Critical Challenges and Daunting Dilemmas Facing Israel: My talk at Congregation Beth Shalom, Seattle: Shabbat, 1/22/11

Critical Challenges and Daunting Dilemmas on the Israeli Political Landscape. The Israeli political landscape can be a minefield of domestic and international issues where miscalculations can be deadly. Henry Kissinger once remarked “Israel doesn’t have a foreign policy; only a domestic policy” My talk was an effort to paint a picture of the of existential angst facing ordinary Israelis. Topics included BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions), Iran, the Palestinian conflict and prospects for, if not peace, at least interim accords and stability in an ever changing Middle East.

A variety of articles/blogposts/reading list, etc. are provided at the bottom of this post which were referenced in the discussion

Prelude to my talk:

On being tired and thirsty--and Jewish:

When tired and thirsty the Italian says, "I must have wine."
The Mexican says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have tequila."
The Russian says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have vodka."
The German says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have beer."
The Greek says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have ouzo."
The Jew says, "I'm tired and thirsty. I must have diabetes."

At a major International Zoology Conference on Elephants, presentations were made by leading experts of the gargantuan mammal. An English scholar gave a lively presentation on "The Elephant and the Hunt." A French expert spoke on "The Love Life of the Elephant." An Indian scholar offered a brilliant paper on "The Elephant and his March towards Death." Then a short, stout man from Israel stepped up to the podium with reams of paper and announced the title of his talk, "The Elephant and the Jewish Problem."

Safe to say we as a people are comfortable with both suffering and self-involvement.

Following up on elephants lurking in rooms, an excerpt from Judea Pearl piece honoring the memory of the late Richard Holbrooke:

A Champion of Truth Doha, Qatar, April 2005–

At a high-profile get together called the US-Islamic World Forum, organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, there was a conference packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who, for two full days, diligently discussed the needs and means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to “progress toward settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.”

From the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to Rami Khouri, former editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon, almost every speaker ended his or her speech with a reminder that the Muslim world is not ready to accept reform for its own sake; reform is, in fact, a concession to America, and will be granted if, and only if, it “resolves the Palestinian problem.”

None of the speakers spelled out what “solution” meant to him or her; it was probably part of an unspoken agreement to avoid controversial issues for fear of spoiling the friendly atmosphere of renaissance and collaboration. It was only in private conversations that I discovered that, to most of them, the “solution” was unquestionably the same one proposed by Helen Thomas.

Richard Holbrooke spoke at the last session of the conference, addressing a large audience of Arab dignitaries, scholars and pundits. After repeating the great things that America can do for the Muslim world – in science, education, freedom, entrepreneurship and more – and after saying all the things that a seasoned diplomat would say on occasions like this one, he added one innocent remark that fell like a bombshell: “By now,” he said, “two and a half generations of Arabs have been brought up on textbooks that do not show Israel.

”The audience was stunned. I can still hear the pin-dropping silence as he calmly went on: “Such continued denial of reality, at the grassroots level, is a major hindrance to any peaceful settlement of the conflict.” (I am quoting from memory.)

I watched Holbrooke’s colleagues from the Brookings Institution to see how they reacted. Their faces were blank.

There were a couple of Palestinian women sitting next to me, and their faces looked like they had been caught cheating on an exam. One of them raised her hand and started to say something about checkpoints and occupation (“settlements” were not in fashion then), but in Holbrooke’s presence, she sounded more like someone complaining about the video cameras that caught her stealing.

Holbrooke answered her politely and comfortably: “Your textbooks do not show Israel on the map, and that does not help the peace process.”

There was no need for further elaboration. The elephant that everyone was pretending did not exist suddenly appeared in the room. Two days of hard deliberations, with Arabs pretending that “progress in the peace process” doesn’t really mean the elimination of Israel, and Americans pretending they have no reason to doubt it, had ended with a refreshing spark of honesty.


How to Be Human

Rabbi David Wolpe:
Rabbi Shlomo Carelbach used to say that if he met a person who said "I'm a Catholic" he knew he was a Catholic. If he met a person who said "I'm a Protestant" he knew he was a Protestant. If he met a person who said "I'm a human being" he knew he was a Jew.
Jews have led some of the great universalist movements of the world. They did so under the illusion that if all people were just alike, the thorny problem of being different would disappear. It never did. It never should. Being a Jew is not a problem but a blessing and a destiny.
There is no such thing as a person in general. Each individual grows up with a certain family, land, heritage, language and culture. To deny it is to cast off a piece of oneself. Jewish is not opposed to being human; rather it is an ancient and beautiful way to be human.
In every age there are those who dream of homogenizing the world. It is an ignoble dream. When we honor difference we honor the One who created this diverse, multicolored pageant of a world.

Living Ahavas Yisroel
Martin Jaffee • JTNews Columnist

The k’lal (the universal) was always known only through the prat (the particular). The road to universal human fellow-feeling first wound its circuitous route through the tangled pathways of intense Jewish communal solidarity.Which may have something to do with my dad’s response when, years ago, I came home from college touting the prophecies of Rosa Luxemburg, about whom I’d learned in a political science course. Jews, I proclaimed (over a plate of borscht with sour cream), should lead humanity out of the darkness of its particularistic atavisms into the clear light of “world citizenship.” This time, Dad knew better than to argue. He just looked up to the Heavens, spread out his hands in the classic Zero Mostel-Tevye pose and mocked: “I love humanity; it’s the people I can’t stand!”It took me years to understand the depth of his insight and satire. How easy it is to love a concept, and how difficult to love reality in all its particular messiness! How easy to forget that, if humanity is a family, it begins with a real mother, a real father, real brothers and real sisters — those who speak your language, know the smells of your kitchen, share your nightmares, and, it must be said, hate your enemies and love your friends, because, after all is said and done, “you are our flesh and blood.”

Just this, I suppose, is what irritates so many “universalists” (Jewish and otherwise) about the centrality of the concept of ahavas Yisroel (“Jewish love for Jews”) in Jewish ethical thought. Why shouldn’t Jews love all humanity equally? Why focus on the insular, bounded “tribe” at the expense of the whole? Isn’t “tribalism” the root of all social evil? The simple answer is: You can’t love “humanity” unless you see in it some familiar faces. It’s through the love called forth by those faces that we learn to see in them something larger — “humanity” as a potential community — something that never really exists, although we strive to reach it. While love of the “tribe” can certainly descend to “tribalism,” it is also true that “humanity” is revealed most richly through the “tribe.” When we lose our “tribe,” we lose the very thing that enables us to find a wider place in the universally “human.”

Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1911: “Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, ‘Why are they so afraid of everything? Apparently their conscience is not clear.’ Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are – we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake.”

Paul Berman on the wave of Palestinian terrorism from 2000-2004, in his book, "Terror and Liberalism": “Each new act of murder and suicide testified to how oppressive were the Israelis. Palestinian terror, in this view, was the measure of Israeli guilt. The more grotesque the terror, the deeper the guilt…And even Nazism struck many of Israel’s critics as much too pale an explanation for the horrific nature of Israeli actions. For the pathos of suicide terror is limitless, and if Palestinian teenagers were blowing themselves up in the acts of random murder, a rational explanation was going to require ever more extreme tropes, beyond even Nazism.”

All the above as a prelude to our people's predilection for obsessive self-reflection, at times veering dangerously into self-flagellation, self-abnegation, and what Ruth Wisse describes as a "moral solipsism."

None of which is to suggest that Israel is perfect, or that its political system is a paragon of virtue. I don't mean to imply that there aren't real threats to Israel as a democracy; that the occupation isn't untenable and not only bad for the Palestinians, but also insidious and corrosive to the soul and moral fiber of Israelis; that Israelis aren't becoming more xenophobic and even anti-Arab and in some cases, down right racist about it. All this is sadly true and should deeply trouble and concern us.

BUT, I also want to paint a picture of Israel in a broader context that gives crucial perspective to understanding the situation, or as it's known in Israel, "Ha'Matzav."

First, a little about my background. I'm a psychotherapist and social worker by trade, and have been working with our Jewish elders for the last 14 years, as a social worker and now as a Hospice Director. I'm no stranger to fighting and advocating for the rights of the downtrodden and dispossessed. For years, I believed that Israel should leave the territories, if necessary unilaterally, working from the premise that we can't control the actions of another, but must do what's morally correct for ourselves.

The Second Intifada blew the lid off of the that belief system. Like most Israelis, I came to understand that the land for peace equation, which seemed so logic and sensible, was anything but. When suicide bombers began exploding themselves in Israel proper, it became obvious that this was no guerrilla war intended to liberate land the Palestinians dwelled in, but rather it was a war for the eradication of a Jewish State. The Hamas suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya in late March 2002, which came to be known as the Passover Massacre, where 30 Israelis were killed during a Seder and over 140 wounded, many elderly Jews and a number of Holocaust survivors, was a major turning point in my understanding of what exactly was happening. And of course, it was a major turning point in Israel's history, because shortly after Passover, Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield, sending the Israeli Defense Forces back into the West Bank and Gaza to stop the hemorrhaging.

Okay, but now it's almost 10 years later, you say, Arafat is long gone, and much has changed. We shouldn't stay stuck in the past. And I would certainly agree. However, I'd also aver that it's vital to fully internalize and comprehend what has happened over the past 10 years in order to better understand what's happening today.

As a segue to that understanding, I'll recapitulate an interesting debate between Daniel Gordis and Peter Beinart a few months back, following Beinart's publication in the NYRB of an essay entitled The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment (which I have commented on here). I think Beinart is largely correct about that failure but for mostly all the wrong reasons (see my blogpost above for specifics). In any event, the essay caused quite a raucous in the Jewish community, as Peter is a modern Orthodox Jew, former editor of the liberal but staunchly pro-Israel journal The New Republic, and is considered a public intellectual who has always espoused Zionist ideals.

In the debate, Peter Beinart was given the podium for his opening remarks, and for 20 minutes he offered up a litany of Israel's current ills. When it was Daniel Gordis' turn to respond, he allowed that he actually didn't disagree with most of what Beinart had identified as issues of concern. These issues included increasing xenophobia among Israelis, anti-Arab sentiment bordering on racism among some young Israelis, the problematic nature of Avigdor Lieberman being Israel's foreign minister, issues with the Haredim including proposed new conversion laws, (in)tolerance for religious pluralism, corruption in public life, and on and on. Gordis did take issue with the fact that in all of Beinart's criticisms, there was no mention of what has transpired in the last ten years. He went on to elaborate on that context:

Four years of the Second Intifada, which was anything but an "intifada" or spontaneous uprising, but rather, a terror war against Israeli civilians. Withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005 leading to an increase in Qassam rockets and mortar shells fired into southern Israel. The Lebanon/Gaza War of 2006 after Hezbollah raided the northern border, killing several Israeli soldiers while Hamas infiltrated the southern border, killing Israeli soldiers and capturing Sgt Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity to this day. Hamas' bloody coup in June 2007 in Gaza, where they murdered rival Fatah Palestinians, in some cases by throwing them off rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed. A further increase in rocket attacks into southern Israel which finally reached such unacceptable levels (upwards of 70-80 a day during late December 2008), culminating finally in 'Operation Cast Lead,' when Israel responded with a massive show of force to repel the attacks. The world's response, accusing Israel of "disproportionate use of force" and labeling Israel the 'War Criminal.' The Goldstone Report, which came to be known in Israel as the "Goldstone Effect," rendering Israelis ever more reluctant to consider further withdrawals or other painful sacrifices in search of peace for fear of finding itself on the docket of public opinion as war criminals in the event it had to again go back into the territories to respond to ever more powerful (and longer range) rocket attacks. The Orwellian absurdity of Israel finding itself the accused, when exercising the greatest of restraint, until left with no choice but to defend its vulnerable citizenry of the south. Fighting an asymmetric war against Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad, who deliberately use their own children as human shields, hide in their own civilian populations, deliberately target Israeli civilians, all blatant war crimes. Dealing with the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement, the unabashed effort to demonize and delegitimize Israel. We've seen it here in the Pacific Northwest, with unsuccessful efforts at boycotts at the Madison Market in Seattle and the Food Co-op in Port Townsend (largely thanks to Rob Jacobs and StandWithUs, the AJC and other local Israel Advocacy organizations), as well as the successful boycott of Israeli products at the Olympia Food Co-op. It's important to understand that the real danger is not economic hardships imposed on Israel (the boycotts will have scant economic effects), but rather the powerful symbolic import of the efforts. The real purpose behind BDS is to delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world, to make the analogy of Israel to South Africa. so that if you are seen as supporting Israel, it becomes tantamount to what it would be like if you supported Apartheid South Africa in the 80's.

Okay, so this is all broader context, and it doesn't even include the Iranian nuclear threat, where a megalomaniac with delusions of ushering in an apocalyptic era of the 12th Hidden Imam by eradicating Israel, continues his dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons (the good news here is that it seems that the Stuxnet Worm and other covert ops have actually set the Iranian nuclear project back considerably, with some estimates by as much as several years; nonetheless, others caution that Iran may still be less than a year away from having the capability to construct a nuclear bomb). And let's remember that Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad are all subsidiaries of Iran, who Iran uses at this juncture as proxies in its war against the Jewish State.

