The fate of Jewish anti-Zionists

The fate of Jewish anti-Zionists

Filed under Opinion Editorials, Anti-Zionist Jews - on Monday, March 31, 2008 -

Ami Isseroff is director of MidEastWeb for Coexistence www.mideastweb.org and creator and webmaster of www.zionism-israel.com. He has a D.Sc. degree in Behavioral Biology from the Israel Technical Institute (Technion) Medical School. and has been a senior researcher at the Weizmann institute, software enginner, systems analyst and free lance software consultant and technical writer. He lives in Rehovot, Israel.

MidEastWeb - Middle East
Zionism-Israel

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Anti-Zionist Jews and those whose views amount to anti-Zionism are an unpleasant fact of life. This article was not written to condemn them, or to refute their ideas in detail, but rather to point out that they will eventually find themselves isolated by the people whose cause they are championing. This is already happening.

Anti-Zionist Jews are among the most vociferous, visible and effective opponents of the existence of the state of Israel today. Who has done more to advance the myth of Zionist "ethnic cleansing" than Ilan Pappe? Who has done more to combat the "Holocaust Myth" by his subtle and effective "Holocaust Industry" campaign than Norman Finkelstein?? Who has been at the forefront at spreading the libel of "Apartheid Israel," if not Jeff Halper? Who has made hatred of Israel respectable in US Academia if not Joel Beinin? Who has done more to advance the image of Israel as a tool of the colonialist imperialist warmongers than Noam Chomsky? Who has been the ideological soul of the British boycott campaigns, if not Jacqueline Rose? Who has done more to discredit the IDF and demoralize Israeli youth than Dorothy Naor with her "New Profile" movement? It is the Golden Age of anti-Zionist and anti-Israel Jews. All over the world, the watchword is "Just Peace in Palestine." Jews are leading the fight to brainwash the world into thinking that genocide is justice. Anti-Semitism was abandoned by the respectable right; now it is the Jews who must lead the anti-Zionist fight, the struggle to deny the rights of the Jewish people. Surely it is absurd that Jews lead the anti-Zionist movement!

This development, which may seem bizarre, can be predictable from the classical Zionist analysis of history. Jews have always been pioneers, going where nobody else wanted to go or could go, and developing fields of endeavor that were neglected by others for lack of motivation or qualifications.

In many lands, as the Middle Ages waned, Jews were the only people who had the education to engage in commerce, and the motivation to do it because they were barred from other occupations. Baruch Espinoza pioneered aspects of modern philosophy that other Europeans could not dare to touch. He was only excommunicated. Christians who dabbled in these matters would have been burned at the stake. In comparatively large numbers, Jews engaged in obscure and nonlucrative pursuits such as theoretical physics, and in the USA, Jews took advantage of the new and risky field opened by the invention of motion pictures. Jews have been at the forefront of movements of social change as well, places where imaginative and bold leaders could gain an audience, while they were shut out of the respectable political movements by non-Jews. Jews, likewise, were at the forefront of the US civil rights movement and the South African anti-apartheid movement. Not surprisingly, Jews took up the Palestinian Arab cause.

Jews bring a special "qualification" to the business of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Only Jews, after all, can advocate the destruction of the Jewish state in liberal circles without risking the charge of racism and advocating genocide. Only Jews can spread nonsense about the "Holocaust industry" without being labeled anti-Semites and neo-Nazis. Jews, and Israeli Jews at that, are best situated to offer credible but inaccurate information about Zionist "atrocities." Only Jews can recycle the tired Nazi accusation that the Jews control the media and the governments of the world without risking the anger of "liberals."

A very significant portion of advocacy for the Arab Palestinian anti-Israel movement is led not by Palestinian Arabs or anti-Semites, but by Jews. Halper, Beinin, Rose, Pappe, Chomsky and Finkelstein, rather than Alloush, Abunimah, Fayyad Husseini, Qaukji and abu Youssef, are the intellectual mainstays of the movement to wipe out the Jewish state. Their English is much better, and they can cast their ideas in slogans acceptable to western culture. "Secular Democratic State" sounds so much better than "Drive the Jews into the Sea" to a good progressive, doesn't it? It is difficult to label them as "anti-Semites" convincingly. It is hard to discredit their lies. If a Jew and an Israeli says that Zionists commit war crimes, people tend to believe it must be true.Their appearances and their books and articles are lauded in the Arab world, and reprinted in Al-Ahram and Roz el Youssef, alongside the latest "proofs" of the authenticity of the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Not since al-Andalus (Moorish Spain) have Jews enjoyed such a Golden Age.

Alas for the anti-Zionist Jews, their fate is sealed, like that of the Jews of Spain and Germany. As Zionist analysis can help us understand the rise of anti-Zionist Jews, and the rise of Jews in Poland or Germany, and as it could predict the downfall of the Jews in Germany and Poland, so Zionist analysis can equally well predict the denouement of Jewish anti-Zionism.

The same drama has been enacted many times before. The father of Marxist Zionism, Ber Borochov called it a "Stychic process," a process that was natural, impartial and inevitable. Eventually, the new field pioneered by Jews becomes a success. It becomes attractive to non-Jews. The Jews are forced out of commerce or the Communist party of the Soviet Union, or the US civil rights movement or whatever other field they have pioneered. The Jewish department stores and the Jewish industries are "Aryanized." Lenin and Stalin take over from Trotsky and Kaganovich, and Farrakhan and Obama take over from Jewish civil rights advocates and martyrs Spingarn and Goodman.

In the case of the Palestinian quest to destroy Israel, there is a special intrinsic problem with Jewish leadership, especially Israeli Jewish leadership. As Marxists would possibly phrase it, there is a contradiction between the means of social organization (Jews) , and the goals (wiping out Jews). The goal of the Palestinian movement, as was made quite clear by its founder, Grand Mufti Hajj Amin al Husseini, was the physical annihilation of the Jews of Palestine, as his mentor, Adolf Hitler, had accomplished regarding the Jews of Europe. Under the influence of Soviet mentors, this goal was modified slightly by the PLO, which originally planned that the "Secular Democratic State" would "only" expel those Jews who had arrived after 1917.

From that point of view, the Halpers and the other Jewish helpers constitute a subversive fifth column. In their mad delusion, they think that the Palestinian Arabs are only against "those other Jews." They seriously intend that the Secular Democratic State will give rights to Jews and allow Jews to live in "Palestine." Of course, there would be no point to the Palestinian "struggle" if that is how it ends, as the Hamas make abundantly clear. Still worse, perhaps, are those Jews who insist that there should be two states, one Palestinian Arab, and the other "Secular Democratic."

Perhaps Jeff Halper, or Ilan Pappe or Dorothy Naor even have the dangerous illusion that they might hold some government post in the Palestinian utopia, as they are so central to the movement right now. After all, they see themselves as part of the "revolution." They are not like those other Jews. If they ever achieve their goal of destroying the Jewish state, it is clear that their fate will be the same as that of the Left Poalei Tzion and the Yevsektzia who were purged by Stalin, of Pfeffer and Mayakovsky and all the leading lights of the Soviet Revolution. For Jews, as the Hamas Charternotes, have always been trouble makers. Dorothy Naor and Tali Fahima will no doubt protest against polygamy, wife beating, female circumcision or honor killings, and the 'democratic' Hamas will do to them what the 'democratic' Hamas must do to all troublesome agitators. Perhaps, on the other hand, they will meet their fate believing in the revolution to the bitter end.

