Electronic Intifada editorial: International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla Massacre

This editorial from the Electronic Intifada gives a good summary of what's known so far in regards to the deadly attack inflicted by Israeli forces on the Freedom Flotilla. There is a lot that isn't known, since Israel has not released basic information such as: Names of the dead and injured.

Racheli Gai.

International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla massacre
Editorial, The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2010

Early this morning under the cover of darkness Israeli soldiers stormed the lead ship of the six-vessel Freedom Flotilla aid convoy in international waters and killed and injured dozens of civilians aboard. All the ships were violently seized by Israeli forces, but hours after the attack fate of the passengers aboard the other ships remained unknown.

The Mavi Marmara was carrying around 600 activists when Israeli warships flanked it from all sides as soldiers descended from helicopters onto the ship's deck. Reports from people on board the ship backed up by live video feeds broadcast on Turkish TV show that Israeli forces used live ammunition against the civilian passengers, some of whom resisted the attack with sticks and other items.

The Freedom Flotilla was organized by a coalition of groups that sought to break the Israeli-led siege on the Gaza Strip that began in 2007. Together, the flotilla carried 700 civilian activists from around 50 countries and over 10,000 tons of aid including food, medicines, medical equipment, reconstruction materials and equipment, as well as various other necessities arbitrarily banned by Israel.

As of 6:00pm Jerusalem time most media were still reporting that up to 20 people had been killed, and many more injured. However, Israel was still withholding the exact numbers and names of the dead and injured. Passengers aboard the ships who had been posting Twitter updates on the Flotilla's progress had not been heard from since before the attack and efforts to contact passengers by satellite phone were unsuccessful. The Arabic- and English-language networks of Al-Jazeera lost contact with their half dozen staff traveling with the flotilla.

News of the massacre on board the Freedom Flotilla began to emerge around dawn in the eastern Mediterranean first on the live feed from the ship, social media, Turkish television, and Al-Jazeera. Israeli media were placed under strict military censorship, and reported primarily from foreign sources. However, by the morning the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli soldiers who boarded the flotilla in international waters were fired upon by passengers. Quoting anonymous military sources, the Jerusalem Post claimed that the flotilla passengers had set-up a "well planned lynch." ("IDF: Soldiers were met by well-planned lynch in boat raid")

The Israeli daily Haaretz also reported that the Israeli soldiers were "attacked" when trying to board the flotilla. ("At least 10 activists killed in Israel Navy clashes onboard Gaza aid flotilla")

This narrative of passengers "attacking" the Israeli soldiers was quickly adopted by the Associated Press and carried across mainstream media sources in the United States, including the Washington Post. ("Israeli army: More than 10 killed on Gaza flotilla")

Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon stated in a Monday morning press conference that the Israeli military was acting in "self-defense." He claimed that "At least two guns were found" and that the "incident" was still ongoing. Ayalon also claimed that the Flotilla organizers were "well-known" and were supported by and had connections to "international terrorist organizations."

It is unclear how anyone could credibly adopt an Israeli narrative of "self-defense" when Israel had carried out an unprovoked armed assault on civilian ships in international waters. Surely any right of self-defense would belong to the passengers on the ship. Nevertheless, the Freedom Flotilla organizers had clearly and loudly proclaimed their ships to be unarmed civilian vessels on a humanitarian mission.

The Israeli media strategy appeared to be to maintain censorship of the facts such as the number of dead and injured, the names of the victims and on which ships the injuries occurred, while aggressively putting out its version of events which is based on a dual strategy of implausibly claiming "self-defense" while demonizing the Freedom Flotilla passengers and intimating that they deserved what they got.

As news spread around the world, foreign governments began to react. Greece and Turkey, which had many citizens aboard the Flotilla, immediately recalled their ambassadors from Tel Aviv. Spain strongly condemned the attack. France's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner expressed "profound shock." The European Union's foreign minister Catherine Ashton called for an "enquiry."

What should be clear is this: no one can claim to be surprised by what the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights correctly termed a "hideous crime." Israel had been openly threatening a violent attack on the Flotilla for days, but complacency, complicity and inaction, specifically from Western and Arab governments once more sent the message that Israel could act with total impunity.

There is no doubt that Israel's massacre of 1,400 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was a wake up call for international civil society to begin to adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel similar to those applied to apartheid-era South Africa.