All this should offer some perspective to how and why Israel has moved more to the right politically. It didn't happen in a vacuum. Let's remember that in 1992 Labor and Meretz had 56 seats between them in a Knessest of 120 seats. Today, Labor has imploded, with leader Ehud Barak creating a new party, Atzma'ut or Independence, taking 4 of the remaining 12 ministers from Labor with him. Labor's ability to remain viable is anyone's guess at this point. Meretz currently has 3 seats in the Knesset. This sea change did not happen because ordinary Israelis are inherently extremist, xenophobic, racist or warmongering. It is natural for any society living under the kind of strain Israel has over the past decade to become a lot more security conscious, hardened, suspicious, distrustful of a world that has largely abandoned her, and develop compassion fatigue for the plight of the 'Other.'

So yes, Israel's democracy currently has problems galore. Our foreign minister is a demagogue and not the best representative for us internationally, to say the least. But we need to remember too that this is part of the price that we pay for the in-gathering of our people, with upwards of a million Russian now being an integral part of the fabric of Israeli society.

I'd like to offer up an analogy of Israel as a kind of Jewish Rashomon (Kurosawa's 1950 film where a rape is re-examined from four different perspectives; that of the rapist, the victim, her Samurai husband, and a witness). Hat tip to Yossi Klein Halevi for the idea

If you're a South African Jew, it's quite natural for you to be exceedingly concerned about the possibility of Israel veering into Apartheid; if you're a South American Jew, you may well be anxious about the stability of Israel's democracy; a Russian Jew and you're likely most wary of Israel's enemies and Israel's ability to contend with them; a Jew from Arab lands and you may be baffled by all the mea culpas and Ashkenazi soul-searching regarding our behavior; an America Jew with a certain antipathy to the Bush/Cheney years, a penchant for civil rights issues, fairness and justice; well, you get the idea: We all bring our diaspora histories--and baggage--to the table.

I would argue that it's equally important to recognize and appreciate how well Israel has done, given the enormity of strain its society has lived under for the past decade, and in some ways, for the past 62 years. We shouldn't take Israeli democracy for granted; instead we should celebrate it for the miracle that it is.

As a point of comparison, we might consider too that if the United States had Israel's parliamentary system, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party would most likely have a much larger stake in the governing coalition than Lieberman's Israel Beitenu party has. You could also expect to see many smaller and much scarier parties having representation, including survivalist militia groups and hard-core religious zealots.

Now imagine that kind of governmental configuration and suppose San Diego and other parts of southern California had been the target of rocket attacks from irredentist Mexican groups for the past 10 years, launching literally thousands of crude bombs and mortars into our country. What do you think the response of that government would be? What do you think the response of the current American government would be? What would the French do if residents of Alsace-Lorraine of German heritage decided to reclaim that land, and continually sent suicide bombers into Parisian cafes, buses, and discotheques, followed by crude missiles and mortar shells? Let's remember that Israel's neighbors are not the Canadians or the Mexicans.

Other points touched upon.

Settlements as red herring issue. Israel has shown that when necessary, it is willing and capable of dismantling settlements from Yamit in Sinai to 21 settlements in Gaza and the northern West Bank, uprooting thousands of its citizens across the Green Line. Sharon intended to dismantle more settlements in the West Bank following the Gaza withdrawal in '05 and Olmert ran--and won Kadima leadership--on a platform of further withdrawals from the West Bank. Hamas' ascent to power, of course, changed all that.

Bush's letter to Sharon on April 14th, 2004, recognizing new "facts on the ground."
"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

See Gil Troy's piece below, "Settlement Subtleties" to better understand that not all settlements are alike.

Q & A: why the Hilltop Youth are not as dangerous as Palestinian extremists and could be easily subdued if a real peace agreement were in sight.

Why the peace process right now is in shambles and the notion of peace on the horizon is a chimera.

I'd like to end with a short blogpost by Jeffrey Goldberg on the continued vitality of Israel's democracy:

Yes, Israel is still a democracy, and no, I'm not referring to Ehud Barak's departure from Labor in order to form another perishable party (more on that later, unless I find these recent events too dispiriting to write about, in which case, radio silence, or maybe something about Stuxnet).

What I'm referring to is something else, the after-effects of the Moshe Katsav trial -- you know, Moshe Katsav, the ex-president of Israel convicted of rape. (Remember when Ben-Gurion said Israel would be a normal state when it had Jewish garbagemen, prostitutes and cops? I don't think he had president-level rapists in mind.) A few weeks ago, as some of you know, I wrote a post asking whether Israel would forever remain a democracy. Of course, people who despise Israel decided I had written definitively that Israel's democracy had already disappeared, but what are you going to do? Very few people know how to read on the Internet.

Anyway, when the Katsav verdict came down, I didn't quite realize who had delivered it. Now I do, and it is sort of stunning. There are six aspects of the Katsav trial which prove that Israel is still a democracy, and a country very much unlike all of its neighbors.

1) An ex-president of the nation was brought to account for his alleged crimes. Doesn't happen too often in Israel's neighorhood.
2) The crimes in question were crimes against women. Happens only rarely in the non-democratic East.
3) Two of the three judges in the Katsav case were women -- doesn't happen.
4) Here's the stunner -- the head judge of the three-judge panel was an Arab Israeli named Geoge Karra.
5) Maybe this is the real stunner -- No one in Israel seemed to think it abnormal for an Arab citizen of the Jewish state to sit in judgment of a Jewish ex-president.
6) And, by the way, the president was convicted.

I'm not expecting the forces of progressivism in Israel to have a particularly easy time in the coming years, not with Avigdor Lieberman, the intemperate foreign minister, playing a central role in politics. But the Katsav trial, weirdly, has reinforced the idea with me that Israeli democracy is far from a lost cause.