The end is already in sight. The stalwart Ibrahim Alloush, who has the courage to say what other Arabs only think, has spelled it out (see freearabvoice.org/articles/SolidarityfromPro-PalestinianJewsRevisited.htm):

There are plenty of people out there who claim to be 'pro-Palestinian', or to support 'Palestinian rights'...

Nevertheless, not everyone who claims to support us is actually a supporter. Many such supporters actually oppose some of the most crucial things we stand for, except they dislike some of the human rights violations that the Zionists are visiting upon us. That is, they: 1) recognize the right of "Israel" to exist and the alleged right of Jews to settle in Palestine, 2) they oppose our strategy to liberate Palestine, and 3) they especially oppose the armed struggle of Palestinian organizations. Such 'supporters' are not actually supporting us, but simply trying to make themselves feel better...

In some cases, you find Jews claiming to support the Palestinian cause. But when you scrutinize carefully what they stand for, you'll find they simply want what amounts to a 'nice occupation', as opposed to a brutal one. In reality they just wish there could be an occupation without administrative detentions, targeted assassinations, land confiscations, house demolitions, and all the rest. Otherwise, those same 'supporters' try as hard as they could to convince Palestinians to present their case 'in a civilized manner' without resorting to human bombs and military operations, especially against what they call "Israeli civilians". One such Jewish 'supporter' is Noam Chomsky who says that it would be immoral for Palestinians to target even an off-duty "Israeli" soldier!

This makes one wonder whether these Jewish "supporters" are just trying to whitewash the occupation with their own professed guilt, as Jews, or whether they're simply out to present another 'positive' side of Zionism!

"Not everyone who claims to support us is really a supporter," writes Alloush. As Joe Stalin noted, one must always be vigilant. There are right-deviationists and left-deviationists and subversives hiding everywhere in our midst. Agents of imperialist reaction in sheep's clothing - rootless cosmopolitans.

Alloush is not the only sign of disaffection. Benny Morris, whose not quite objective history of the Palestinian refugee exodus was used as a major weapon in the war against Israel, was criticized by Finkelstein, and by Khalidi and others, because he "didn't go far enough." Eventually, it was discovered that Morris is a Zionist in pro-Palestinian clothing, and he admitted unambiguously that he believes the blame for the exodus of Palestinian Arab refugees lies solely with the Palestinian Arabs. When the campaign against the alleged "Israel Lobby" gathered momentum under the inspiration of professors Walt and Mearsheimer, Noam Chomsky was discovered to be a left-deviationist, who put the blame for American foreign policy on Americans, rather than the nefarious "Israel lobby." The writings of Simha Flapan are widely quoted by anti-Zionists to "prove" that Zionism is a racist movement. But surely, some ambitious person will also one day discover and quote Flapan's advocacy in the Zionist idea.

Presently, it will be discovered that Dorothy Naor, who agitates for refusing service in the IDF, is unwilling to wear the Dhimmi star after the Arabs have duly conquered "Filasteen." It will be understood that Noam Chomsky actually was, as he freely admits, a Zionist, a card-carrying member of the international Zionist conspiracy. Likewise, it will be revealed that Joel Beinin, leader of the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist camp as former head of MESA (Middle East Studies Association) was likewise a card-carrying Zionist, and that even now, he most subversively advocates some solution that provides at least some rights to the Jews of Israel, such as a truly democratic and secular state, and innocent believes in the possibility of achieving this utopia. Perhaps all these people are still agents of the Mossad, who have infiltrated and subverted the Arab Palestinian movement? After all, the Elders of Zion are clever. They must have a contingency for every exigency. If they can't control the Palestinians one way, they will do it another way. If the "Jew Zionists" cannot control the American government, they will put forward the Jewish anti-Zionists to do it instead.

There is no getting around the problem: anti-Zionist Jews are still Jews. What is the point of getting rid of one type of Jew, if at the end of the day, the Arab Palestinians are to be controlled by a different type of Jew? The problem is highlighted by the rise (or rather the recrudescence) of Islamist ideology among Arab Palestinians. There is no place for Jewish leadership in an Islamic Republic. As the Hadith observes, before the end of days, the Muslims will kill all the Jews. It doesn't exempt anti-Zionist Jews. A Jew is a Jew and remains a Jew. A Jew is liable to support outlandish and evil notions like the right of Jews to settle in Palestine, or to oppose time honored customs like wife beating or honorable pursuits like suicide bombing. The Jews will try to hide behind trees as the Hadith states. But if the state of Israel is really destroyed, no tree will shelter Tali Fahima or Ilan Pappe or Jeff Halper.

Alloush is an extremist, in the vanguard of the Arab Palestinian movement. He is a Holocaustdenier, but no more so than say, Norman Finkelstein, or the Neturei Karteh Jews. Alloush dares to say what others are only thinking. His ideas will achieve popularity first with the "anti-Zionists" like the Stormfront people, but inevitably, they must percolate down to every Arab Palestinian and every anti-Semite who rightly feels that the Jews have not only dispossessed the Arabs from Palestine, but have now dispossessed them from their own genocidal movement. The leaders of a genocidal movement cannot be those who were targeted for elimination. It wouldn't do at all if Eichmann or Himmler or Heydrich had been Jewish.

The Jewish anti-Zionist movement must inevitably fall victim to the nemesis of of the historical dialectic. If the Arab Palestinian movement to destroy Israel succeeds, the Jews who are leading it now will certainly be redundant and undesirable. What use will Tali Fahima or Ilan Pappe or Jeff Halper be in an Arab Palestinian state? If it fails, they will be blamed for its failure.

A specter is haunting over the anti-Zionist movement. It is the specter of anti-Semitism. As day follows night, the logical and social contradictions of the Jewish pro-Palestinian movement must lead to the exclusion, if not the annihilation, of the anti-Zionist Jews. It is far better for them, and for all of us, if it happens sooner, rather than later.

Hat Tip: Ber Borochov

Based on the article The future of Jewish anti-Zionism - a Zionist analysis, published by Zionism & Israel Center.

Harassment and Freedom

ISRAELI E NEWS

Harassment and Freedom

Filed under Judaism, Christianity, Christian Zionism, Opinion Editorials, Missionising, Christian Fundamentalism -

on Tuesday, April 01, 2008

By: Taylor, Penina

Born Jewish, as a teenager Penina embraced Christianity. Having gone to Bible College and served in a variety of lay leadership positions within Christianity, Penina eventually made her way to “Messianic Judaism” where she served in as a leader in the Messianic movement. This became a catalyst for her to explore authentic Jewish literature and Torah observance; forcing her to confront some real challenges to her faith. Her search for answers was assisted by the Baltimore center of Jews for Judaism which helped her examine the scriptural bases for her faith and explore the spiritual beauty of Judaism. In July of 2000, after 17 years of involvement with Christianity, Penina made a complete return to Judaism.

