FresnoZionism.org — ציונות פרסנו

Gershon Baskin calls himself a neo-Zionist. But what he writes shows that he is an old fashioned leftist who hasn’t learned anything from recent history. His essay is full of false dichotomies, missed points, blurred distinctions, fuzzy generalizations, straw men, and has a generally patronizing tone that I find repugnant.

He writes,

The debate will come down to a divide between those who’s [sic] minds are focused on the past, roots and traditions versus those who are searching for a new future which uses the past, roots and traditions as a link to the future but not as shackles to it…

There is no other way. As a neo-Zionist I am more concerned with the Jewish future than the Jewish past, and as such I recognize that we must come forth from the passages of Torah into the reality of the 21st century Middle East, and make the necessary concessions now so that our neighbors can live with the same collective and national dignity that we demand for ourselves.

In the Jewish fight over the Land of Israel it is the battle for Jewish survival between the so-called Zionists – the settlers and their supporters and those like me, the neo-Zionist, the majority of Israelis who are not blinded by a messianic dream and believe that in the ultimate balance of values, peace with our neighbors outweighs peace with our past…

When the peace process gets underway and we will once again be forced to deal with the territorial issue, we will have to choose between settlements and peace. The only decision, for those of us more concerned with our future than our past will be for peace.

Settlements or peace. Either you are for peace with our neighbors, or you are against it, blinded by a “messianic dream”. It’s a battle between bearded, Torah-waving fanatics and clear-headed secular Neo-Zionists.

There’s no room for anything in between. In particular, there’s no room for anyone who thinks that perhaps our neighbors would not grant us peace in return for a withdrawal to the Green Line. Baskin ignores that the fact that the Palestinians responded to partition plans in 1938, 1948 and 2000-1 by making war, and that they greeted Israeli withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza with rocket attacks.

Those among us who continue to advocate the Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel beyond the Green Line are in fact guilty of leading the Zionist enterprise toward its end. The settlement project in the West Bank is nothing less than an act of national suicide. The most significant and dangerous obstacle in our ability to reconcile peace with our neighbors is the continuation of the adherence to the archaic modes of our yearnings for Zion expressed by settling the hilltops surrounding Palestinian towns, villages and cities that turn the lives of the Palestinians into a daily hell.

Funny, it would seem to me that the “most significant and dangerous obstacle[s]” to peace today are called Hamas and Hezbollah. After all, they want to kill Israelis and destroy the state. And where is a “daily hell” to be found if not in Sderot?

Baskin denounces the “settlement project”, but he doesn’t explain what a settlement is and why the Green Line (more or less the 1948 cease-fire line) is so important. Are settlements in Gush Etzion, which was in Jewish hands before the war of independence, part of it? What about the parts of Jerusalem which were ethnically cleansed of Jews by the Jordanians in 1948? Should Israel return to a border that was 9 miles wide at one point?

His ability for delusional interpretation of history is remarkable:

Even Ehud Barak who went further than any Israeli leader before him in negotiations with the Palestinians, destroyed the very process that he wanted to conclude by his misguided continuation of an accelerated settlement program.

Ehud Barak destroyed the process? Had Arafat accepted Barak’s final proposal, something like 97% of the West Bank would have been in Palestinian hands. But Arafat didn’t accept it, just like the Arabs in 1938 and 1948 didn’t accept partition.

Baskin’s arrogance and supercilious tone, especially toward religious Jews, is incredible:

Neo-Zionism concerns itself with the people of Israel inside the State of Israel. When settlers come home we must concern ourselves with ensuring that they feel at home, that they have a place within society. The secular Left in Israel feels detached, to a large extent from the Jewishness of Israel which is perhaps why it is so difficult for them to feel empathy toward the suffering of the settlers who left Gaza. [my emphasis]

Gershon Baskin, unfortunately, is not the only one who speaks and writes like this. If the rest of us have learned anything in the past 20 years or so, it’s that the problem is not that Israel isn’t prepared to pay a significant price for peace.

The problem is that the Arab world (and it’s impossible to talk about the Palestinians by themselves) are not offering it — at any price.