Very lastly (before the list of recommended articles), another revealing joke

Dan Rather, Katie Couric & an Israeli Sergeant

Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and an Israeli sergeant were all captured by terrorists in Iraq. The leader of the terrorists told them that he would grant them each one last request before they were beheaded.
Dan Rather said, "Well, I'm a Texan, so I'd like one last bowlful of hot, spicy chili."The leader nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili. Rather ate it all and said, "Now I can die content."
Katie Couric said, "I'm a reporter to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here and what's about to happen. Maybe someday someone will hear it and know that I was on the job till the end." The leader directed an aide to hand over the tape recorder and Couric dictated some comments. She then said, "Now I can die happy."
The leader turned and said, "And now, Mr. Israeli tough guy, what is your final wish?"
"Kick me in the ass," said the soldier."
"What?" asked the leader? "Will you mock us in your last hour?" "No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass," insisted the Israeli. So the leader shoved him into the open and kicked him in the ass. The soldier went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled a 9 mm pistol from under his flack jacket, and shot the leader dead. In the resulting confusion, he jumped to his knapsack, pulled out his carbine and sprayed the terrorists with gunfire. In a flash, all terrorists were either dead or fleeing for their lives. As the soldier was untying Rather and Couric, they asked him, "Why didn't you just shoot them in the beginning? Why did you ask them to kick you in the ass first?""What?" replied the Israeli, "And have you two jerks report that I was the aggressor?!


NYRB: Hussein Agha & Robert Malley: Who's Afraid of the Palestinians?

Time Magazine: Response from the Prime Minister's Office to article, "Israel's Rightward Lurch Scares even some Conservatives

Leslie Gelb: President Emeritus of CFR: America Pressures Israel Plenty

Rich Richman: Everyone Does not Know what Everyone Supposedly Knows

Benny Morris: Bleak House

Gil Troy on Settlement Subtleties

My JPost review of Daniel Gordis' "Saving Israel"

My film review in Congress Monthly of "To Die in Jerusalem"

Judea Pearl on Richard Holbrooke: A Champion of Truth

Daniel Gordis' excellent reading list

Blog List
In the Trenches: http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/harris/ (blog) David Harris: (National Director of the AJC)
Goldblog : http://www.theatlantic.com/jeffrey-goldberg/ Jeffrey Goldberg
South Jerusalem : http://southjerusalem.com/ blog by Gershom Gorenbeg and Haim Watzman, journalists and authors
http://giltroy.com/Gil Troy: History Prof, McGill U
Ruminations: http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/ Yaacov Lozowick: historian, author
The Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/
Ha'aretz: http://www.haaretz.com/
New Israel Fund: http://www.nif.org/
Bitter Lemons: http://www.bitterlemons.net/ Palestinian-Israeli Crossfire
Daily Alert: http://dailyalert.org/ prepared for Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Orgs (sourced from around the world)
Summary of editorials from Hebrew Press: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA
Go to “editorials” changes daily; need to subscribe
my Blog, BRUMSPEAK: http://brumspeak.blogspot.com

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Judea Pearl on Richard Holbrooke and the Elephant in the Room

On the power of calmly speaking the truth to 'conventional wisdom' with a quiet dignity...
david
A champion of truth
By JUDEA PEARL
There are people whom you meet once and will never forget. Richard Holbrooke, whose shloshim falls today, was one of those people.

Richard Holbrooke spoke at the last session of the conference, addressing a large audience of Arab dignitaries, scholars and pundits. After repeating the great things that America can do for the Muslim world – in science, education, freedom, entrepreneurship and more – and after saying all the things that a seasoned diplomat would say on occasions like this one, he added one innocent remark that fell like a bombshell: “By now,” he said, “two and a half generations of Arabs have been brought up on textbooks that do not show Israel.”

The audience was stunned. I can still hear the pin-dropping silence as he calmly went on: “Such continued denial of reality, at the grassroots level, is a major hindrance to any peaceful settlement of the conflict.”



Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, passed away on December 13 at 69. He has been hailed by several Jewish papers as a friend of Israel, although not prominently involved in American-Israeli relations.

Indeed, in a column in The Washington Post two years ago, he wrote something we don’t often hear from presidential envoys and State Department officials. Holbrooke wrote that president Harry Truman should be admired for having recognized Israel as a state on May 14, 1948, and that the State Department’s attempts to undermine this decision was not something Holbrooke was proud of.

THERE ARE people whom you meet once and know you will never forget. I met Richard Holbrooke once, in Doha, Qatar, in April 2005 – a meeting I will never forget.

It took place at a high-profile gettogether called the US-Islamic World Forum. Organized by the Qatar government and the Brookings Institution, the conference was packed with more than 150 scholars and leaders from all sides who, for two full days, diligently discussed the needs and means for achieving democracy, reforms and renaissance in the Muslim world. Oddly enough, there was hardly a Muslim speaker who did not tie the implementation of such reforms to “progress toward settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.”

From the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, to Rami Khouri, former editor of The Daily Star in Lebanon, almost every speaker ended his or her speech with a reminder that the Muslim world is not ready to accept reform for its own sake; reform is, in fact, a concession to America, and will be granted if, and only if, it “resolves the Palestinian problem.”

None of the speakers spelled out what “solution” meant to him or her; it was probably part of an unspoken agreement to avoid controversial issues for fear of spoiling the friendly atmosphere of renaissance and collaboration. It was only in private conversations that I discovered that, to most of them, the “solution” was unquestionably the same one proposed by Helen Thomas.

Richard Holbrooke spoke at the last session of the conference, addressing a large audience of Arab dignitaries, scholars and pundits. After repeating the great things that America can do for the Muslim world – in science, education, freedom, entrepreneurship and more – and after saying all the things that a seasoned diplomat would say on occasions like this one, he added one innocent remark that fell like a bombshell: “By now,” he said, “two and a half generations of Arabs have been brought up on textbooks that do not show Israel.”

The audience was stunned. I can still hear the pin-dropping silence as he calmly went on: “Such continued denial of reality, at the grassroots level, is a major hindrance to any peaceful settlement of the conflict.” (I am quoting from memory.)

I watched Holbrooke’s colleagues from the Brookings Institution to see how they reacted. Their faces were blank.

There were a couple of Palestinian women sitting next to me, and their faces looked like they had been caught cheating on an exam. One of them raised her hand and started to say something about checkpoints and occupation (“settlements” were not in fashion then), but in Holbrooke’s presence, she sounded more like someone complaining about the video cameras that caught her stealing.

Holbrooke answered her politely and comfortably: “Your textbooks do not show Israel on the map, and that does not help the peace process.”

There was no need for further elaboration. The elephant that everyone was pretending did not exist suddenly appeared in the room. Two days of hard deliberations, with Arabs pretending that “progress in the peace process” doesn’t really mean the elimination of Israel, and Americans pretending they have no reason to doubt it, had ended with a refreshing spark of honesty.

AT THE end of the Q&A session, I walked up to Holbrooke and told him how much I admired his presentation and the way he handled the question. He looked at me with some astonishment and said: “This is obviously one of the main obstacles to peace.”

He said it as if stating in public what everyone knows to be true – even in a place like Doha – is as natural as breathing .