Yet governments largely have remained complacent and complicit in Israel's ongoing violence and oppression against Palestinians and increasingly international humanitarian workers and solidarity activists, not only in Gaza, but throughout historic Palestine. We can only imagine that had former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni indeed been arrested for war crimes in Gaza when a judge in London issued a warrant for her arrest, had the international community begun to implement the recommendations of the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, had there been a much firmer response to Israel's assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai, it would not have dared to act with such brazenness.

As protest and solidarity actions begin in Palestine and across the world, this is the message they must carry: enough impunity, enough complicity, enough Israeli massacres and apartheid. Justice now.

Latest articles on EI:
Palestine : Activism News: Gazans unite in call for solidarity with Freedom Flotilla (31 May 2010)
Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: International solidarity and the Freedom Flotilla massacre(31 May 2010)
Palestine : Action Items: Action alert: Call your governments, demonstrate support for Freedom Flotilla (31 May 2010)
Palestine : Human Rights: Rights org condemns "hideous" attack on Freedom Flotilla (31 May 2010)
Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: The Gaza flotilla and the ironies of history (30 May 2010)
Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: Freedom Flotilla exposes international community's failure(28 May 2010)

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Marc Ellis: The Ongoing Nakba and the Jewish Conscience / palestinecenter. org

Dr. Marc Ellis is University Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, now in its third edition, Unholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time, Practicing Exile and most recently, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel. Dr. Ellis has been inducted into the Collegium of Scholars at the Martin Luther King International Chapel and Morehouse College.

Ellis sees contemporary Jews as divided into 3 groups in terms of their positions on the question of Israel/Palestine:
"... Constantinian Jews see Israel as a remarkable and innocent flowering of Jewish history. Progressive Jews see Israel as a remarkable and innocent enterprise that has gone wrong. Jews of Conscience go further than Constantinian or Progressive Jews, back to 1948 as the war for a state of Israel that ethnically cleansed the Palestinian population. An ethnic cleansing that has continued under various guises since the formation of the state of Israel and continues apace today. "
Perhaps because of his training and work as a theologian, Ellis has a somewhat different way of looking at things - which I found deep and compelling.

Racheli Gai.

Marc Ellis: The Ongoing Nakba and the Jewish Conscience

Thursday, May 27, 2010

To view the video of this briefing online, go to
http://www.palestinecenter.org

The Palestine Center
Washington, D.C.
27 May 2010

Dr. Marc Ellis:

Thank you very much for that introduction. I see many old friends and some former students. This is my third time speaking at the Palestine Center, so I'm very glad to be back. I have many good memories of my times here. Thank you for your invitation to speak at the Palestine Center. I spoke here many years ago and have fond memories of that time. But of course they are shadowed by the continuing and increasing desperate situation in Israel-Palestine. I have been saying that things would get worse and worse, over the years, and they have. I've been accused of being too despairing and that I should bring a message of hope. But hope can only come from reality; without reality hope is false. Jews and Palestinians are in a terminal condition, realistically speaking. And though vastly different in experiences, we Jews and Palestinians share the same sinking boat. We will be rescued together or we will go down together.

Today I am addressing the ongoing Nakba and Jewish Conscience. I will address these questions, partly through sum events that have occurred since I was invited to speak here because, I believe, they open the question of the ongoing Nakba and the Jewish Conscience in a relevant way. I'll also refer to a recent important lecture here by Professor [John] Mearsheimer where he referred to Righteous Jews, a category I will discuss in a few moments. But I have to make an immediate disclosure – he did not include me among the Jewish notables he lists as Righteous Jews. I may have been included in the "among others" category. Now I don't mention this because I am hurt or surprised. I doubt has ever heard of me. I mention it because it is telling for what he and others leave out. What is often left out of the discussion about Jews and Palestinians is an understanding of Jewishness that I believe forms a substantial component of the Israeli-Palestinian impasse and a substantial
component of a life beyond that impasse. The "something" that is left out is a crucial aspect of the war between Israelis and Palestinians and the internal war among Jews over the question of Israel-Palestine. That "something" often is not recognized by Palestinians either. To this "something" I will return. But first two recent articles in the press that illustrate this missing understanding.