Penina Taylor’s extensive experience in Christian and Messianic leadership as well as training in evangelism, outreach, and missions over 17 years has given her a unique perspective on missionary groups that target the Jewish Community. Since her return to Judaism, Penina has continually worked in the Jewish community to encourage Jewish people of all backgrounds to explore their own faith before looking to other religions.

Thursday, March 20, 2008, marked an interesting change in the dynamics between the Orthodox Jewish communities and the Evangelical Christian and “Messianic” communities in Israel. The event which sparked this change was the explosion of a package which severely injured the teenage son of a Messianic Pastor in Ariel, a city in Israel.

Despite the fact that the MO was typical of Palestinian terrorists, particularly since it was packed with shrapnel, and despite the fact that the Al Aksa Brigade is reported to have taken credit for it, according to the Ma’an news agency, and despite the fact that the Pastor has, for some time, had a fatwa on his head (a Muslim death threat) for having converted Muslims to Christianity, the family, messianic community and legal representation continue to look towards the religious Jewish community, whom they typically call “extremists” for the perpetrator(s) of the crime.

Although it has yet to be shown that the family has ever received an actual death threat from a religious Jew, and despite the fact that this does not fit the way even the most extreme religious Jews operate, it would seem that the Messianic community is using this event as a springboard for legal change in their status in this country. Citing past harassment by the religious Jewish community and annoying protests that have sometimes ended in fisticuffs, Caleb Meyers, legal council for the Messianic community and the Ortiz family is milking this for all its worth. When all is said and done, what we are really left with is the necessity to clearly define the terms, “harassment” and “freedom of religion”. The Messianic community has been very adamant that they have been harassed on a regular basis. But what is harassment?

According to the dictionary definition, harassment is “to irritate or torment persistently”. Certainly, the protests that have taken place in many Messianic communities, including Arad and Beer Sheva would qualify, but what about proselytizing? Doesn’t that qualify as harassment? If someone comes up to you and tells you about Jesus, and it is unsolicited, does that qualify as harassment? To some of us, it does. What about if that unsolicited event doesn’t stop? What if you tell the person that Jesus isn’t the messiah, so they continue on, pounding you with verse after verse, trying to prove that he is? Does this qualify as harassment? I would dare say it does. Don’t Jewish people living in a Jewish country have the right to exist without being harassed simply because they don’t believe what someone else does? Why doesn’t the cry of “harassment” go both ways?

And what about the claim that the messianic community is being persecuted? While I suppose that persecution is in the eye of the beholder, I would really like to see Christians in Israel prove that they are being persecuted when lined up side by side with Christians in places like Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, and Laos, where being arrested, tortured and killed simply because of what they believe occurs on a regular basis. No, the Church in Israel is not being persecuted. At best it is being limited or restricted, but that is not the same as persecuted.

Freedom of religion is the freedom to believe whatever you want. It is not, however, the freedom to do or act however you want, even in the name of religion. No Christian in the United States, for example, would have a problem with restrictions concerning bigamy, incest, human sacrifice, or any other number of crimes which might be related to one’s religious beliefs. Look at the Mormon Church in Utah, the events that happened in Waco, Texas or the “Heaven’s Gate” cult suicides. In the United States freedom of religion does not mean freedom of behaviour, and neither should it in Israel.

The State of Israel has not said that people cannot believe in Jesus if they want to. What they have said, at certain times, is that those who believe in Jesus do not have the right to persuade others to come to that same belief. While Christians, who’s right to spread their beliefs goes unfettered in the United States, baulk at the idea that their ability to spread the Gospel might be restricted in what is supposed to be a democratic country, the truth is that this is not a right to which they are entitled. In Israel, we are free to be Jews, however we define that on an individual basis. However, freedom of religion ceases - as it should - to be such when freedom to believe crosses the line into freedom to behave.

Time to Retire (Most of) the Old-Line American Jewish Organizations

Time to Retire (Most of) the Old-Line American Jewish Organizations

Filed under Jewish diaspora, Opinion Editorials, AIPAC, Jewish organisations worldwide - on Monday, February 04, 2008 - By: Gold, Mark

Mark Gold does volunteer work on behalf of U.S. national security and Israel.
He is retired from a career in the transportation industry and lives in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC.

In fact, it is long past the time when most of the large, long-established mainstream American Jewish organizations outlived their usefulness.

You know the ones I am talking about – the ones with the constant fund-raising letters, sometimes enclosing trinkets (usually direct from China). The letters where they tell you how dire the situation is for Jews everywhere, and how crucial it is that you send them money so they can save the day. And save the day they can, they say, because they are in close contact with UN officials and foreign leaders, and because they have decades of experience.

What they don’t reconcile, however, is a critical contradiction: if they are so good and effective and have been on the job for years, how things can be so bad? Of course, they can’t reconcile these incompatible facts.

Some of these organizations have a record of failure going back seventy years, when they suppressed information about the extent of the Holocaust and fought against saving Jews, or even establishing the State of Israel.

How could that possibly be? A good question. The most likely answer seems to be their leaders were more interested in maintaining good relationships within their power circles, notably with President Franklin Roosevelt, and were tinged with an excessively large dose of timidity and a fear of "making things worse." (Readers interested in learning more about this incredible story can consult Heroes, Antiheroes and the Holocaust by David Morrison.)

Fast forward to today, and these Jewish organizations seem to be among the last to the table to recognize, much less address, the threat to us all from Islamic extremism. Perhaps is it a perceived need for atonement, that rather than face today’s enemies, they seem to prefer to wallow in memories and "lessons" of the Holocaust and the last-war threat from neo-Nazis? A relevant side note is that these organizations’ invocations of the Holocaust are likely to omit any mention of the Arab complicity in it. While not a Jewish organization per se, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's permanent exhibition is a case in point.

Here are two factors to evaluate how useful an organization is likely to be in promoting Jewish interests today:

• Is it focused on fighting the prime and imminent threat to the western world as a whole, and to Jews in particular, of Islamofascism, or is it warning you about the relative non-threats of conservative Christians, sightings of neo-Nazis in Europe or a Jewish cemetery being desecrated with swastikas? Does the fact that Israelis in Sderot and elsewhere are being bombarded every day from Gaza, and being killed and injured regularly, rate as much concern as the threat from the neo-Nazi bogeyman? Does the Jewish organization even let on that anti-Semitism today is centred in the Muslim world, with a virulence every bit as horrific as the Nazis’?
• 
  

  Does the organization actually do anything useful, or does it plan more dialogue and meetings with intractable UN and foreign bureaucrats, who due to their own interests are not going be any more swayed by the organization’s pleadings this year than they were in any previous year? Finding something truly useful to do is not that difficult – for example, the group could aid terror victims, Israeli soldiers, or others in need, or get word out defending Israel. And the organization could encourage the community to invest in Israel, to shop Israel, and to travel to Israel.
• 
  Unfortunately, you cannot rely on a good rating from major charity rating sites. They base their ratings on the groups' compliance with their criteria, which notably do not include the intrinsic value of the groups' underlying mission or activities. Indeed, some organizations linked to the promotion of terrorism have received the evaluators’ highest 4-star ratings, as they evidently pursue their missions effectively.