This was the meeting I will never forget.

Richard Holbrooke will be remembered in the history of the Jewish people as one of the few State Department officials who had the courage to proclaim Truman a hero for overruling his own State Department.

He will also be remembered for teaching his colleagues how honesty can be an instrument, not a hindrance to effective diplomacy.

The writer is a professor at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (danielpearl.org), named after his son. He is a coeditor of I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl (Jewish Lights, 2004), winner of the National Jewish Book Award. This article was first published in The Jewish Journal.

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The Big Lie: The Truth about Israel beyond the Failed Seattle Bus Ads

The truth about Israel beyond the failed bus ads
A failed effort to place ads on Metro Transit buses that accuse Israel of war crimes is part of an effort to delegitimize the state of Israel. Guest columnist Jonathan L. Singer disputes the war-crimes allegations.
see the full list of pulpit rabbis from Seattle and Tacoma (below) who signed on to this article
By Jonathan L. Singer

Special to The Times


THE Big Lie is alive and well in Seattle, and this fact is ironic for a city that prides itself on having a commitment to diversity, openness and intellectual engagement.

In the past, big lies were used by fascists and dictators as a means of delegitimizing certain groups or classes, seeking a scapegoat upon whom to blame general societal disappointments. Experts at utilizing this tool understand you cannot start with an outlandish statement but must state many small lies at first. In an age of Twitter and instant messaging, our culture is ripe for domination by this political approach.

We recently saw this approach at work in the failed attempt to place billboard ads on city buses in Seattle claiming that Israel is a state actively engaging in war crimes with the support of American dollars. [" 'Israel right or wrong' crowd advocates censorship in Seattle," Opinion, Jan. 1]

It is a beautiful example of the Big Lie at work — on buses that normally have photos of theater performers, or insurance agents, the proposed ad would have given us a stark and chilling vision of a brutish monster oppressing a helpless victim. Had the bus ads been allowed, the only context of the message would have been a government-owned bus adding legitimacy to a claim that is anything but true.

Seattle is ripe for this kind of hate speech because in schools, houses of worship and political gatherings, our community leadership has not challenged the little lies that delegitimize the state of Israel. It has become commonplace to portray Israel as an oppressor and an occupier without respecting Israel's legitimate rights and fears in a region where her neighbors actively call for her destruction.

No condemnation is made with similar vehemence or focus of other nations that clearly violate human rights and receive millions from the U.S. government. Only Israel, the democratic state — that supports women's rights, to which Sudanese refugees flee oppression in their land, where none are at risk of genocide — is the focus of their ire.

If you go to the website of the group sponsoring the ads, they make it clear that no matter what Israel does, she should not exist. They claim that in 1948 she displaced the Palestinians, though they pose the argument as if the concern is only the land captured by Israel in 1967.

This ignores the fact that Jews have had a continuous presence in the land of Israel since Biblical times and that the Palestinians declared war on the nascent Jewish state.

They do not want you to know that throughout history there has never been another state on that land, that the land was purchased, and the Jewish state was and is recognized by the United Nations.

They fail to mention the call by Hamas, which rules Gaza, to destroy Israel, and the rockets still being fired at Israeli civilian population centers.

And then they conclude that their position is not anti-Jewish but only a protest against the misbehavior of a state, but we know that it really is a new form of the old anti-Semitism, wrapped in the Big Lie insinuating that Jews are guilty of defending themselves, and therefore must be punished by being ostracized by the world and made stateless yet again.

Israel, like all countries, makes mistakes. Criticism in the context of support for Israel's legitimate rights is not hate speech. We hope that Seattleites concerned with fairness who want to create space for real dialogue about difficult issues will speak out against all hate speech. That outcry should not just be against the big lies but should focus as well on the smaller lies about Israel and the Middle East that if unchallenged create an environment in which the Big Lie thrives.

Israel wants peace with her neighbors, she has accepted the idea of two states, one Jewish, one Palestinian existing as neighbors in peace. In spite of all efforts at obfuscation, that is the Big Truth.

Jonathan L. Singer is a senior rabbi at Temple Beth Am, Seattle. Another 24 rabbis in the Seattle and Tacoma area support this statement.


Rabbi Beth J Singer, Temple Beth Am, Seattle
Rabbi Daniel Weiner, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle and Bellevue
Rabbi Moshe Kletenek, Congregation Bikur Cholim Machzikay Hadath, Seattle
Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum, Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation, Mercer Island
Rabbi Jill Borodin, Congregation Beth Shalom, Seattle
Rabbi James Mirel, Temple B’nai Torah, Bellevue
Rabbi Simon Benzaquen, Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, Seattle
Rabbi Daniel Septimus, Temple De Hirsch Sinai, Seattle and Bellevue
Rabbi Janine Schloss, Temple Beth Am, Seattle
Rabbi David Fine, Union of Reform Judaism
Rabbi Allison Flash, Temple Beth Am, Seattle
Rabbi Alan Cook, Temple De Hirsh Sinai, Seattle and Bellevue
Rabbi Mark Glickman, Congregation Kol Ami, Woodinville
Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, Temple B’nai Torah, Bellevue
Rabbi Bruce Kadden, Temple Beth El, Tacoma
Cantor David Serkin-Poole, Temple B’nai Torah, Bellevue
Rabbi Harry Zeitlin
Rabbi Sarah Newmark
Rabbi Marna Sapsowitz
Rabbi Jaron Matlow
Rabbi Doug Slotnick
Rabbi Stanley Yedwab
Rabbi Jay Heyman
Rabbi Arlene Schuster

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Charles Jacobs on Jewish Anemia when it Comes to Fighting Against Vilification & Demonization

For its long-term security, what matters is how the Jewish state is viewed and valued in the world, especially in the Jewish community, and the skill set required for this fight – what we now call “the information war” – seems congenitally absent from the Jewish collective.


In 1911, Ze’ev Jabotinsky had it perfectly right. “Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, ‘Why are they so afraid of everything? Apparently their conscience is not clear.’ Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are – we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake.”



Charles Jacobs reminds us of the urgency, now more than ever, to fight the good fight. To stop apologizing for ourselves, and, as Ruth Wiesse points out, get over our 'moral solipsism.'
david brumer


Jewish malware

By CHARLES JACOBS
21/12/2010

The dynamic between Israel’s negative portrayal in the media and academia, and the inadequate fight against it, is something akin to the Stuxnet virus.