To read the rest, go to http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/12975/pid/897I
If you prefer viewing it, visit http://www.palestinecenter.org
The video is 44 minutes long.

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Al Jazeera: Tensions rise over Gaza aid fleet

A fleet of 9 vessels is heading towards Gaza, with some 700 activists and 10,000 tons of humanitarian aid aboard.
Israel is preparing a detention center, claiming it won't allow the ships to go through. At the same time, it has launched a PR campaign in an effort to convince the world that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Racheli Gai.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/2010528431964325.html

Tensions rise over Gaza aid fleet

The Israeli army has prepared a detention centre in Ashdod for activists taking aid to Gaza [AFP]
The UN chief has called for restraint as some 700 activists from around world vow to deliver 10,000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to break the blockade of Gaza.

Israel has cautioned that the Freedom Flotilla would be stopped, if necessary by force.

The nine-ship flotilla is by far the largest fleet of aid to try to reach the coastal Palestinian territory since Israel imposed its siege on it in 2007.

"We strongly urge that all involved act with a sense of care and responsibility and work for a satisfactory resolution," a spokesman for Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday.

He restated UN opposition to the siege of Gaza and the lack of material to meet "basic needs, begin reconstruction, and revive economic life".

After the Israeli army announced a detention centre at Ashdod port for holding the activists, Greta Berlin, one of the flotilla organisers, said: "We have the right to sail from international waters into the waters of Gaza.

"The only illegal presence in the area is Israel."

Berlin said the Freedom Flotilla was on schedule to arrive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday with more than 10,000 tonnes of supplies, including water-filtration units and pre-fabricated homes.

Israel and Egypt have sealed Gaza off to all but very limited humanitarian aid since Hamas, the Palestinian political faction, took control of the territory in June 2007.

Israel says the Gaza blockade aims to prevent Hamas from acquiring weapons or materials that could be used for military purposes.

For the majority of Gaza's population of 1.5 million people, the result has been impoverished living conditions.

'Absolute provocation'

Israel's foreign ministry said it had given warnings to the ambassadors of Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Sweden and Turkey - from where the ships set sail - that it had "issued warrants that prohibit the entrance of the vessels to Gaza".

The flotilla "is about to break international law", Yossi Gal, the ministry's director general, said.

Gal said that the flotilla was "an absolute provocation" and a "cheap political stunt", as there was no shortage of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros attended an Israeli army news conference on Wednesday, where journalists were told that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
( check out http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/05/201052721394261509.html)
She said that the information to back up this claim was both incomplete and out of context: "This tells me what Gaza is getting in terms of supplies but does not compare this to how much Gaza needs to survive."

Israel has vowed to divert the ships to the southern Israeli port of Ashdod.

It has said that Israelis on board would be arrested, Palestinians would be questioned by the Israeli secret service, and foreign nationals deported.

Part of the port has been cordoned off and prepared to deal with the activists, and large tents set up for immigration booths and areas for people to be searched.

Gal suggested the organisers should voluntarily head to Ashdod to unload the supplies so Israel or humanitarian agencies can deliver them to Gaza overland, but the flotilla organisers rejected the offer.

Hanin Zuabi, a member of the Israeli parliament who is on board the flotilla, told Al Jazeera that the activists intend to reach Gaza regardless of plans to stop them.

"If the Israelis try to stop us, this will be a huge diplomatic and political crises for them," Zuabi said.

"We have 50 states participating in this and are sending a very clear message to Israel - the international community is not accepting the siege on Gaza."

Peace laureates aboard

Al Jazeera's Jamal Elshayyal, on board the flotilla, said the activists travelling in the convoy included European parliamentarians, former US diplomats and Nobel peace laureates.

Berlin, the flotilla organiser, said: "This mission is not about delivering humanitarian supplies, it's about breaking Israel's siege on 1.5 million Palestinians."

Fintan Lane, an Irish activist, said that they were determined to break Israel's blockade and will not be intimidated.

"The people of Gaza have a right to access to the outside world and the right to determine their own future," Lane said.

Huwaida Arraf, one of the organisers from the Free Gaza Movement, said: "Israel should not be under any illusion whatsoever that their threats or intimidation will stop us or even that their violence against us will stop us."

PR disaster

Some Israeli officials see the situation as potentially disastrous in terms of public relations.