The sad truth of the matter seems to be that most of the old-line Jewish organizations (with the notable exception of the ZOA, the Zionist Organization of America) are so inculcated with their decades of affinity for traditional leftist Jewish causes that they are at least partly blind to today’s realities.

One recent example concerns the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. In March, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said, "The creation of a Palestinian state is not the required answer to Israel's security needs" and that a future Palestinian state must comprise officials "who want not only to live in peace with Israel, but are also able to fight terror." I.e., establishing a Palestinian state now is not a good idea from the standpoint of Israel's interests.

But the JCPA, a coalition of 14 major American Jewish groups and 125 local Jewish community relations councils, thinks it knows better. With the exception of the abstention of its member Orthodox Union, the JCPA recently voted unanimously for endorsing the establishment a Palestinian state.

Fortunately, one can support Jewish interests without supporting these ineffective, or at worst, counterproductive, old-line Jewish organizations, as a new generation of groups has arisen, much more in tune with today’s real problems and needs. They are also much more effective in doing a lot with a lot less. One cannot help but be impressed by the work done by the relatively small and nimble new generation groups such as

• Stand With Us,
  
• CAMERA,
  
• One Family Fund,
  
• MEMRI, and
  
• Palestinian Media Watch.

Many long-established corporate titans are now gone, for good reason. There is no reason why the non-profit sector should be any different.



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For Zionists, the obsession with Jerusalem is a recent phenomenon

REALISTIC DOVE

Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.

For Zionists, the obsession with Jerusalem is a recent phenomenon

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations recently “reaffirmed its longstanding position that a united Jerusalem should remain the sovereign and eternal capital of Israel,” according to a JTA story. Some left-of-center groups were against it but they could not stem the tide. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the last decade, including Ehud Olmert, knows that the status of Jerusalem is an open question that must be resolved as part of a comprehensive agreement, but that did not deter the groups from, once again, being more Israeli than the Israeli government.

The idea that the Jewish people have had a continuous, unbreakable emotional and spiritual connection with Jerusalem for thousands of years is, of course, one of the organizing principles of our narrative. I certainly feel that connection, deep in my bones. But the transformation of that emotional and spiritual identification into the core of a political ideology, is, in fact, a recent phenomenon.

For one thing, many secular Israelis on the coastal plain want nothing to do with Jerusalem, rarely if ever venture there, and live quite happily without such a connection. That is, I think, their loss. But the Zionist pioneers who are mythic heroes to American Jews also lacked an attachment to the city. I just stumbled upon a compelling tidbit in The History of Zionism by Walter Laqueur, by far the best and most comprehensive history of the movement. He is, by and large, sympathetic to the Zionist cause. But, in a new preface written in 2005, he tells us:

The question of Jerusalem illustrates best the enormous difference between historical Zionism and the ideology that has replaced it. Jerusalem contains the holy places of three world religions, and elementary prudence if not basic tolerance should have prevented declarations according to which Jerusalem was to remain forever undivided under Israeli rule. It was, in fact, an empty declaration, for in actual fact Jerusalem is of course a divided city.

When Hertzl first visited Jerusalem, he saw only the musty deposits of two thousand years of inhumanity, intolerance, and impurity; he perceived superstition and intolerance on all sides. Hertzl suggested Haifa as the capital of the new Jewish state. But it was not only Hertzl, the assimilated Jew, who reacted in this unsentimental manner. Chaim Weizmann always feared becoming involved in the Jerusalem imbroglio. And because their attachment to the city was not overwhelming, David Ben Gurion and other leaders of the second aliyah did not visit Jerusalem for the first time until two or three years after their arrival in the country. For many years, not a single Zionist leader chose to live in Jerusalem. For them, Jerusalem symbolized the negative past of Jewish history, that part of the tradition from which they wanted to disassociate themselves.

The idea that Jerusalem was the beginning and end of Zionism, that Israel could not exist without having full sovereignty over the entire city emerged only after 1967 and the growth of a religious fanaticism and aggressive nationalism that had more in common with the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood than the founding fathers of Zionism.

And so, guarding the holy sites has become a nightmare and Jerusalem itself has become a dangerous flashpoint. The insanity of a few religious fanatics –Jewish, Muslim or Christian—has the potential of transforming a local conflict into a religious war with incalculable consequences. Word up, Walter.

Topics: Middle East peace process, Israel, Zionism, American Jews, Jewish identity, Jerusalem

Why most checkpoints are unnecessary: a primer

REALISTIC DOVE

Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.

Why most checkpoints are unnecessary: a primer

When my previous post about the checkpoint at Sheikh Sa’eb was published in July, in slightly different form, I received an angry email from a friend of a friend. An excerpt:

“If the IDF says we need all of them [the checkpoints], who are you to say they’re wrong? Where do you get off giving military advice to Israeli generals from your liberal American playpen? [Israelis] need the checkpoints and they need the wall just where they are, thank you. If the killers stop coming after them, Israelis won’t need the checkpoints and the wall. End of story.”

Love that phrase, “liberal American playpen…”

Today, Sadie Goldman and Jason Proetorius over at Israel Policy Forum supplied a response. They have come up with an excellent explanation of the checkpoints and barriers, the VAST MAJORITY OF WHICH ARE THERE TO MAKE LIFE EASIER FOR ISRAELI SETTLERS, and have nothing to do with protecting anyone in Israel proper. More and more Israeli security experts who have outgrown their playpens think Israel should eliminate most –although not all– of them. Here’s their analysis, quoted in full:

Understanding Checkpoints

By Sadie Goldman with Jason Proetorius and IPF Staff

One of the most onerous aspects of the situation in the West Bank is the system of checkpoints which block Palestinians from getting to work, school, hospital or even to visit friends a few miles (sometimes a few blocks) away without being stopped and delayed, often for hours. This is well-known here in the United States, especially because the Bush administration has made clear that it wants many of the checkpoints removed.

Less understood is that very few checkpoints separate Israel from the Palestinian areas. The overwhelming majority of them are internal barriers which serve not to protect Israel from terrorists but simply to ease life for settlers and to make Palestinian lives miserable. In fact, no one suggests taking down any checkpoint or border crossing that separates Israel from the West Bank or Gaza. The entire controversy is over the internal checkpoints and their onerous effects on Palestinians trying to get about their lives. Terrible as the situation is, some people find humor in it, so ridiculous is the rationale for aspects of the checkpoint system.

A Hummous Hut employee is stopped by a soldier who misunderstands “hummous” for “Hamas.” A woman driving with her dog is stopped at a checkpoint and explains that, while she does not have papers to enter Jerusalem, her dog does. These light-hearted vignettes—from the 2005 Oscar winning short film “a West Bank story” and Suad Amiry’s book Sharon and My Mother-in-Law, respectively—use humor to explain the physical barriers scattered throughout the West Bank in simple, human terms.

For Israelis, the reason for instituting roadblocks and checkpoints since the beginning of the second intifada in which over a thousand Israelis were killed is also simple and human—to stop suicide bombers from entering Israel. “The method of roadblocks has proven itself,” Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a group of soldiers on February st. “There is no way to effectively fight terrorism without actual daily control of the area,” he said.