Reports surfaced last week that Stuxnet, the virus mysteriously implanted in the computers running Iran’s nuclear sites, is still wreaking havoc, despite claims by Teheran that it has been contained. No one knows for sure how much damage is being done, or if it can be stopped, or who is the culprit – but Israel has been mentioned as a prime suspect. When it was found that the name of a key file in the computer worm’s code is easily a cognate for Queen Esther, many imagined that the Jewish genius who delivered the poison pill to the Persian plotters did it while poetically recapitulating the Purim story – in malware. Compared to that feat, the WikiLeaks gambit is child’s play, simple pilferage.

But even if this is true, and Israeli technological genius can thwart or mitigate a looming disaster – just as its military genius has done in the past – Jews cannot afford a truly needed rest, because the sobering reality is that Jewish technological and military prowess has proved inadequate – necessary but not sufficient – to safeguarding Israel. For its long-term security, what matters is how the Jewish state is viewed and valued in the world, especially in the Jewish community, and the skill set required for this fight – what we now call “the information war” – seems congenitally absent from the Jewish collective.

Far from being geniuses, when it comes to rhetorical combat with defamers, or creating a culture of discourse that is honest and fair, world Jewry seems, tragically, imbecilic.

Compared to almost every nation, but particularly compared to its adversaries and accusers, Israel is a stellar state. Yet it is branded and portrayed in the media, on campuses and in increasing swaths of civil society in the West as among the cruelest of nations. How can this be?

THE DYNAMIC is something akin to the virus that flummoxes Iran’s computers. Jews may be susceptible to a particular type of rhetorical virus, so devastating that once implanted it prevents them from acting in their own self-defense and turns otherwise eloquent people into stuttering blockheads. The worm is simple, and ancient. It’s called “accusation.”

Accuse the Jews. Accuse them unfairly and with such disproportionate frequency that anyone who wishes to can see there’s an agenda at work that has little to do with the actual charges raised. Accuse the Jews and they instinctively, like moths fly to candles, start believing they can cleverly explain themselves, and convince their accusers of their innocence and their goodness.

I bring this up because the Jewish Week’s editor, Julie Wiener just reported that the major Israel advocacy organizations have done a major rethink and are now calling for a “more open, critical approach to teaching about Jewish state.” “Even centrist players,” Weiner wrote, “like Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the David Project and people in the Jewish federation system are calling for more open, critical discussions about Israel.”

Why? Because much of our youth feels that Israel advocacy as it is now taught, makes them “check their liberalism at Zionism’s door.”

And so, rather than lose the kids who have fantasy notions about international politics, Jewish educators now think (I’m hoping Weiner got it wrong) students shouldn’t be advocates for Israel, but referees or judges in the Middle East contest. Their lessons will no longer be: “Israel is imperfect but fundamentally right, and the obstacle to peace is nothing more and nothing less than the Arab/Islamic refusal to abide Jewish sovereignty.”

Instead it will be “on the one hand the Israelis say X, and on the other hand, the Palestinians say Y. Can’t we all get along?”

So the net result is that the radical leftist professors and the growing Muslim student population are permitted to be advocates and propagandists for the Arabs, while Jewish students rise above the fray to contemplate the conflict. The vast student body will still only receive a mostly one-sided version which will demonize Israel and the next generation of American leadership will be less likely to empathize with the Jewish state – like the man in the White House.

But what’s really happened in the discourse is that authentic Jewish liberalism has been paralyzed – not by Zionism, but by anti-Zionism. Inserting the “accuse the Jews” worm into the discourse, anesthetizes the Jewish instinct to fight the good fight. Infected, Jewish students forget the ideals and the history of valiant battling for a universal standard of human conduct, of fighting for precisely those victims abandoned by the “civilized world.”

Instead of explaining to our students the dynamic of “accusation” that has been used to hobble Jews from time immemorial, we teach them to sit in the dock. Instead of exploring with them just how Israel is under a massive ideological assault which masquerades as legitimate criticism, we teach them to keep the focus of discourse on Jewish conduct, Israeli behavior, which is exactly what our adversaries want. Instead of turning our fingers back on the tyrannical Arab/Muslim world whose criticism of Israel defines chutzpah, we answer its charges.

Instead of exposing the hypocritical Western liberal elites – the “human rights” establishment, the media and the professoriate – who have abandoned for reasons of political correctness whole classes of people in the worst of circumstances: women, gays, apostates, Christians, democrats in the Islamic realm, we accept playing the the role of defendant.

In other words, instead of making the subject of this entire discussion the actual world tyrannies and the execrable Western hypocrites who aim to destroy us, we are bitten by the “accusation” virus, and we simply lose our minds.

Yes, it is not easy to educate a generation, brought up to believe that everyone has his own truth, about a global campaign to defame the Jewish state. And it is not easy to tell the hard truths about the world of radical Islam to students who are taught the multi-culturalist dream, taught even that to suspect another culture of being supremacist is itself “racist.”

And yes it is not easy to include in pro-Israel education an honest representation of the Palestinian narrative, so that it can be truly understood and seen for what it is. Pro-Israel organizations need to learn (with the help of our thus-far mostly silent professors, please!) to do all this. But pro- Israel organizations must first deal with the “accuse the Jews” killer virus.

In 1911, Ze’ev Jabotinsky had it perfectly right. “Every accusation causes among us such a commotion that people unwittingly think, ‘Why are they so afraid of everything? Apparently their conscience is not clear.’ Exactly because we are ready at every minute to stand at attention, there develops among the people an inescapable view about us, as of some specific thievish tribe. We think that our constant readiness to undergo a search without hesitation and to turn out our pockets, will eventually convince mankind of our nobility; look what gentlemen we are – we do not have anything to hide! This is a terrible mistake.”

You’d think all the smart Jews would’ve figured that out. By now.


http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=200331

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'Israeli War Crimes' signs to go on Seattle Metro buses: That's Right: Not Hamas War Crimes, but Israeli