"We can't win on this one in terms of PR," Yigal Palmor, a foreign ministry spokesman, said.

"If we let them throw egg at us, we appear stupid with egg on our face. If we try to prevent them by force, we appear as brutes."

Hamas officials say that Israel's threats to intercept the flotilla amount to "Zionist piracy".

"The occupation's threat to prevent the Freedom Flotilla from arriving in the besieged Gaza Strip is Zionist piracy and a violation of international law," Ismail Radwan, a senior Hamas leader, said.

"The occupation is concerned about these ships... because they grant legitimacy to engagement with the Palestinian government and confirm that the attempts to isolate Hamas have failed."

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
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Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

Is Israeli Democracy Losing Ground?

The pseudonymous Moshe Yaroni, a well-placed and informed commentator on Israeli politics, writes in the Jewish journal Zeek that the recent arrest of Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian Arab of Israeli citizenship, appears to mark a new low in the condition of Israeli democracy. Makhoul, the director of Ittijah: the Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, in Haifa, was arrested on May 6 in a night raid as he and his family slept. But all of this is a national secret. Like the case of the secret arrest of Jewish Israeli journalist Anat Kamm last December, which came to light publicly only in April of this year, information about Makhoul's arrest remains unpublicized by the Israeli news media due to a military gag order.

There are good reasons to ask whether, as suggested by these extraordinary secret detentions of citizens, Israel is charting a political course for itself that will lead to an increasingly ruinous decay of its civil life and internal democracy. Other signs of the degradation of democracy in Israel -- attacks on liberal NGO legitmacy, anti-democratic legislation in the Knesset, worrisome public opinion polls, and the growth of far-right political groups -- have appeared at an alarming rate in recent months. These problems are by and large secondary consequences of Israel's occupation and the increasing power of its settler constituency. Whatever the prospective resolution of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians, the current erosion of democracy within the state should be of grave general concern.

--Lincoln Shlensky

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http://zeek.forward.com/articles/116691/

ZEEK: Articles: Prescription For Survival
By Moshe Yaroni

The time has come to ask the question: what is Israel turning into?

For decades, those of us who fervently support Israel but oppose with equal passion certain Israeli policies could make some allowances for Israeli behavior because of its traumatic creation and long string of conflict. But now, the actions of the government are becoming so onerous, and the support for such actions are becoming so widespread among the Israeli populace that any supporter of Israel whose politics are anything other than far right has got to be asking what Israel is becoming.

Just in recent months, we have seen two pieces of legislation designed to cripple progressive Israeli NGOs. There was the Anat Kamm affair, where a journalist was secretly imprisoned for months; Israeli newspapers were forbidden from mentioning it, while it was being reported by media outlets around the world. Violent police actions have become the norm in demonstrations in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Yet protest have been confined to the Left, while a recent Tel Aviv University poll found that nearly 58% of Israelis believe that "human rights organizations that expose immoral conduct by Israel should not be allowed to operate freely."

Now, Ameer Makhoul, the director of Ittijah – The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations - has been arrested in the dead of night, while he and his family slept in their home in Haifa. Let us be clear—Makhoul is an Israeli citizen. Yet the arrest of this high-profile activist has been again placed under a gag order. You're reading about it here, but Israeli reporters, news outlets and even blogs are forbidden from writing about it.

With the news blackout, any serious charge against Makhoul is unknown. A Petah Tikvah court extended his detention for six days and he is barred from consulting an attorney for at least two days. Makhoul had been barred from leaving the country in late April, by order of Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

No doubt, Makhoul is a figure the Israeli government would love to keep quiet. He has been an outspoken critic of Israel, and he supports the international movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the state. A year ago, he was interrogated by the Shin Bet for a day, and released, but he has never, as far as I can determine, been convicted of any crime or been demonstrated to have ties to any sort of terrorism. This would, then, seem to be a case where the state is obliged to publicly disclose the reason and nature of this arrest.

At this point, and lacking any information from the Israeli government, it seems very much like Makhoul is being detained and severely harassed for exercising his right, under Israel's Basic Laws, to free speech and political expression.

Makhoul is one man, and perhaps we will learn something in the coming days that offers some sort of explanation for what looks right now depressingly like KGB tactics. But the trend in Israel is moving toward a very frightening future; a future where most Jews will no longer be able to support Israel.