However, according to a group of twelve retired Israeli generals, some of whom were involved in setting up West Bank barriers, the system of over 560 roadblocks and checkpoints, which increased by 50% in two and a half years, needlessly harms Palestinians and ineffectively protects Israelis. (According to the Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, as of November 2007 there were 99 permanent checkpoints, 36 of which were on Israel’s border and 63 within the West Bank. The remaining 486 barriers [as of November 2007] are roadblocks, such as dirt mounds, concrete blocks, fences, trenches, and gates.)

At a Van Leer Institute conference on February 13, these experts, informally called the “checkpoint team,” presented a position paper, which they also sent Barak. In it they assert that, while some barriers stop terror, others damage the Palestinian economy, breed resentment, and, in turn, create more terror. According to Shlomo Brom, one of the group’s members and former chief of the army’s planning committee, quoted in Laurie Copans’ February 13th Associated Press article, “The feeling of humiliation and the hate the roadblocks create increase the tendency of Palestinians to join militant groups. . .”

These barriers, furthermore, do not always stop attacks. They did not stop the February 4th suicide bombing in Dimona that killed one and injured eleven, Brom went on to note.

But the major problem that the defence officials cite is not with the few checkpoints on Israel’s borders (to stop attacks like the one in Dimona, they support finishing the fence along Israel’s border). The cause of the most needless hardship, they say, is the hundreds of barriers that form a complicated network of checkpoints and roadblocks, which divide the West Bank into separate, isolated sections.

From the outside, the technical terms that are often used interchangeably to explain West Bank barriers seem confusing. According to the group, however, the differences are important and should be demystified.

The West Bank barriers fit into two major categories: checkpoints and roadblocks. Checkpoints can be permanent (toll-both like) structures manned by Israeli soldiers or temporary checkpoints (flying checkpoints) that are placed according to intelligence and are meant to be taken down. The majority of West Bank barriers are roadblocks that come in many forms, such as concrete blocks or earth mounds or trenches that stop cars from using a particular road.

It is this mixed system of barriers that can make a thirty-minute trip from the village of Azun to Nablus take two hours. In a March 6 Washington Post article, Griff Witte described such a trip taken by emergency-room doctor Karim Edwan. To get from his village of Azzun to work in Nablus, Witte writes, “Dr. Edwan must take at least two cabs, skirt a barbed-wire fence, climb a dirt mound, talk his way through multiple Israeli checkpoints and remove his shoes for a full-body security check.”

The checkpoint team calls for a reevaluation of the barriers that cause hardship, like that caused Dr. Edwan, without serving a specific security purpose. One of its members, retired Brigadir-General Ilan Paz, who served in the West Bank during the Intifada, gave the example of a checkpoint that he established that no longer serves its intended purpose. “I founded the Qalandia checkpoint years ago as a flying security checkpoint for a specific reason,” he told IRIN, a U.N. news source, on February 14 “to prevent a specific attack we had intelligence on . . . that checkpoint hasn’t been removed years later.”

According to Paz, the Qalandia checkpoint demonstrates that when there is specific intelligence, checkpoints can be very effective in stopping attacks. However, as things change on the ground, they can become useless and even detrimental. In some instances, the defense experts noted, barriers were put in place, not to stop terror attacks but to separate roads used by Israelis and Palestinians. And, while no longer serving that purpose, they remain in place.

According to Ron Schatzberg, another member of the group, “Near Jenin there is an Israeli settlement called Sheve Shomron. Since the start of the intifada Palestinians have not been allowed to travel on the area’s main road, due to security concerns. A three-meter-high wall has since been erected, a new road has been built for settlers and an army division has based itself there.” “However,” he was cited in IRIN, “Palestinians still can’t use the main roads.”

The team believes that by ending the system of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank not only could earth mounds that stop car traffic be removed, but Israeli security could be enhanced because “militants would find it harder to mount attacks without harming Palestinians,” IRIN reported.

Furthermore, instead of maintaining ineffective checkpoints inside the West Bank, the team proposes finishing constructing the barrier around it, and removing some permanent checkpoints, particularly those that have a major impact on Palestinians without providing Israelis security. These checkpoints could be replaced, as needed, with temporary “flying” checkpoints that rely on intelligence that is gathered and used in cooperation with Palestinian security services, as was done before 2000.

These changes, they propose, would ease Palestinian movement and enhance Israeli security in several ways, not the least of which, through strengthening the economy in the West Bank and aiding in the confidence building demanded by the current U.S. led peace process.

This process, and the U.S. administration officials that are pushing for it, have been frustrated by inaction on checkpoints. In a March 9th David Ignatius op-ed, a U.S. official described this frustration, “What they [the Israeli military] said they would look at hasn’t happened. The IDF has been doing the same stuff the same way [on checkpoints] for seven years, and they haven’t bothered to change.”

The checkpoint team has proposals for change, but without concerted efforts, it could become just another proposal. Making it something more, in clearly difficult times, will take risk, work, and coordination by both Palestinians and Israelis. Or, as Elvis Presley once put it, “a little less conversation, a little more action please.”

Is Israel a settler colony like South Africa?: A guest column

REALISTIC DOVE

Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.

Is Israel a settler colony like South Africa?: A guest column

This blog is fortunate to get regular contributions from Tom Mitchell, a scholar who has carefully analysed the similarities and differences between Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland. He sent me a summary of a longer article. I thought I would publish it, as people on the far left often claim that there is little difference between South Africa under apartheid and contemporary Israel. And people on the right deny that there is any similarity. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. In addition. peaceniks like me often point to the reconciliation achieved in Northern Ireland as a sign of hope and a shining example for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Tom offers some insights into the similarities and differences.

Tom is the author of Native vs. Settler: Ethnic Conflict in Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, published in 2000 by Greenwood Press. He then took some of the unused material from that book and wrote a second one, Indispensable Traitors: Liberal Parties in Settler Conflicts, also published by Greenwood two years later. Below is the summary of an article published in the Journal of Conflict Studies in the Winter 2004 issue. It is scholarly and not polemical, which means some of you will have no use for it, but I hope the rest if you dive in and follow his analysis.

ISRAELI POLITICS AS SETTLER POLITICS

Conventional wisdom in much of Western academia is that Israel is a settler colony, and that this means that it is another apartheid state a/la South Africa. Below is analysis showing why I believe that the first half of this equation is true, but the second half is false. The strategies employed to bring peace in South Africa and Northern Ireland were very different, so it is important to determine which one Israel more closely resembles. This determines why we should go with mediation and not sanctions.

Israel’s politics is characterized by the following six main features:

1. Numerous political parties are in the Knesset, which in turn results in weak coalition governments.
2. There are powerful religious parties with no equivalent in the West and comparable to Islamic parties in the Third World (Indonesia, Turkey).
3. Israeli politics is populated with many former senior military officers, creating a class of Arab-fighter politicians comparable to native-fighter politicians in the U.S. and S. Africa.
4. In the past, there were two important parties (Herut, Ahdut Ha’Avoda) that were paramilitary parties. Their descendants are the two main Israeli parties today.
5. The Arab question or native question has been the main issue in Israeli politics, dividing parties of the left and right since before independence.
6. In Israel, Jews and Arabs have a different legal status under formal law constituting a legal distinction between settlers and natives.