Ed Mast, the self-styled "peace activist" for the Palestinians is at it again. This time, as a spokesperson for the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign. The group is paying for billboards to be plastered on Seattle Metro buses, starting on the 27th of this month, to "protest" Israeli war crimes. What are those crimes?
The Israeli response two years ago to unrelenting Hamas rocket attacks into southern Israel. Over 8,000 such rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel, thousands after Israel's total withdrawal from Gaza in the summer of 2005.
In a bizarre, Orwellian twist of logic, it is Israel who is being accused of war crimes for defending its citizenry from unprovoked attacks against its civilian population. For the historically challenged, over 250,000 Israeli citizens in southern Israel lived under constant terror from Kassam rockets and mortar fire from Gaza. Children and families had literally 15 seconds from the sound of a siren announcing the launching of another salvo to go to the safety of a bomb shelter.
It would seem to the average Martian who visited planet earth that the real war criminals are the leaders of Hamas, a terrorist organization with a charter avowing the destruction of Israel.
These leaders deliberately target civilians, firing their rockets from residential areas in Gaza, making it excruciatingly difficult for the Israelis to retaliate without causing inadvertent civilian casualties on the other side. Sounds to me like double war crime behavior on the part of Hamas.
But then, this is a group who, in their bloody coup against their rivals Fatah, back in the summer of 2007, threw their political opponents off of rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed.
Hamas make no bones about their political agenda. Destroy the 'Zionist entity' by any means necessary.
Israel, fighting an asymmetric war against jihadist fundamentalists, makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties. In fact, by Hamas' own reckoning, the vast majority of those killed in "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's defense against those rocket attacks in late December, 2008, were Hamas operatives. Israel's track record in avoiding civilian casualties on the other side is unrivaled in modern warfare.
But so much for truth and an honest appraisal of the situation. For Ed Mast and his ilk, any tactic is acceptable, including a callous disregard for the facts.
One would think that fighting for the liberation of the Palestinians would necessitate identifying the true enemy of the Palestinians: Hamas, not Israel.
That these ads should appear on Seattle buses is as disgraceful as it is disingenuous.
David Brumer
Seattle
'Israeli War Crimes' signs to go on Metro buses

by ALLEN SCHAUFFLER / KING 5 News
SEATTLE – "Israeli War Crimes," the enormous advertisement reads. "Your tax dollars at work."

To the right of the image is a group of children -- one little boy stares out at the viewer, the others gawk at a demolished building, all rebar and crumbled concrete.

It's an ad you'll be seeing soon on a handful of Metro buses in downtown Seattle.

A group calling itself the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign has paid King County $1,794 so that 12 buses will carry that message around town, starting two days after Christmas. That's December 27: the two-year anniversary of Israeli attacks on Gaza, aimed at stopping rocket attacks and weapons smuggling.

Ed Mast, a Seattle man who is a spokesperson for the group, says it’s not meant to be an anti-Israel message, but a message designed to generate discussion and awareness.

"I wouldn't say it's an anti-Israel message any more than any complaint about a country is anti-that country. We would like Israel to stop violating human rights. We would like Israel to give equal rights to its Palestinian citizens and its Palestinian subjects who live under occupation," said Mast.

At the Pacific Northwest office of the Anti-Defamation League, the ad campaign is seen quite a bit differently.

"We're dismayed," says Community Director Hilary Bernstein, who calls the bus-born advertisement grotesquely one-sided. "Citizens young and old will be seeing this sort of propaganda, this very one-sided distortion. It's unfortunate."

So, is the side of a public bus the right place for this kind of attack? Are the issues that regularly inflame one of the most flammable hot-spots in the world appropriate fare for people strolling the sidewalks of Seattle?

As far as King County is concerned, it's not really up to them what appears on the side of their buses, as long as it fits specific guidelines regarding:

•Pornography
•Alcohol
•Tobacco, and
•As long as the images and material used don't interfere with public safety or insult specific groups to the point that a riot could be incited, vandalism could occur or public safety could be threatened.
King County Metro Transit spokesperson Linda Thielke acknowledges some people will be offended by the campaign, but that is not enough to prevent the rolling billboards from hitting the streets.

"As a government, we are mindful of the provisions in state and federal constitutions to protect freedom of speech. So, we can't object these campaigns simply because they offend some people," said Thielke.

The Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign has targeted their advertising so that the buses carrying their message will run mostly on Seattle routes.

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Steinberg on Bernstein: Exposing the Human Rights Facade

Exposing the Human Rights Facade
Important piece once again documenting the extreme biases of too many human rights NGO's when it comes to anything relating to Israel. We need more courageous voices like Bernstein to speak out against this travesty. The stakes are ever higher with the growing international demonization and delegitimation of Israel epitomized by the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
david in seattle



The people and institutions that claim to uphold human rights and democracy are in fact nullifying these core moral principles.



At 87, Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch, began his second life. Thirty- three years after he founded Helsinki Watch in 1976, which evolved into HRW and became one of the most influential human rights organizations in the world, he disowned his earlier creation. In October 2009, in an explosive column published in The New York Times, Bernstein denounced HRW and its leaders for distorting and exploiting human rights to attack democracies, and for playing a central role in turning Israel into a “pariah state.”

Now, Bernstein has gone further in working to reverse the moral failures of HRW and the wider network of highly politicized groups that use the façade of human rights to attack moral principles. Delivering the Goldstein Lecture on Human Rights at the University of Nebraska at Omaha [published in full on page 13 of today’s Jerusalem Post], he contrasted Israel’s democratic values with their notable absence in the Arab regimes and Iran. But most of HRW’s humanrights accusations are directed at Israel. Bernstein demonstrated that these “human rights organizations, including the one I founded,” as well Amnesty International, the Carter Center and other groups, are leading the political war against Israel by working closely with corrupt UN frameworks.


His involvement in free speech grew out of his background as a book publisher. In the 1970s, he went to the Soviet Union to negotiate copyright issues, and met the dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner. Bernstein encouraged Sakharov to write an autobiography, and provided support as he came under increasing harassment, including exile to Gorky. (Natan Sharansky was jailed and sent to the gulag for his work with Sakharov.) The Soviet regime revoked Bernstein’s visa in a failed attempt to end this support.

This was the beginning of Helsinki Watch, which grew into HRW.

After the Cold War, Bernstein turned his attention to human rights issues in China, leaving HRW in the hands of cynical leaders who played a leading role in exploiting human rights principles to attack Israel. As the assault grew, amid the carnage of Palestinian terror bombings that killed more than 1,200 Israelis, Bernstein returned to an active role, joining HRW’s Middle East North Africa Advisory Board and observing its cynical manipulation of moral rhetoric.

He quickly noted the close cooperation between HRW and the UN Human Rights Council, which was “so critical of Israel that any fair-minded person would disqualify them from participating in attempts to settle issues involving Israel.” The UNHRC sought out “prominent Jews known for their anti-Israel views,” such as Richard Falk. (Falk had written an article comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Hitler’s treatment of Jews in the Holocaust.) When Israel objected, HRW “leaped to his defense, putting out a press release comparing Israel with North Korea and Burma in not cooperating with the UN.”

The text defending Falk was written by Joe Stork, deputy director of HRW’s Middle East Division. As Bernstein reminds us, Stork had been an editor of a notorious pro-Palestinian newsletter before being hired by HRW.

