FresnoZionism’s powerful piece about the warped perspective of the Jewish Left, “Beinartism,” is competing in the quarter-finals of the 2011 pro-Israel Blog-off!
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2011 pro-Israel blog-off -- click here and vote!
In March, I wrote an article about why I don’t think Rabbi Richard Jacobs is the right choice for leadership of the Reform movement, because his activism in J Street and the New Israel Fund places him, in my opinion, outside of the Zionist tent.
Last month, I agreed to place my name on an advertisement which appeared in several Jewish media which called on the Union for Reform Judaism to not confirm Rabbi Jacobs. The ad was respectful and factual, but the response was vicious, including attacks on our motives, accusations of extremism, and even a threat of blacklisting from a member of the URJ Board of Trustees!
The URJ leadership also seems to have called in all of its markers, getting supportive comments from various Jewish organizational luminaries:
We worry when efforts are made to continuously narrow the definition of “support for Israel,†and we are concerned as well by those who claim that only those who agree with them on everything are fit to be called “pro-Israel.â€
The pro-Israel community, like the Jewish community, is diverse and eclectic, representing a range of opinions and ideals. The last thing that we need is for people in this community to be excluding one another.
… Our experiences working with Jews of different backgrounds and viewpoints has taught us the importance of unifying behind issues of great importance to Israel even when disagreements over nuance and positions existed. When we can all find common ground to stand on, our voices together are all the more powerful.
Nope, I’m sorry. This dog simply won’t hunt. Certainly there can be multiple points of view among Israel supporters. But you can’t define black as white, up as down, an elephant as a giraffe — or J Street as ‘pro-Israel’.
Words have meanings.
It is not “nuance” when J Street calls for the US to support a Security Council resolution that condemns Israel, nor when it arranges appointments for Judge Goldstone to meet with US Congress members, when it opposes a Congressional letter calling for sanctions on Iran, applauds the union of Fatah with Hamas, sponsors a speaking tour by the anti-Israel John Ging of UNRWA, invites boycott-divestment-sanctions advocates to present at its national convention, etc.
If that isn’t nuanced enough, J Street’s sources of funding include individuals associated with the Saudi embassy and the Arab-American institute, George Soros, and a mysterious woman in Hong Kong who provided more than $800,000 in one year.
Words have meanings.
Here’s still more nuance: the New Israel Fund (NIF) funds organizations that call for boycott-divestment-sanctions of Israel, Israeli Arab groups that want ‘de-Zionization’ — the conversion of the Jewish state into a ‘state of its citizens’ — as well as the NGOs that provided the majority of the false ‘evidence’ cited by the libelous Goldstone report, and that engage in ‘lawfare’ against Israel.
Words do have meanings. Is any of this part of the meaning of ‘Zionism’ or of love for Israel? I don’t think so.
Rabbi Jacobs gave a talk on May 2, during which he declared, over and over, his love for Israel and his Zionism. He was somewhat vague on details — several times he called for a “two-state solution” without mentioning the inconvenient truth of the Hamas-Fatah pact, announced the week before. He also stressed the importance of “complete equality of social and political rights to all [of Israel’s] inhabitants” without mentioning the very real problem that some of these inhabitants are committed to the destruction of the very state that gives them rights.
But talk is cheap. So I am issuing a challenge to Rabbi Jacobs:
You say you are are opposed to boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. You say that you want to fight the delegitimization of the Jewish state: then resign your position with the New Israel Fund, whose grantees advocate these things.
You say that you care about Israel’s survival: then resign from J Street, which is a thinly-veiled front for anti-Israel activities.
There actually is a big tent for Israel supporters. It does include the pro-state Left. If that’s where you stand, then ditch your baggage and welcome inside.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Rabbi Richard Jacobs, URJ
The biggest problem Israel has faced in its 63-year history has been its inability to translate military victories into political gains.
The Arabs have lost every war they’ve fought with Israel (yes, even the 2006 Second Lebanon War was a military defeat for them despite Israel’s multiple embarrassing failures), but at the same time they have made great gains in the diplomatic and PR arenas:
These events have seriously weakened Israel’s position. It’s even worse in the context of major changes in the strategic balance of the Middle East, like the almost complete Hizballah takeover of Lebanon and the shift in Turkey’s allegiance from the Western bloc to the Iranian orbit.
The response of the “pro-Israel Left” (or what remains of it) is that all of this indicates that the best path for Israel is to go with the flow and withdraw to 1949 lines, with some form of security guarantee. In order to see why this is exactly the wrong response, we need to ask: why has Israel lost ground so precipitously?
Some obvious reasons are the increased influence of the Arab nations and Iran since the 1970’s because of the Western sensitivity to the world price of oil, the Old Left’s turn against Israel after the Soviet Union squared off against the US by adopting the Arab nations as proxies, and the New Left’s reaction to American support for Israel. There is the Arab success in presenting their cause as a third-world anti-colonialist one. There is the popularity of the ‘human rights’ argument (although it is based on false information from the corrupt NGOs). And last but assuredly not least has been the mutation of antisemitism into anti-Zionism, where it is free to propagate itself in the most vicious ways.