These six features can be divided into two groups: the first two, which are not features of settler societies, and the last four, which are features of settler societies. The combination of the last four features makes Israeli politics a variant of settler politics—the political features that are typical of independent settler colonies such as the United States, South Africa, etc. that are also democracies.

When looking for settler societies to compare Israel with, I looked for societies that were

• a) democratic;
  
• b) involved in prolonged conflict with the native population; and
  
• c) either independent or at least autonomous.
  

This last requirement eliminated nearly all of the dependent settler colonies that were run by local representatives of the European settler power rather than by the local settlers.

I found three societies that could usefully be compared with Israel: Northern Ireland, antebellum America, and South Africa. Each of these three societies is useful for comparing with a different aspect of Israel.

Northern Ireland exhibits all of the above six features except for number 3 (because the UK is responsible for its security). The United States exhibited traits 3,5, and 6, and briefly had a multiparty system between 1828 and 1860 but no coalition governments. South Africa exhibited traits 3, 5, and 6 and had a genuine multiparty system from 1910 to 1950 and had two stable two-party coalition governments in the interwar period. Thus, if one looks at it, Israel has more of these settler traits than any of the three societies being compared with it. Northern Ireland lacks a native-fighter politician class, while both the U.S. and S. Africa lack paramilitary parties.

Northern Ireland can most usefully be compared with Israel when examining the peace process with the Palestinians and interparty and intraparty dynamics. Because it is only a province of the UK, it has no foreign policy and so cannot be used for comparison of foreign policy with Israel. But because the Arab-fighter politician class is such an important feature in Israeli politics, comparisons of Israel with Northern Ireland need to supplemented with either the U.S. or S. Africa.

South Africa can be divided into three main periods:

• the period of the Boer republics from 1860-1900;
  
• the Union of South Africa from 1910-1950; and
  
• the Republic of South Africa from 1961-1994.
  

African-fighter politicians were most important in the South African Republic (ZAR or Transvaal), particularly from 1881 to 1900. But the ZAR had a weak two-party system rather than a multiparty system, had no standing army, and had less than 10,000 men voting in its presidential elections during this period. So it is clearly not suitable for comparison with Israel.

Military politicians were also important in the Union of South Africa, which did have a three- to four-party system, a standing army, and a much larger population. There were no military conflicts with the native population of South Africa, however, during this period. Politics was cantered on ethnic disputes between Afrikaners and English-speakers rather than on the native question. During the Republic of South Africa under apartheid, there was only one elected African-fighter politician, General Magnus Malan. This indicates that South Africa is not a particularly useful supplementary case for looking at internal politics in Israel.

The U.S. had a weak three-party system from 1828 to 1848, with the third party being mainly represented at the local and state levels rather than the federal level, present only in the North, and combining with one or both of the two main parties to form new parties. With its presidential system. it completely lacked coalition governments. But the U.S. did have a party, the Whigs, that was dependent on the charisma of former generals to head its tickets. And it did carry out transfer of the native population, the Indians of the East to the West. This latter subject comes up off and on in Israeli politics since the 1940s. The Whigs can usefully be compared to Labor, the Democrats to the Likud, and the third parties (Antimasons, Liberty Party, Free Soil Party) to Mapam and Meretz. The Know Nothings or American Party of 1854-57 can also be compared to Tommy Lapid’s Shinui Party both as a nativist party and with its sudden success and sudden collapse. Beyond that party comparisons are not available.

South Africa is useful for comparing with Israel’s regional defense policy. South Africa and Israel both were/are peripheral countries in conflict with the core of their region. In the Middle East the core is Arab states. In sub-Saharan Africa the core is made up of independent African states and the white settler colonies were the periphery. South Africa and Israel had similar strategies of supporting minority peoples in the Arab countries and black neighbors such as the Kurds in Iraq and Christians in Lebanon and Sudan, and the Ndebele in Zimbabwe and various minority peoples in Namibia. Both countries also engaged in numerous cross-border raids and invasions. In this regard it is useful to compare Israeli policy in Lebanon and South African policy in Angola.

Between 1967 and the mid-1990s Israel was dependent on migrant Palestinian labor from the territories in the same way that white South Africa was dependent on black labor from the homelands (bantustans). But this migrant Palestinian labor is much reduced today as a result of Israeli recruitment of East Asian and East European workers in reaction to the Islamist terrorist campaign of the 1990s and the Al-Aksa Intifada.

Likud plans for a Palestinian state under Sharon could also fairly be compared to South Africa’s bantustan system. Any plans for leaving a Palestinian state made up of several non-contiguous parts can be compared to most of the South African homelands in particular the KwaZulu and Bophutatswana homelands. With the above in my opinion, the usefulness of the South African comparison has exhausted itself.

The purpose of making these comparisons is not to delegitimize Israel. It should be borne in mind that the Israeli Jews are not only settlers but also returned natives, that is the original population of the country that returned with the support of the international community. So in its origins Israel is a unique settler society. But as a result of the ongoing native-settler conflict with the Palestinians, Israel developed features typical of other settler societies.

The comparisons are not meant to replace traditional methods of political analysis of Israeli politics and policy, but to augment them. When radio telescopes, X-ray telescopes and infrared telescopes were developed, astronomers did not stop using optical telescopes but merely used these new instruments to give a fuller picture of distant galaxies and our own galaxy. I make these comparisons in the same spirit. If Dan will indulge me, I will explore the lessons of Northern Ireland and the U.S. for Israel in two further pieces.

By Dan Fleshler
March 31, 2008

Israel, human rights and the silence of [most] American Jews

REALISTIC DOVE

Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.

Israel, human rights and the silence of [most] American Jews

Those who empathize with the plight of Palestinians under occupation are often puzzled by American Jews’ silence in the face of Palestinian suffering, especially when the suffering results from Israeli actions that much of the world deems to be human rights abuses. A whole industry exists to monitor and refute human rights NGOs whenever they set their signs on Israel. Worse, even mentioning Palestinian misfortunes is suspect in some quarters, as Barack Obama has learned.

But it is not just the pro-Israel right wingers and centrists who either defend or mutely accept the way Israelis treat their neighbours. It is also my camp, the liberals who crave compromise. Some of us marched against the Vietnam war and even against the Iraq war. Some of us give money to help victims in Darfur and shelters for battered women here at home. If we are within the Jewish communal tent, not enough of us can bring ourselves to say very much out loud about the battering of an entire people.

I include myself in this category, guilty as charged, looking back on my own reactions to sundry allegations of Israel’s human rights violations. I think it is important for American Jews who support Israel to stop suppressing their moral instincts, to stop ignoring what is best within themselves, and to start finding a language, a vocabulary to acknowledge the horrors of occupation. But before providing a prescription, we need the diagnosis.

“It blows my mind that my Jewish brothers and sisters, who are with me on Darfur, who were with me on South Africa, can’t bend themselves to deal with injustice to the Palestinians,” said a Protestant minister whom I interviewed for my book. “I just never understood it.”

One simple answer is that American Jews who agree with the minister on most issues view the realities of the region through an entirely different prism, which reflects Israelis’ sense of permanent vulnerability and their fierce determination not to be vulnerable.