Most of HRW’s accusations against Israel were not based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights but on subjective interpretations of the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. But HRW has “little expertise about modern asymmetrical war.” Noting that Israel was responding to terror attacks from Iran’s non-state proxies – Hizbullah and Hamas – Bernstein relates the ways in which HRW’s reporting on this conflict consistently “faulted Israel as the principal offender.”

At first, Bernstein, like most journalists, diplomats and academics, was “inclined to believe what Human Rights Watch was reporting.

However, as I saw Human Rights Watch’s attacks on almost every issue become more and more hostile, I wondered if their new focus on war was accurate.”

THE BLOW that led a reluctant Bernstein to break publicly with his organization was HRW’s central role in promoting Richard Goldstone – one of executive director Kenneth Roth’s closest allies and an HRW board member – to lead the UN’s assault following the Gaza war.

“Human Rights Watch has been by far the biggest supporter” of this campaign to “bring war crimes allegations against Israel – based on [Goldstone’s] report.”

As Bernstein observed, HRW has ignored “many responsible analyses challenging the war crimes accusations made by Goldstone,” as well as detailed refutations of HRW’s own reports, which were filled with unverifiable and false claims.

Referring to the unresolved Marc Garlasco affair, Bernstein noted that “a military expert working for Human Rights Watch who seemed to wish to contest these reports was dismissed and... is under a gag order. This is antithetical to the transparency that Human Rights Watch asks of others.” (Galasco was also exposed as having something of a fetish for Nazi memorabilia, yet ironically, he was one of HRW's most objective analysts when it came to Israel--see Minority Report: TNR--db)
And he recalled that when HRW’s Sarah Leah Whitson went to Saudi Arabia in 2009 to raise funds by selling its support for Goldstone’s attacks on Israel, it is doubtful that she discussed textbooks published by the Saudis calling Jews “apes and pigs.”

Bernstein’s painful accounting regarding the organization he founded has of course been summarily rejected by this corrupt human rights priesthood and its acolytes. As a result, the people and institutions that claim to uphold human rights and democracy are in fact accelerating the tragic destruction of these core moral principles.

The writer heads NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org) and is professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University.

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Seattle AJC: Addressing Israel's Future: Akiva Tor, Yehudit Barsky on BDS & "Lebanon"

Last Thursday evening, on the 15th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, the American Jewish Community and the Consulate General of Israel co-sponsored “Addressing Israel’s Future,” a program discussing new challenges and threats to Israel and the world Jewish community. The night also featured a private screening of Lebanon, winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.

The program was promoted as a “BUYcott Israel” event, and the sold out audience was encouraged to join the anti-boycott movement and strike back at the forces behind BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement that has been gaining traction worldwide. The Pacific Northwest has become a lightning rod for the BDS movement, where the first successful boycott of a food co-op in America took hold in July at the Olympia Co-op.

Akiva Tor, the Consul General for the Pacific Northwest spoke about the importance of countering BDS, a movement whose agenda promotes the vilification and delegitimation of Israel, under the guise of promoting justice and freedom for the Palestinians. Tor described the groups supporting BDS as fringe organizations on the far left. Though lacking any real political power, he cautioned that the danger they pose is significant because of the power of symbols. And by deeming Israel as illegitimate, by extension, a shadow is cast on those who support it.

He applauded the efforts of the AJC, both locally and globally, educating the public to the insidious nature of these attacks against the Jewish State. Tor talked about the imperative to be proactive, citing the work the AJC and groups like StandWithUs have done, challenging the Administration at Evergreen College to secure a safe and normative educational environment for its beleaguered Jewish students, and the achievement of thwarting the proposed boycott at the Port Townsend Food Co-op.

Yehudit Barsky, director of AJC’s Division on Middle East and International Terrorism was also on hand, speaking about recent threats to the Jewish community, when two parcels containing bombs were recently intercepted in Dubai and Britain, with addresses earmarked for synagogues in Chicago. She noted that the media gave short shrift to fact that both targets were against Jews, with news reports downplaying the anti-Semitic intent of those behind the attempted terror attacks. Barsky, who is fluent in Arabic, described the work her division does around the clock, monitoring publications and websites of extremist groups like the ones behind the failed parcel bombs. While in Seattle, she met with the FBI and local police intelligence to discuss the growing risks posed by such terrorist organizations, particularly against Jewish targets.

Before the screening of Lebanon, Akiva Tor invoked the memory of the late Yitzchak Rabin, paraphrasing remarks Israel’s current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu made at the memorial service held at Herzl cemetery in Israel. Bibi described how Rabin united the Israeli populace, evolving from a security hawk to a peace-seeking, and more importantly peace-believing dove. Despite media portrayals to the contrary, Netanyahu emphasized that Israel is less polarized today than it was when Rabin was its leader. Living through the collective trauma of the collapse of Oslo and the Second Intifada, the Right understands the Left better today, with the reverse being equally true. He ended by noting that the country is in fact more like Rabin today.

Tor then gave the sold out audience a brief historical backdrop to Israel’s war with Lebanon from 1982-1985. He explained the rationale for Israel’s initial incursion into Lebanon (the effort to eradicate the stepped up terrorism emanating from the PLO against northern Israel) and the problematic nature of the conflict, with Israel quickly finding itself in the quagmire of the Lebanese civil war. Tor spoke of how that war came to define his generation, and how that generation went on to come of age and produce powerful artistic testaments to that period, most notably through literature and film. Movies like Yossi and Jaeger, Beaufort, and Waltz with Bashir have all received international critical acclaim, with Beaufort and Waltz both nominated for Best Foreign Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Lebanon, Samuel Maoz’s first feature film, is a virtuoso addition to that already impressive body of work. A stunning artistic achievement, the film is shot entirely from the perspective of the inside of a tank (with the exception of the first and last shots). Psychologically riveting, cinematically daring and excruciatingly honest, Lebanon offers an unfiltered look at the chaos, confusion and terror experienced by four young Israeli soldiers thrust into battle on the first day of the war. Only through their periscope are we given a window to the fog of war outside the dank and darkened interior of the tank. And that window is filled with the horrific carnage that all wars leave in their wake. In fact, it is the universality of the soldiers’ experience that lends the film its distinctive humanity, despite the graphic, brutal violence it portrays. In the second to last scene, one of the Israeli soldiers performs an act of inordinate compassion to their Syrian prisoner. In those moments, when the two meet eye to eye, the essential humanity of the other trumps all else.

Israel can be proud that it fosters a culture which is willing to be that self-reflective, unafraid to look at itself, warts and all, and in the process produce such transcendent works of art.

David Brumer
Co-Chair, AJC Seattle Jewish Film Festival
Seattle AJC Executive Committee Member

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