent of the land, while Israel agreed to the remaining 55 percent divided into three cantons (60 percent of which is desert). Finally, in 2000 Israel offered the Palestinians more than 96 percent of contiguous West Bank land and all of Gaza in the hopes that the century-old conflict could end. The Palestinian response to that offer was the Second Intifada, more aptly understood by Israelis as a Terror War unleashed against the Jewish State.
Yet Israel continues to be viewed as the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Israel, which at 60 continues to be a vibrant, secular democracy. Israel, which is accused of human rights violations and even apartheid, remains an oddity in the Middle East where gays participate openly in military service; all women have the right to vote, with 17 of them serving in the 120-member Knesset (Parliament). Another 12 members are Arab-Israelis, with three parties representing the Arab segment of the population. And all Israeli citizens, Christians, Muslims and Jews, enjoy freedom of speech, the press and unfettered religious expression, as well as access to education, modern health care and the professions.
Of course, Israel is far from perfect, and legitimate criticisms launched against specific conditions and policies are expected and welcomed. It is the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish state that is as baffling as it is malevolent. Israel, which has produced more Nobel laureates per capita than anywhere else in the world, a nation of highly educated and motivated people, producing cutting-edge technologies in medicine, science and business; and all this in the face of ongoing threats -- and actualities -- of war, and the unwillingness of too many of its neighbors to accept Israel's very right to exist as a Jewish nation. The world might better applaud the miracle of Israel's rebirth in its deliberately tiny ancestral land as a model of decency, tolerance and intellectual vibrancy, for these are the true criteria of legitimacy, and focus its urge to deligitimize on societies that celebrate (and wish to spread around the world) the values of suicide-bombing, uncompromising intolerance, and irrationality.
David Brumer is a media analyst, writer and consultant on Middle Eastern affairs. He is on the advisory board of StandWithUs Northwest and is a member of Israel Bonds Speakers Bureau. Visit his blog, BRUMSPEAK, at brumspeak.blogspot.com
© 1998-2008 Seattle Post-Intelligencer


Original, full length version
This month Israel will celebrate its 6oth birthday in its modern incarnation as the nation of the Jewish people. For some, this represents a historic injustice. In fact, there are intellectuals, world leaders, and even United Nations special rapporteurs who consider Israel’s very ‘Right to Exist’ a subject for legitimate debate. It’s ironic too, since few nations can claim the kind of historic legitimacy and connection to a place as can the Jewish people.

For over three thousand years, Jews have been spiritually as well as physically bonded to the land of Israel. More than 3,200 years ago, Moses prophesied: “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.” And indeed from our most recent exile in 70 A.D. during Roman Times, we were scattered to the corners of the earth, only to be reunited in what Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France has said, “is the most significant event of the 20th century.” He described Israel’s re-establishment as “the twentieth century’s miracle” and noted that “defending its existence is an international duty…Israel introduces diversity and democracy to the Middle East. It is a miracle that out of the remnants of the scattered Jewish people, such a state has arisen.”
Israel is the only place on earth, iterates Britain’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, where Jews have been able to rule themselves and defend themselves. Israel is the only place where, during 4.000 years of history, Jews have formed a majority. Where Jews have been able to create a nation and a society according to their own laws and values. Only in Israel can Jews speak their ancient tongue, live by the Jewish calendar, walk where their ancestors walked and perpetuate the Jewish narrative.

On May 14th, 1948 Israel’s towering leader David Ben-Gurion read from the Declaration of Independence:

Eretz-Yisrael--The Land of Israel--was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.
Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland… On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.
This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.



So why, 60 years later, or 3,060 years, if you will, is Israel living under such a barrage of existential threats, from the physical to the philosophical? Why does Israel still have to prove itself worthy to be included in the family of nations, and fight for the right to be? Why was Israeli historian Yaacov Lozowick compelled to publish a defense, entitled Right to Exist in 2003, a book that prompted Cynthia Ozick to write,
Lozowick meticulously unravels the Big Lie that demonizes Israel and Zionism and contaminates the viler estuaries of what is nowadays dubbed ‘the international community.’ The title alone—the scandal of calling into question a living nation’s existence—ought to shame the prevaricators and defamers, whether they be professors in universities, media distorters, ‘peace activists’ who justify terror, morally deformed intellectuals, self-deceiving unconfessed haters, or merely the herd of the easily led.