Israeli democracy is under siege, and it's no less stark than that. For years, the peace groups in Israel have been warning that occupation cannot co-exist with democracy without one eventually strangling the other. It is no longer a theoretical argument.

Sure, in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa bubble, life feels as free as in any Western country. But the rising nationalism represented by fanatical groups like Im Tirzu and the moves by the government to unleash its own power from the watchful gaze of Israeli human rights groups are changing the very nature of the country. The idealism of Zionism has long since been surpassed by the cynicism of conflict and that makes the ground fertile for the continuing erosion of civil and human rights.

This is not just about how Israel treats the Palestinians, or even its own Arab citizens. Coupled with the ongoing problem of the disproportionate and anti-democratic influence of ultra-orthodox segments of Israeli society, the erosion of rights is a dynamic that threatens every Israeli.

Consider even the words of Tzipi Livni, hardly anyone's idea of a raging liberal: "Israel 2010 is a country in which women ride in the back of the bus, dry bones take precedence over saving lives, conversion is a mission impossible, the Zionist vision has blurred and defining the Jewish state has been given to a monopoly of ultra-Orthodox politicians that are taking advantage of the system and politicians. Society is divided into cloistered groups, each studying in its language - Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish - the curriculum it sees fit."

Livni is describing a society that is fractured and one where the gaps between groups are deepening. That also presents an opportunity for ultra-nationalist fervor to galvanize one segment of that society at the increased expense of another. When that society, one which was founded on high ideals, has maintained an occupation for 43 years which has been growing steadily more oppressive, consistently more disdainful of the rights of the occupied, it eventually turns a blind eye to the erosion of rights within its own borders.

The gag order on Anat Kamm's case at least involved her having leaked classified military documents to a reporter for Ha'aretz. One can at least argue that this was a security issue. But Ameer Makhoul's case does not, at this point, seem to have a security rationale.

Makhoul is a leading proponent of Palestinian identity among Arab citizens of Israel. This plays on the rising fear in Israel (one which has always existed, but has generally been trending downward over the decades until this past one) of an Arab "fifth column" within its borders. Makhoul's support for the BDS movement touches on the near hysteria this movement seems to generate among Israel and her supporters. And now, Makhoul is arrested at 3 AM, spirited away and his case is kept under wraps.

I'll say again that perhaps there will be some sort of explanation in the Makhoul case. But it no longer really matters. It is one more case in point demonstrating that Israel is simply tossing aside the democratic values that Jews worldwide overwhelmingly embrace.

In the long run, Israel will face not only diplomatic isolation due to its unwillingness to halt its settlement project; it will also face declining Jewish support, down to a small corner of the right wing of the Jewish community. But this is far from a certain fate.

It can be averted by a change in Israeli actions and an increase in Jewish investment of values in the state. And for that to happen, liberal Jews in Israel and out, from Tel Aviv to San Francisco, must stop allowing the Jewish right to monopolize the shaping of both the state of Israel and of the nature of the pro-Israel community.

That is the call for the next generation of pro-Israel activists: take the face of Israel support away from the Marty Peretzes, Ed Koches, Alan Dershowitzes and Abe Foxmans who refuse to admit that Israel's democratic structures, never entirely stable, are now under a mortal threat. They can't help with the problem if they won't even admit it is there.

In the 21st century, if Israel is to survive, it will only be because the new meaning of pro-Israel is not trumpeting Israel's shaky democracy, but defending and strengthening that democracy, making it the strong fabric Israel's founders thought it would be. That requires ending the occupation and allowing Palestinians their freedom, but it also requires true equality – in practice not just on paper—for all of Israel's citizens, freeing Israel from the grip of the rabbinate, and strengthening its courts and NGO communities.

Are there Jewish leaders willing to be truly pro-Israel?

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
------------
Jewish Peace News archive and blog: http://jewishpeacenews.blogspot.com
------------
Jewish Peace News sends its news clippings only to subscribers. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription, go to http://www.jewishpeacenews.net

NY Times Acknowledges Jewish Split over Israeli Policies

A prominent home page article in today's online New York Times reports that the traditional American Jewish leadership's unconditional support for Israeli policy is in conflict with the views of the far more skeptical American Jewish public at large. Organizations such as the grassroots Jewish Voice for Peace have been claiming for years, of course, that the American Jewish leadership and its presumed constituency are at odds over Israel's policies in the occupied territories. Such claims mostly have been dismissed by establishment leaders as self-servingly biased. But, as the Times article today suggests, it is increasingly difficult to ignore the lay/leadership disparity, with its consequent anti-democratic implications.