American Jews who see themselves as ethical and caring can usually find reasonable explanations and justifications for Israeli activities that the world abhors. The core argument is the same one used in Israel: what appears to be cruel and unjust behaviour is usually an unfortunate, unavoidable consequence of The Situation that Israelis and Arabs are mired in. Plus, we have a rooting interest in information and arguments that prop up our craving to believe in the Israelis, while others have a rooting interest in finding ways to blame them. The raw truth is usually the victim.

Object to the missiles that repeatedly killed non-combatants in Gaza or Lebanon, and you will be assured that Israel has done everything possible to avoid collateral damage, Israel has been much more careful about shedding innocent blood than its adversaries, Israel is perfectly within its rights under the Geneva Convention to go after enemy combatants that hide among civilians. Besides, you will be told, we can’t be armchair moralists judging Israelis by western, humanistic standards; they live in a tough neighbourhood where there is no respect for the weak…Look at how the Lebanese army shelled Palestinian refugee camps unmercifully a few months ago in their fight with militant jihadists..I’ve made those arguments.

Object to anything that al-Jazeera decides to transform into yet another symbol of Zionist bestiality, and eventually you are likely to hear evidence that the truth has been distorted by Palestinian propagandists and their media allies. When Israel assaulted the West Bank village of Jenin during the second Intifadeh,

• at first the international media alleged that hundreds of innocent Palestinians had been massacred and
  
• that bulldozers had crushed houses and
• destroyed property for no discernible reason.

Later, media and some human rights groups changed their story; they said there had been no massacre, and most of the Palestinian casualties were armed combatants. The truth was probably somewhere in between, but you could almost hear the sounds of Israel’s friends around the world, including me, breathing sighs of relief.

Another reason for our silence is that the world unfairly singles out Israel for its abuses, real or imagined, and ignores even worse behaviour by, say, the armies of central Africa or Sri Lanka or the security services of every Arab country. To liberals with a connection to Israel, the intense, remarkably single-minded focus on the Jewish state by the United Nations Human Rights Council and a large swath of the blogosphere is so suspicious, and so offensive, that we feel reluctant to add to the clamour of its avowed enemies. We certainly don’t want to give rhetorical fodder to those who blithely call for tearing down the “apartheid wall” –not changing the route of the security barrier, but obliterating the whole thing– and refuse to acknowledge that Israelis need protection from those who want to blow themselves up in shopping malls and discos.

But sometimes, what we read about or see on our T.V. screens makes it impossible to counter allegations of indefensible Israeli behaviour. When that happens, something besides logic and evidence kicks in, we are left with little except a panicky unwillingness to believe Israelis are behaving as badly as people claim. So, we look the other way if we come across titbits like the following, from a B’Tselem press release this past December:

A survey conducted by the Israeli military and published by leading Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, found that a quarter of soldiers serving at checkpoints in the West Bank perpetrated or witnessed abuse of Palestinians. In response, B’Tselem, said that the numbers are shocking, but not surprising. The organization commends the military for initiating the survey, but states that physical and verbal abuse of Palestinians by soldiers, particularly at checkpoints, has long become routine. In spite of official condemnations, the military does not do enough to ensure accountability and to deter soldiers from engaging in such behaviour.

According to B’Tselem, most soldiers who harm Palestinians are never held accountable. Law enforcement authorities place numerous obstacles on Palestinians who try to complain against security forces personnel and only a small minority of complaints result in charges against those responsible for abuse.

"There must be a reasonable explanation,” we try to tell ourselves. “There must be something terribly wrong with the way this story is being told, even if it is the Israeli army itself that is telling it.”

We try to tell ourselves, “there must be a reasonable explanation for the extra-judicial, execution-style killings of four Palestinians sitting in a car in Bethlehem,” as reported today by Richard Silverstein in Tikun Olam. “Ok, it’s suspicious, but war is hell.”

“There must have been a very good, sound military reason for bombing that power plant in Gaza and inflicting darkness for half a day, for months, on a civilian population,” we try to tell ourselves, even though reasonable people called it a clear violation of international law. “And even if it is a war crime,” we tell ourselves, “why say anything? Israel has enough problems, enough enemies…”

After awhile, though, the evidence accumulates and becomes too troubling to be discarded or wished away. The anguished testimony of the Israeli soldiers in “Breaking the Silence” makes a mockery of willfull denial. “Breaking the Silence” is an explicitly non-political organization that just lets those who have served in the territories speak for themselves about the level of brutality and wanton cruelty. They are not refuseniks. Most of them return to the IDF every year for reserve duty. They want their own society to wake up to what Israeli soldiers are being asked to do, and, sadly, what some of them eagerly volunteer to do. Read what they have to say on the group’s web site.

When the pro-Israel left in this country confronts what Palestinians are subjected to, the standard response is that there is no such thing as a benign occupation. Unless and until there is a political solution, we assert, morally grounded Israeli soldiers and border police will be forced into circumstances where it is difficult and sometimes impossible to be humane, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to be good. I use that argument, all the time, and it is true…up to a point.

But lately, I am tired of relying upon it as the exclusive answer. The problem is not merely that the brutality and humiliation inflicted on Palestinians is an inevitable consequence of occupation; the problem is that is just plain WRONG. Why can’t we say that? What happened to our moral compass?

Yes, those who focus only on Israeli behaviour without putting it into context, without appreciating that steps must be taken to protect Israel’s borders, have also lost their moral compass. Yes, the Palestinians have in many ways brought this situation upon themselves [e.g, there used to be a vocal peace camp in Israel; it was shattered by the second Palestinian Intifadeh. Now, the prospect of Hamas rockets being hurled at Tel Aviv from the West Bank has made it even harder to put that doveish, Humpty Dumpty back together again]. But once that context is affirmed, the reasons for decrying the brutality and humiliation become compelling and the rationalizations for saying nothing become very hollow.

Rabbis for Human Rights is an Israeli organization that does not hesitate to call some Israeli policies morally reprehensible and contrary to Torah values. A few American rabbis, like Arthur Waskow, are associated with it. But thus far, its message has been unheard or barely noticed, let alone echoed, in the organized American Jewish community.

The unwillingness of American Jews to say, simply, “This is wrong!” has many consequences, in addition to the way it contributes to the corrosion of souls and hearts. What should also be of concern to the mainstream Jewish community is that the silence contributes to the alienation of Jewish college students and young adults from anything remotely connected to Israel. That does not matter to the anti-Zionists who believe the whole enterprise of Israel is illegitimate, but it should matter to anyone who wants to help fix what is broken in Israel.

Yes, speaking out forcefully against Israeli policies and behaviours will add fuel to the fiery rhetoric of those who don’t want the Jewish state to exist. That is undeniable; it is a problem and I have never come up with a solution to it. But a greater risk is that an entire generation of Diaspora Jews will want nothing more to do with Israel. There are a host of Israeli organizations trying their best to monitor and change unjust Israeli policies; instead of connecting our young people with those groups and showing there is a way to be pro-Israel and true to their ideals and values, much of the community either derides or shuns those groups. That is why the message from Israelis like Rabbi David Froman, one of the more articulate activists in Rabbis for Human Rights, is decidedly Zionist. After deriding those in the UK and elsewhere who want to boycott Israeli academics, he tells us:

And yet, we know in our hearts of hearts that while such boycotts are not justified on the universal plain of comparisons, there are more than a few elements of truth in what these hypocrites claim. For one segment of the population over whom we have responsibility, we have abrogated any semblance of democracy. It is especially painful that some in South Africa have joined the fray of those who boycott us, because of that country’s moral authority - given how blacks suffered years of unspeakable oppression under white minority rule.