All of the above forces have one thing in common: they are not so much pro-Palestinian as they are anti-Zionist. The Palestinian Arabs no longer pay even lip service to the idea that they want a peaceful state alongside Israel, Iran, Hamas and Hizballah explicitly call for the end of the Zionist entity, the movements of the Left present Israel as founded in sin and irredeemably corrupt, and the NGOs invent crimes where there are none.
The thrust of all of the above is to assert that a Jewish state should not exist.
An attempt to appease the forces of anti-Zionism by withdrawals and other concessions only leads to more terrorism and further demands, something that has been verified by recent history. And this makes sense if the goal is the elimination of Israel, rather than ‘peace’ or human rights.
Israel’s policy in this hostile environment must be to prevent erosion of its red lines: defensible borders, a united Jerusalem, recognition as a Jewish state, rejection of ‘right of return’ and nakba guilt, demographic integrity, freedom from terrorist attack, access to all holy places — Jews de facto do not have this now — all of these have to be explicitly claimed by Israel and defended by force if necessary.
Israeli leaders have often taken the easy way out and ignored encroachments on Israel’s sovereignty and other principles in order to avoid conflict with the “international community.” But said community is composed of two groups: a) those who will not be satisfied by anything Israel does except disappear, and b) those who don’t much care about Israel but don’t want to get on the wrong side of group a). Group a) understands this well.
It’s wrong to anthropomorphize the behavior of states — for example, although a president might feel friendship (or its opposite) toward a prime minister and this might influence his behavior on occasion, nations qua nations have interests, not feelings. It’s also wrong to say that because people respect strength and despise weakness the same applies to nations. But there is an analogue to respect that does apply to international relations — the concept of deterrence.
The idea that aggression will be met by force, that red lines can’t be crossed with impunity, that encroachment on a hard-won principle will be resisted — these are principles of deterrence. Deterrence is increased when threats and promises are carried out, and it ebbs when they are not.
Sometimes wars are ended in ways that nullify the military advantage gained at great cost. For example, in 1982, after the First Lebanon War, the US forced Israel to allow the PLO, including Yasser Arafat, to escape from Beirut. It is said that an Israeli sniper had Arafat in his sights but was not given permission to pull the trigger. How many lives would have been saved if he had! The legacy of this mistake was murderous Second Intifada, with more than a thousand Israelis dead.
The Second Lebanon War was ended by a Security Council resolution that the UN lacked either the will or the ability to enforce. Weapons began flowing across the border from Syria almost immediately, and Hizballah began an ambitious project to create even more and better fortifications and rocket launching facilities than before. The legacy of UNSC resolution 1701 will be another war with Hizballah.
Sometimes the imperatives of the information war appear to contradict the need to maintain deterrence. The Mavi Marmara affair was a perfect example of this. In order to appear humane, the commandos who boarded the ship were armed with paintball guns instead of assault weapons. Ironically, the anti-Israel forces were relatively successful in disseminating the message that the commandos attacked the ship with deadly force! So little was gained by endangering the commandos. The legacy of the Mavi Marmara affair will be more flotillas.
There have also been times when domestic pressure has caused the leadership to make inappropriate concessions, such as the exchange with Hizballah of 435 security prisoners for kidnapped drug dealer Elchanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of several Israeli soldiers. This precedent then led to an exchange after the Second Lebanon war in which several prisoners, including one of the most vicious terrorists in Israel’s history, Samir Kuntar, were released in return for the bones of two Israelis. The legacy of these affairs is Gilad Shalit’s continued captivity.
Deterrence is earned by fighting and by making hard decisions. It is eroded by compromise and appeasement, and leads to more war and more erosion. The only way to have peace when your enemies want to destroy you is to maintain deterrence.
Technorati Tags: Israel, deterrence, anti-Zionism
Hamas PM Ismail Haniyya at a press conference in Gaza called to denounce the killing of Osama bin Laden
Sometimes it’s too easy. Compare this:
And then there is the Palestinian Hamas, whose top leader in the Gaza Strip mourned bin laden [sic] on Monday as an “Arab holy warrior.” Ismail Haniyeh, who is Hamas’s prime minister, told reporters that “we regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood.â€
“We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior,†said the man who has assured former president Jimmy Carter, among other envoys, of Hamas’s peaceful intentions toward Israel and the United States. “We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs.â€
With this:
President Carter said, “This [Fatah/Hamas] agreement, and the promise of elections in the next twelve months, has the potential to arrest the spiral of intra-Palestinian human rights violations and preserve Palestinian democracy. It can also lead to a leadership representing all Palestinians capable of negotiating peace with Israel. Based on my years of contacts with Fatah and Hamas, I am confident that, if handled creatively and flexibly by the international community, Hamas’ return to unified Palestinian governance can increase the likelihood of a two-state solution and a peaceful outcome. I encourage the international community to respect this decision by the Palestinian leadership and to view it as part of the larger democratic trend sweeping the region.”
— The Carter Center (April 29)
Technorati Tags: Hamas, Osama bin Laden, Jimmy Carter
2011 pro-Israel blog-off -- click here and vote!
FresnoZionism’s post “Beinartism” is a quarter-finalist in the 2011 pro-Israel blog-off!
You can vote for it (or against it if you think the other guy’s post is better) at the ISRAELLYCOOL blog. Vote your conscience, but vote!
