Israel at 75 is up to us

“When Israel has prostitutes and thieves, we’ll be a state just like any other," was David Ben-Gurion's famous line about achieving a true place among the nations. Decades later, a few of us joined Ben-Gurion's late protege -- and our own beloved mentor -- Ralph Goldman to visit the Tel Aviv home of Israel's first and greatest Prime Minister. Ralph showed us the small kitchen table where BG would read and drink his coffee, and the sink where he'd wash out his own cup when he was finished. Imagine, the founder of modern Israel washing out his own coffee cup...

Fast-forward to today, as Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary. It has fulfilled so much Biblical prophecy, including the ingathering of exiles and shining a light unto the nations in countless dimensions. Israel has a first-rate military and economy, it has top-ranked arts and sciences, and its legitimacy is now almost universally accepted. It's also been home to its share of prostitutes and thieves, and tonight its Prime Minister is known for the kind of extravagant high living that Ben-Gurion wouldn't even have recognized.

 
Benjamin Netanyahu has also assembled a governing coalition that seems hell-bent on erasing the values and political culture to which all the founders including the right-wingers had pledged themselves. His top priority is revoking the independence of the judiciary even as convicted criminals and terror suspects serve in his government and as he himself is on trial for public corruption.

Israel was far from perfect before, and now it certainly faces the greatest challenge to the rule of law in its history. But is it so different from the United States of Trump, Orban's Hungary, Bolsonaro's Brazil, or Berlusconi's Italy? All these leaders and their movements have collaborated together and been extolled by the same MAGA strategists and cheered on by Vladimir Putin. And all these countries remain vibrant societies vigorously debating their identities and futures.

In this century, no major Israeli party has run an election on the Palestinian issue, while Netanyahu has done his best to exacerbate, sideline and leverage it for his own political purposes. Now, belatedly, the Israeli left seems to be connecting some of the dots between occupation, mob vengeance, and rule of law. We'll have to see if it's too late.

So these are the stakes.

Around the world, democracy and decency are on the ballot, and even when they win the results are challenged and denied. Yes, Israel is part of this seamy dynamic. The murderous Saudi crown prince cuts business deals with Netanyahu and with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Sudan's military junta is only too happy to be courted by the Jewish state amid the gun battles of Khartoum. But millions of Israelis have also taken to the streets, and this week even the loyalist American Jewish Federations are considered in play, with Netanyahu declining to show up for the ultimate Israel-Diaspora victory lap.

From that sunny day in 1970 when our ship first pulled into Haifa port, Israel has been part of me. Not as an American Zionist theme park, but as a true homeland with real people and real challenges, and one worth fighting for.

I have hope for Israel's future, and I believe deeply in its religious and prophetic significance. My critiques of Netanyahu et al these past 15 years have certainly cost me professionally and socially, but my intent was always to avert just such a crisis as we see now.

Tonight, after remembering the fallen, I will be celebrating the existence of Israel, the spirit of Israelis, and the aspiration to continue and perfect this sacred and historic undertaking, and never to take its existence or its democracy for granted. Even when it hurts.

Do US Jews value pluralism over justice?

I am outraged by Israel's long years of bait-and-switch with Judaism's non-Orthodox denominations, most of whom fervently support and advocate for the Jewish state, culminating in the latest decision to abandon even a compromise of their basic religious rights. This last straw in a long-running scam to exclude and demonize non-Orthodox Jews should rattle us all to our core.

Equally striking, however, is the general contrast between our community's instant and very public outrage over this spiritual and emotional offense, which targets mostly absentee co-religionists who otherwise enjoy freedom of travel and self-expression vs. the daily and hourly humiliation and subjugation of 2+ million Palestinians -- whose plight, regardless of who is at fault, is at least somewhat and significantly in the hands of the same Israeli government which has now again inconvenienced and insulted Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews. 