Why indeed is Israel singled out as the one nation on earth whose very existence is questioned? Just last month, the cover of The Atlantic Monthly featured a large Jewish star with the heading, “Is Israel Finished?” as the cover story. Curious choice of words, since the article itself was a thoughtful piece by journalist Jeffery Goldberg, actually entitled “Unforgiven.” It explored the divide in Israeli society since the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, exemplified by the rift between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and renowned literary figure and moral spokesperson, David Grossman, who lost his son, 20 year old tank commander Uri Grossman, in the waning days of the Lebanon campaign. To be sure, the article examined the precariousness of Jewish life in such a sea of hostility that is the Muslim Middle East. But nowhere does Goldberg suggest that Israel is finished as a nation. While real threats like Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and demographic tides are considered, the question remains why Israel’s existence as a nation of the Jewish people continues to be called into question.
There seems to be an underlying belief that Israel is not doing enough to move the region towards peace. That the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains at the core of the Arab world’s problems with the West, and that somehow, if only this conflict could be solved, all the other calamities would be diffused. Leaving aside the illogical nature of this proposition (Al Qaeda and other radical Islamists have as much a gripe against Christians whom they see as usurping their place in history), it is hard to find a nation that has striven more for peaceful co-existence with its neighbors than Israel. No nation has taken more demonstrable risks for the sake of peace. This yearning is enshrined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence and indeed goes back to biblical times, when our prophets intoned about turning “swords into plowshares” and visualizing a day when the lion and the lamb would lie down together. Israel proved its intention to live in peace with its neighbors when it signed and enacted peace treaties with Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994. Israel has shown its willingness to make painful sacrifices in the name of peace, relinquishing the buffer zone it had established against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2000, and then in the summer of 2005, withdrawing from all of Gaza and evacuating over 8,000 Israeli citizens from their homes.
Israel has said yes to virtually every partition plan put forth in modern times, starting with the Peel Commission in 1937, which would have given the Palestinians 80% of the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea. In 1947, when the United Nations approved the creation of a Jewish homeland in Israel, the Palestinians again rejected statehood on 45% of the land, while Israel would have settled for the remaining 55% divided into three cantons, with over 60% of that land comprised of desert. The ensuing war launched by five Arab armies against the fledgling Jewish state resulted in Israel’s de facto borders until the Six-Day War of 1967. Finally, in the summer of 2000 at Camp David and later in the year under the Clinton Proposals at Taba, Israel offered to relinquish over 96% of contiguous West Bank land and all of Gaza in the hopes that the century old conflict could at last come to an end. The Palestinian response to that offer was the Second Intifada, more aptly understood by Israelis as a Terror War unleashed against the Jewish state by Arafat and his minions. Sadly, Palestinian intransigence has each time cost their people a shrinking map of a potential Palestine. History moved on with each successive Palestinian rejection.
And yet Israel continues to be viewed as the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. Israel, who at 60 continues to be a vibrant, thriving, secular democracy. Israel, who is accused of human rights violations and even apartheid, remains an oddity in the Middle East where gays participate openly in military service; all women have the right to vote, with 17 of them serving in the 120-member Knesset, or Israeli Parliament. Currently 12 of those 120 members are Arab-Israelis, with 3 parties specifically representing the Arab segment of the population. Ishmael Khaldi, the Israeli Deputy Counsel General for the Western United States, is an Israeli-Arab and the second highest Israeli government representative in Western America. And all Israeli citizens, Christians, Muslims and Jews enjoy freedom of speech, the press and unfettered religious expression, as well as access to education, modern health care, and the professions.
Of course, Israel is far from perfect and legitimate criticisms launched against specific conditions and policies are both expected and welcomed. It is the demonization and delegitimization of the Jewish State that is as baffling as it is malevolent. Israel, who has produced more Nobel laureates per capita than anywhere else in the world, a nation of highly educated and motivated people, producing cutting-edge technologies in medicine, science and business; and all this in the face of ongoing threats—and actualities--of war and the unwillingness of too many of its neighbors to accept Israel’s very right to exist as a Jewish nation. The world might better applaud the miracle of Israel's rebirth in its deliberately tiny ancestral land as a model of decency, tolerance, and intellectual vibrancy, for these are the true criteria of legitimacy, and focus its urge to deligitimize on societies that celebrate (and wish to spread around the world) the values of suicide-bombing, uncompromising intolerance, and irrationality.
David Brumer
David is a media analyst, writer and consultant on Middle Eastern affairs. He is on the Advisory Board of StandWithUs (SWU) Northwest and is a member of Israel Bonds Speakers Bureau. In 2005 he was awarded “Congressional Recognition for Excellence in Public Diplomacy in Support of Israel ” on behalf of his work with The Israel Project (TIP). David is also a geriatric social worker and psychotherapist. Visit his blog, BRUMSPEAK, at http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/

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