As Steven M. Cohen, a professor of sociology at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan points out in the Times article, American Jews "are frustrated at being labeled 'anti-Israel' or even anti-Semitic for expressing opposition to Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories." Liberal Jews are more and more dismayed at what they view as the internal censorship imposed by powerful institutions such as the Jewish Federation of San Francisco, which recently chose to deny funding to any Jewish organization that airs opinions deemed too critical of Israeli policy (see the MuzzleWatch post here).

The Times article is a welcome acknowledgment of the growing dissent among Jews over Israeli policy. Such dissent is arguably more attentive to the safety and welfare of both Israelis and Palestinians than is the "Israel-right-or-wrong" sentiment to which many among the putative Jewish leadership adhere.

In a recent attempt to pry open Jewish public discourse on Israel, and to express their frustration at being silenced by the reactionary Jewish hierarchy, a group of more than 3000 prominent European Jewish intellectuals calling themselves "JCall" -- including notable Israel backers such as Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut -- recently signed a petition prodding Israel to halt settlement construction and negotiate fairly with the Palestinians (see the JCall petition here). The petition was delivered to the European Parliament in Brussels on May 3rd.

Political leaders, whether Jewish or not, can hardly afford to ignore the increasingly bold writing on the wall: justifying Israel's ongoing occupation and settlement activity is not just a moral failing. It is also a political liability.

--Lincoln Shlensky

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/us/politics/06jews.html

On Israel, Jews and Leaders Often Disagree
By PAUL VITELLO

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — Criticizing Israel has long been the equivalent of touching a third rail in many Jewish families and friendships, relegating disagreements to a conversational demilitarized zone where only the innocent and foolhardy go.

"You cannot really engage in that conversation," said Phillip Moore, a teacher in this Detroit suburb who has embraced strong opinions on many topics in his life — on politics, education, even religion — but avoids the subject of Israel at gatherings of his Jewish relatives.

"You raise a question about the security forces or the settlements and you are suddenly being compared to a Holocaust denier," said Mr. Moore, 62. "It's just not a rational discussion, so I keep quiet."

But the recent tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over the stalled Middle East peace process has put the questions underlying those long-avoided family discussions directly in the public spotlight. They have raised serious questions about whether the traditional leadership of the American Jewish world is fully supported by the mass of American Jews.

The issues arose last month when American officials openly rebuked Israel over the announcement of new housing plans in east Jerusalem, and are likely to grow as indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians, mediated by the Obama administration, resume this week. President Obama, working to ease those tensions, met on Tuesday with the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who had criticized the administration in an advertisement last month.

Many other prominent Jews, representing the conservative organizational leadership that has been the dominant voice of the Jewish community for decades, have also recently criticized the Obama administration's pressure on Israel. Some have even accused the White House of sabotaging the foundations of the Jewish state.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York spoke for many stalwart Israel backers last Sunday when he told an angry crowd of 500 gathered outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, in a videotaped statement, that President Obama's demand for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem was nothing less than an orchestrated effort "to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel."

But while those voices have been strong and their message unmistakable, a newly outspoken wing of Israel supporters has begun to challenge the old-school reflexive support of the country's policies, suggesting that one does not have to be slavish to Israeli policies to love Israel.

"Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel," said Rabbi Tamara Kolton of the Birmingham Temple, a secular humanistic congregation in Farmington Hills. "They support Israel, but it's complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people. You heard only from the organized ones, the ones who are 100 percent certain, we're right, they're wrong."

In the 2008 election, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Mr. Obama, and surveys have suggested that most continue to back his policies.

In a survey taken after the diplomatic skirmish of March, the American Jewish Committee — the heart of the traditional mainstream — found little change in the level of Jewish support for Mr. Obama's handling of relations with Israel. The survey found that 55 percent approved of his handling of Israeli relations, compared with 54 percent last year. (His disapproval rating rose five points, to 37 percent.)