Unless as a throwaway line with which to blame "the Arabs" and excuse Israel, even mentioning the Palestinians' situation commonly engenders charges of anti-Semitism and perfidy hurled reflexively by Federation leaders, pulpit rabbis, radio hosts, and blog idols of the official pro-Israel line. Speakers are disinvited, academic tenures are threatened. 

The American Jewish Diaspora won't dare notice -- and actively distracts from the reality -- that Palestinians are routinely and daily denied basic human dignity, rights and services, except to blame and denigrate the Palestinians themselves. Yet, for over three decades, to have one integral but single right -- the right to non-Orthodox observance, including "Who is a Jew" -- denied them in the land of our forefathers is an existential crisis demanding urgent moral umbrage.

In most cases, the same American Jewish establishment which once again warns vocally and righteously of the specter of an alienated American Jewry still thinks little of the Palestinians who live within sight of the Western Wall. As a community, we staunchly defend the Israeli Government's actions with regard to the basic rights of Palestinians, then we turn around and expect that same government to show remorse for how it allows us to pray and validate conversions. 

If this is the Light Unto the Nations, then which nations do we mean? And if we cannot even bear to hear the prayers and grievances of those under our immediate or indirect control, then how can we expect God to hear our own entreaties at the site of his Holy Temple?

The inconvenient Beilis centennial

One hundred years ago this week, a jury in Kiev acquitted Mendel Beilis of ritual murder in the death of a Christian child. Half the jurors were literally card-carrying anti-Semites, members of the infamous Black Hundreds, and still they could find no plausible evidence to convict this Jewish man. The trial was followed around the world, and 20 years later, 4,000 people attended Beilis' funeral in New York.

Jay Beilis addressing diplomats and Ukrainian officials

Last month in Kyiv (note the Ukrainian spelling), we commemorated the Beilis centennial within the context of fighting anti-Semitism, with full participation by the Government of Ukraine and many other countries. As a consultant to the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, I had the opportunity to help facilitate. As Jay Beilis pointed out to us, countless thousands of Jews are alive today because his grandfather refused to confess to a crime he didn't commit, and the highly publicized trial inspired a new mass emigration of Jews from Eastern Europe years before the Holocaust, and before the mass-murder at Babi Yar, which occurred just the other side of town from our conference.

I believe the fact that neither Israel nor the United States is hosting any major event for this centennial reflects our own politics and mythology. In Israel, they already have the earlier Dreyfus Affair and Theodor Herzl narrative. In the States, the Jewish community is largely defined (and self-identified) as a post-Holocaust community -- even though most of us are descended from pre-War arrivals. And if there's a centennial to mark here, it will be the Leo Frank trial, which ended in the lynching of an Atlanta Jewish community leader and is popularly linked to the founding of the legendary Anti-Defamation League (which was also among the cosponsors of the Kyiv conference).

Ironically, U.S. officials were precluded from participating in the Kyiv conference due to the federal government shutdown. Even The Forward, whose Yiddish-language forerunner The Forverts at the time promoted Beilis as the trial of the century, was unavailable to participate in or report on the Kyiv commemoration. 

As a culture, we choose our heroes or they are chosen for us, and then we choose or invent new heroes when it's convenient. This may be something America and Israel have in common, as new (or renewed) societies.

At least the record has been honored where it was set. 

Peter Beinart faces the closing of the American Jewish mind

I disagree with Peter Beinart's call to boycott Israeli products from the West Bank. He went too far. Even J Street thought (or said) so, too. But boycotting him in Atlanta -- actually, dropping him from a scheduled appearance at the Jewish Book Festival there -- is beyond wrong. It's abdication.

Anyone aspiring or already claiming to be a leader within the Jewish community must recognize that with such honors and privileges also comes a long legacy of responsibilities. Jews are big dreamers, but we are also taught not to ignore the realities around us and among us.