But how would one describe certain things we are doing in the West Bank that have virtually no security value - checkpoints between Palestinian villages and within Palestinians cities; separate roads for Palestinians; thousands of Palestinians arrested under administrative detention; confiscation of Palestinian property for illegal Jewish settlements; a twisted route for Israel’s security barrier that separates Palestinians from their lands and divides villages in half; administrative home demolitions; covert protection for Jewish settlers who harass Palestinians tending their agricultural fields; preventing Israelis who marry Palestinians from living in Israel; banning Palestinians from swimming in natural springs along the Dead Sea? And yet, despite the above, Israel’s present situation is still not politically analogous to South Africa’s history of discrimination; and so, we confidently argue that “apartheid” is not an appropriate term to apply to what we are doing in the West Bank. But what term would one choose to define a privileged protectionism for a few thousand Jews in the West Bank over a separate and unequal existence for over two million Palestinians?

…We have shamed ourselves as a Jewish state that sought to educate the world that we would not be a nation like other nations and that the Zionist enterprise would fashion a society based on a prophetic vision of social justice. Instead, we have created a moral morass - and, if it takes the hypocritical self-righteousness of some foreign pseudo-intellectuals and pig-headed unionists to open our eyes and alter this unacceptable reality, then something positive will ultimately be served.

Something positive will be served if Americans who want both Israel and Palestine to thrive, side by side, stop keeping their eyes closed and their mouths shut.

Topics: Palestinians, Israel, Zionism, American Jews, Far left, Israeli occupation, Gaza Strip
By Dan Fleshler | March 28, 2008

What lessons can be learned from Northern Ireland?

REALISTIC DOVE


Candid, constructive commentary on Israel, the Arab-Israeli conflict, America’s Middle East policies and their domestic political context.

What lessons can be learned from Northern Ireland?

Below is the second column by Tom Mitchell. I have always told myself that the main “lesson” that can be learned from Northern Ireland is that violent, longstanding and seemingly intractable ethnic or religious conflicts eventually can be solved. It has been a source of hope. I am not sure if Tom agrees with that premise. Hope so. I also hope Tom won’t mind that I made a few parenthetical comments:

NORTHERN IRELAND’S LESSONS FOR THE MIDEAST

Introduction
Having previously demonstrated that Northern Ireland is the case closest to Israel, I will briefly look at the main lessons of the peace process from Northern Ireland and their application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Lessons
First, it was the centrist parties that started the process.

In Northern Ireland there were deep divisions on both the nationalist Catholic and unionist Protestant sides. The nationalists had two main political parties, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Fein. The SDLP opposed the armed struggle conducted by Sinn Fein’s armed wing, the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The unionists were traditionally split into two main political parties, the more moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

During the peace process, the centrist Protestant UUP did its negotiating exclusively with the moderate Catholic nationalist SDLP, while pointedly ignoring Sinn Fein. Only the [Irish and British] governments negotiated with the terrorist parties, because the governments were the ones responsible for the issues that concerned those parties. [DF: So, is one lesson that the situation in Israel-Palestine might be helped if the U.S. negotiated with Hamas?]

Second, there were preconditions that participants to the negotiations had to meet. All participants had to swear-off violence and had to agree to decommission any illegal weapons they might have. These conditions were known as the Mitchell Principles, after Senator George Mitchell who came up with them and served as the chair of the talks. [DF: The very same man who came up with the “Mitchell Plan” to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Guess one out of two ain’t bad]

Third, it was the joint Anglo-Irish dual mediation that kept the talks going and was responsible for finally successfully implementing the April 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Two British and three Irish governments worked closely together. In both countries the negotiations and NIPP had bipartisan support from the main political parties. British prime ministers spent up to 40% of their weekly time on the Northern Ireland Peace Process (NIPP). It had top priority even during the start of the Iraq war..

This process worked because the two governments were less emotionally invested in the conflict than were their respective clients whose views they represented in formulating the framework for the process. Periodically they would issue new documents when needed to serve as parameters for the process. Outside governments like Washington, Helsinki, and Ottowa also contributed to the NIPP at the invitation of the two governments. Of these the largest contribution by far was by Washington.

Fourth, the NIPP dragged on for so long because the British government was unwilling to back up its side after the Republican Movement (Sinn Fein/IRA) failed to disarm in the allotted time period. London was mainly interested in avoiding a renewal of IRA bombing of London and other British cities and so was afraid to confront and pressure Sinn Fein. This also undermined the SDLP as more nationalists voted for Sinn Fein as they saw that its strategy was paying off.

Fifth, the NIPP worked because the UUP was willing to ignore violence including major bombings by dissident republican organizations and still keep negotiating. UUP leader David Trimble decided that an agreement was in the unionist interest. The Omagh bombing in August 1998, the worst in the history of the conflict, also served to end public support for the armed struggle and bring the two sides together.

Sixth, the UUP under Trimble was willing to negotiate before the Republicans had completed their journey from violence to democracy. It took the IRA 31 years from its founding in 1970 to its first act of decommissioning in October 2001 to make that journey. It took another four years to complete that journey. It is probably necessary to engage a terrorist organization/liberation movement before it has completed the journey to give it the incentive to do so. [DF: This may well be the most important lesson of all].

Seventh, the UUP paid a big price and the SDLP a slightly lesser price when the peace process failed between 2001 and 2005. The UUP will probably never again become the leading voice in unionism. If it does, it will take decades. The SDLP can only be saved by merging it with a party from the Republic.



Application to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Unfortunately, there is no real Palestinian equivalent of the SDLP. Fatah is the equivalent of the IRA. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the equivalent of the dissident republicans. Labour is the equivalent of the UUP and the Likud is of the DUP. The equivalent of Dublin would be the European Union. Instead of calling for Washington to be more balanced—which goes against both historical and political reality—its pro-Israel bias should be balanced by bringing in the Europeans. It is doubtful that Labour, having already paid a heavy price for the failure of the Oslo process, will want to back a new peace process if the results are doubtful going into it. Barak’s hesitation is perfectly understandable.

Only two American presidents have devoted the same time and effort to the Mideast Peace Process that the British and Irish prime ministers devoted to the NIPP. These were Carter from 1977 to 1979 and Clinton during the last six months of 2000. Clinton devoted his attention after it was already too late and time was too short. Much of the fault for this is with the parties: the Palestinians failed to act sufficiently to curb terrorism and the Netanyahu government was unwilling to carry out Israeli obligations under the process. To be successful American support for the peace process will have to again become a bipartisan American effort as it was in the 1970s. With a devoted Washington-Brussels dual mediation effort the Mideast Peace Process stands a slim chance of success; without it there is no chance for success.