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of a Washington lobby known as J Street, the latest of several organizations representing the voice of liberal Jews who support Israel but not all its policies, said many people have long felt ignored or silenced by the pro-Israel establishment in the United States.

"People are tired of being told that you are either with us or against us," he said. "The majority of American Jews support the president, support the two-state solution and do not feel that they have been well represented by organizations that demand obedience to every wish of the Israeli government. If you had taken their word for it, Obama should have gotten 12 percent of the Jewish vote. But he got 80. That should say something."

Within the vast spectrum of opinion, though, American Jews continue to have strong attachments to Israel, and the recent tensions have produced intense, often angry, debate. The rancor led delegates at the annual convention of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella community relations group that includes almost all major American Jewish organizations, to adopt a resolution in February calling for a halt to "a level of uncivility, particularly over issues pertaining to Israel, that has not been witnessed in recent memory."

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, predicted that Mr. Obama's approval ratings among Jews would soon reflect what he called "a deep distress" over his approach.

"People are angry," he said. "Americans do not want peace shoved down the throats of the Israelis."

But Professor Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan who co-wrote a study last year charting a steep decline in attachment to Israel among younger Jews, said the younger and liberal-leaning are frustrated at being labeled "anti-Israel" or even anti-Semitic for expressing opposition to Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

Many liberals cite a recent crackdown in San Francisco as an example. After leaders of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco learned that one of the film groups it supported had sponsored the screening of an Israeli documentary critical of Israeli security forces, "Rachel," about an American woman killed in Gaza, they adopted new rules early this year prohibiting any of the cultural organizations it supports from presenting programs that "undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel."

William Daroff, vice president for public policy of the Jewish Federations of North America, defended the San Francisco federation's decision. "An open exchange of views within the pro-Israel community is good," he said. "But there has to be some sort of line between constructive discussion and destructive communication that does not recognize Israel as the eternal home of the Jewish people."

The questions that Jews are now facing are rooted not in being for or against Israel, but in the shadings of difference over how to achieve peace, and the complexities of the relationship between Israel — a state whose government is now dominated by nationalist and ultrareligious politicians — and the predominantly liberal-leaning and secular base of Jewish support in the United States.

The struggle to define the middle ground was in evidence last month among a small group of Jewish Americans who gathered in a suburban Detroit synagogue to describe the view of the recent turmoil from somewhere in the demographic middle.

They were seven people from the "more or less inactive" list of the Birmingham Temple, said Rabbi Kolton, who gathered them at the request of a reporter because they roughly matched the profile of about 60 percent of American Jews, according to various studies: They do not belong to a synagogue and do not attend services or belong to Jewish organizations, yet they consider themselves Jewish — bound in a web of history, culture and DNA to their Jewishness, and by extension, to Israel.

"My parents were Jewish, so I'm a Jew," said Rosetta Creed, 87, a retired hospital administrator. "I get into arguments with people who knock Israel."

All said that they had voted for Mr. Obama, supported his efforts to prod Israel and believed there would never be peace in the Middle East without determined intervention by the United States.

Nonetheless, "It makes me angry that the Israelis are always blamed for the problems and asked to make concessions," Ms. Creed said. "You know, the Israelis are not the ones launching rockets and placing fighters in houses with children inside."

In different ways, each referred to the history of Jewish persecution throughout the world and noted that the absence of it here and now did not spare one the occasional flash of insight and dread — when swastikas desecrate a synagogue or neo-Nazi militias appear on the six o'clock news — that Israel will always be one's last sanctuary.

With many of their children intermarried, they pondered what meaning Israel would hold for their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"Let's face it, with each generation we are getting less and less Jewish," said Irving Hershman, an insurance agent who was raised in an Orthodox home. He predicted, with regret, that the bonds between American Jews and Israel would dissipate in 5 or 10 generations.

Mr. Moore, the headmaster, expressed frustration that the voice of Israeli advocacy in the United States was monopolized by what he called the "Israel right-or-wrong" camp.

Israel is not just the homeland of Jews but of Jewishness, he said, and should be known for its embrace of the values at the core of Judaism — truth, fairness, kindness, freedom.

That is what he would tell those hard-line relatives of his, he said, "though I'm pretty sure it wouldn't change their minds."

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Jewish Peace News editors:
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Judith Norman
Lincoln Z. Shlensky
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Alistair Welchman
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