I must confess to a
rising sense of frustration and rage when observing the increasing
number of ill-informed and fallacious critiques of Israel by liberal
Diaspora Jews.
I am not referring to
the loathsome so-called anti-Zionist Jews who call for boycotts of
Israel. Nor even to jaundiced far-left Jewish groups like J Street,
which inflict considerable damage on the Jewish state by calling on the
U.S. government to pressure Israel, or orchestrate petitions such as
those recently circulated among liberal Jewish clergy demanding that
Israel cancel plans for residential construction in Jerusalem's Jewish
suburbs and the E1 area.
I refer to those Jews
who, when it was fashionable, were enthusiastic supporters of Israel.
But the estrangement of many of their liberal non-Jewish friends from
the Jewish state encouraged them to also assume politically correct
attitudes, even adopting an "anti-Zionist chic." Some were swept up in
the tide of postmodernism with its oft-espoused view that Israel was
born in sin and represents one of the last bastions of colonialism.
This was an
evolutionary process that began with the progressive application of
moral equivalence to Israelis and Arabs and climaxed with Benjamin
Netanyahu's election and demonization as an extremist nationalist. At
this point, these Jewish liberals began chanting the mindless mantra
that Israel had become obsessed with maintaining "the occupation."
They adopted the Arab
narrative that settlements represent the greatest obstacle to peace,
dismissing the fact that settlements comprise only 2 percent of
territory over the Green Line and that since Oslo, every territorial
concession from Israel has merely emboldened Palestinian radicals and
resulted in intensified terror.
As a rule, these
liberal Jewish critics ignored the facts that the Palestinian Authority,
no less than Hamas, consistently refused to make reciprocal
compromises, and that the conflict was not over territorial compromise
but over ongoing Jewish sovereignty in the region. They also played down
the ongoing missile attacks and vicious incitement and anti-Semitism
infusing all levels of Palestinian society.
Israel is now more
isolated than it has been at any time since its creation. We are
surrounded by anti-Semitic Islamic regimes bent on our destruction, and
Iran is on course to becoming a nuclear power. Most European countries,
whose soil was drenched in Jewish blood, are again standing on the
sidelines as they did before and during the Shoah when Jews were being
slaughtered. Surely, at such a time, even liberal Diaspora Jews could be
expected to unite in support of the Jewish state. Alas, increasing
numbers of them are distancing themselves further from Israel.
A recent example was
the condemnation by the North American Board of the Union of Reform
Judaism of housing construction in the exclusively Jewish suburbs of
east Jerusalem and E1. This undermined a central Israeli policy,
endorsed by the vast majority of Israelis.
Were the Reform Jewish
leaders not aware that this area had always been designated to remain
within Israel and that the Bush administration even acknowledged this in
a letter to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the wake of the
unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the forcible uprooting of
Jewish settlements?
Were they unaware that
the uproar instigated by the Palestinians over residential construction
is a ploy to undermine our vital interests in areas which until now were
never in dispute? That they are seeking to impose upon us, as an
opening benchmark to negotiations, indefensible borders based on the
1949 armistice lines? That this formula would deem the Temple Mount and
the Old City of Jerusalem occupied territories?
Or the subsequent
extraordinary outburst by the progressive rabbis of Bnai Yeshurun, one
of New York's most prominent temples, who proclaimed that "the vote at
the United Nations was a great moment for us as citizens of the world
... an opportunity to celebrate the process that allows a nation to come
forward and ask for recognition." This, in the immediate wake of the
U.N. speech by PA head Mahmoud Abbas, who accused Israel of killing
innocent Palestinians during the Gaza war and indulging in ethnic
cleansing.
Aside from also
endorsing the 1949 lines as future borders for Israel, were these rabbis
not aware that Abbas was calling for reunification with Hamas, whose
leader had just proclaimed that "Palestine is ours from the river to the
sea and from the south to the north ... there is no legitimacy for
Israel. ... We will free Jerusalem inch by inch, stone by stone. Israel
has no right to be in Jerusalem."
The extent of the
breakdown among Jewish liberals was highlighted when even David
Breakstone, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization and a
devoted Zionist, recently provided a kosher certificate to Peter
Beinart, one of Israel's most biased and hostile Jewish Diaspora
critics.
Breakstone stressed
that while strongly disagreeing with Beinart's call to boycott Israeli
settlement products, he was attracted to him because he was a committed
Jew, sent his children to Jewish day schools and provided a service to
Zionism by criticizing our failure to sufficiently promote peace and
uphold the ethical high ground because we maintain the "occupation."
Few would dispute our
obligation to be self-critical and expose injustices in our midst. But
this is not what Beinart and other liberal Jews like New York Times
columnist Tom Friedman promote. They produce distorted one-sided
evaluations demonizing Israel as the principal obstacle to peace. They
promote anti-Israeli politicians like Chuck Hagel and accuse Jewish
leaders of promoting McCarthyism. They call on the U.S. and other
governments to exert pressure and force Israel to conform.
How can Breakstone possibly describe such people as "champions of good old-fashioned Zionism"?
There is also an
increasing tendency among Jewish liberals to hijack the memory of
assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as a means of discrediting
Netanyahu. This is outrageous. Rabin, whom I knew and admired, was a
genuine patriot. His "gamble for peace" proved disastrous. But at no
stage did he even come close to promoting the views attributed to him
today by liberals.
He was adamantly
committed to the unity of Jerusalem and initiated the E1 project. He
would never have contemplated delaying its construction or freezing
residential building in Jewish Jerusalem. It is unconscionable to
shamelessly exploit his name to promote views he himself bitterly
opposed.
The reality is that Netanyahu has made more concessions and is far more accommodating to the Palestinians than Rabin was.
One would wish to
believe that much of the condemnation of Israel by liberal Jews,
compounded by purportedly being grounded on Jewish values, is not
malicious but based on ignorance. The blame for such behavior could then
be directed solely toward Israel's failure to convey the reality of our
situation.
Yet sadly, one becomes
increasingly convinced that many Jewish liberals have closed minds and
do not wish to be enlightened, because their principal motivation is to
demonstrate to their "progressive" friends that they are more
open-minded, universalist and tolerant than their "bigoted" Israeli
kinsmen.
Isi Leibler’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.
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