Peter's latest book, The Crisis of Zionism, is about much more than boycotting the West Bank. He speaks to, and of, a whole generation of young Jews who are disaffected or otherwise turned off by the organized Jewish community. They are not anti-Israel, and eight days of "birthright" tourism aren't going to help. For too many young Jews, the hasbara and "yisrael hayafa" industry just no longer cuts it. Even if they do drink the Kool-Aid without resistance, we will have raised an intellectually untested and Jewishly unsophisticated corps of believers. Serious questions go unasked and unanswered in any meaningful way. As Peter said in response to the cancellation, "I think the mistake is to think that trying to avoid discussion produces unity. It produces a false sense of unity." 

"Israel Firster" charge crosses the line

One can argue, even persuasively, that the AIPAC model of pro-Israel advocacy provides a disincentive for the Jewish State and its leaders to act in their own national interest. While I welcome the advent of J Street and other full-blooded left-of-center approaches to U.S. Middle East policy, I am not ready to join their movement. But I reject the assumption that they must be anti-Israel if they oppose the current Israeli government and support more forceful efforts to re-engage Israeli and Palestinian leadership in direct and meaningful negotiations, as anyone generous enough to read my blog must have noticed.

AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (THE pro-Israel lobby), like many major American Jewish organizations, is simultaneously a source of pride, regret and frustration for many activists in the American Jewish community. And I certainly have my own ideas about how they could do better. But AIPAC is successful in many ways, and it represents many thousands of mainstream American Jews. Like it or not, AIPAC matters.

I also have ideas about reforming the whole Washington system of influence-peddling, but not because it undermines progressive Zionism. It's not all about Israel, nor should it be.

The latest brainstorm by my friends in the progressive lobby (but NOT J Street) has been to label AIPAC and many prominent Jews of the center-right and neo-conservative wings as "Israel Firsters". This is both brilliant, as a way of reframing the parameters of debate, and absolutely deplorable. By "absolutely", I mean there's no way to justify it, no context to make it acceptable. M.J.'s most recent column, pointing out that the "Israel Firsters" are not really "Israel Firsters" (because they don't even care about Israel!!) begs the question: Why call them "Israel Firsters" in the first place, if not for the shock value?

Qaddafi's Quran

When I commenced my Arabic studies, over 20 years ago, our Jordanian Christian professor supplied us each with a thick green Quran. On the title page was a dedication from the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. We didn't use it so often, but it was interesting just to have it, considering that our classroom was a ten-minute walk from the White House.

I had fantasized of someday thanking Col. Qaddafi for the gift of "his" Quran. Years later, when I had the opportunity, our subject turned out to be issues of Jewish identity and Zionist theory, with which he was surprisingly well-versed. I had forgotten all about his Quran, until just now, after two weeks of following the hot struggle for Libya's future.

Muammar Qaddafi has not been the normative face of Islam, especially since he now claims Islamic extremists are behind the Libyan rebellion. But in his stylized defiance, there has been a certain Arab pride. Ironically, though, it is regular Arabs and Muslims who now rise up out of their own sense of intrinsic pride. Printing Qurans does not make one a prince of the Arab nation or the Islamic umma. Not for very long, at least.

Provocative settlements, provocative UN resolutions, and no peace

The Palestinian delegates to the United Nations are within their rights to push a Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank (or any resolution at all), and the United States is within its rights to veto such a resolution.

The United States may no longer be the indispensable nation in every corner of the globe, but in the Middle East it still is. If there is one nation that can influence Israel more effectively through direct engagement, it is the United States. This has been a major consideration behind countless U.S. vetoes against Security Council resolutions that were one-sided and/or politically motivated. What will be gained by changing course at this sensitive juncture?

The United States and Israel are strategic allies, and the UN is certainly no stranger to friends standing up for friends... and far worse. Violators of international law -- even outright genocide -- are routinely exempted from UN condemnation, despite often strong efforts by the United States and others. If the UN were known for acting on principle in every instance and nations voted on the basis of international law rather than specific relationships and strategies, the world would be a safer and better place. But that's just not the case.