Technorati Tags: Baskin, Israel, Zionism

Israeli officials were recently upset to learn that the US plans to sell laser-guided JDAM devices (to convert ordinary munitions into ‘smart bombs’) to Saudi Arabia. In addition to the risk of the Saudi air force joining in a regional war against Israel, there is no way to prevent the transfer of these kits to other nations. The US, of course, will go ahead with the sale despite Israeli opposition.

But something else mentioned in the same article was, to me, more worrisome:

Last month, Defense Ministry Diplomatic-Military Bureau head Amos Gilad and Maj.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan, head of the IDF Planning Directorate, met with senior Pentagon officials in Washington to discuss the proposed deal and to see if it could be changed in Israel’s favor.

According to senior officials, the Israeli delegation walked away from the talks disappointed and dissatisfied. An Israeli request to acquire the F-22 [Raptor] stealth bomber – a plane that can avoid radar detection – in order to retain its qualitative edge was also turned down, the officials said.

“We were told that the plane’s sale was currently off the table,” another official said. “It does not look like that will change under this administration.” (my emphasis)

The US has always promised — and continues to promise — that it will maintain Israel’s qualitative military superiority in the region. And especially with Iran receiving advanced weapons and aircraft from Russia, this is more important than ever.

So why does the US not wish to sell F-22’s to Israel? Surely it must be hard to turn down orders for a plane that may cost from $100-$300 million each.

The official reason is that the US considers the possible benefits (political, military, financial) of selling weapons using advanced technology against the various negatives, especially including the possibility that the technology may find its way into the hands of enemies (the Pentagon worries a lot about future conflict with China and perhaps Russia):

Applied to the F-22, this framework yields insights regarding its exportability. First, it indicates that a limited F-22 export to America’s closest allies— Australia, Great Britain, and Canada—is reasonable. Second, an expanded export to other close allies may also be within the realm of possibility, but will ultimately depend on the level of technology protection built into the export variant. — Matthew H. Molloy, Lt Col, USAF: U.S. Military Aircraft for Sale: Crafting an F-22 Export Policy (my emphasis)

By ‘technology protection’, they mean in part limitations on access to internal software or firmware; so the buyer can fly the aircraft and use its systems, but he can’t (theoretically) determine how it works or duplicate it.

But there are also political factors in play. And this is what bothers me. The range and stealth capabilities of the F-22 make it exactly what Israel would need in the event of a conflict with Iran — or indeed any regional conflict.

It’s not outrageous to speculate that some entities with which the US has a close relationship would prefer a weaker Israel. Saudi Arabia, for example, has a great deal of influence on the administration.

How about entities with which the US does not have a close relationship, but wishes to influence concerning Iraq? Even Iran has leverage in this context. And finally, we can’t forget the circles within the US government (e.g. the State Department) which want a more pliant Israel — which means one with less deterrent capability.

Anti-Israel voices make a big deal about not trusting Israel to keep the technology safe (“might as well fly it to China”, says one), but these aircraft are built in export versions precisely to provide ‘technology protection’.

I’m afraid that the reason is political, not technical.

Technorati Tags: Israel, F-22, Raptor

With really remarkable chutzpah, the racist and antisemitic government of Sudan is claiming that the Jews are responsible for Sudan’s genocidal activities in Darfur:

Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur” last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper…

A journalist from Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: “Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?”

“The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning,” the Sudanese defense minister replied…

“…they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles,” Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using “all means to fuel these conflicts.” — YNet

Meanwhile, thousands of refugees from Darfur have made the difficult journey across Egypt, and into Israel, where they are finding refuge.

Stephen Kramer writes,

More than 2,000 African refugees, about half from Sudan, are provoking strong reactions in Israel. Some of these desperate people are Christians from Darfur [in Sudan], while many are Muslim. None are Jewish. Opinions are divided between those who want to open Israel to refugees, remembering how borders were closed to Jews fleeing the Nazis, and those who want to deport the refugees who are already here and prevent others from crossing our borders, fearful of adding more non-Jews to our population…

“As Jews, who have the memory of the Shoah embedded within us, we cannot stand by as refugees from genocide in Darfur are knocking on our doors. The memory of the past, and the Jewish values that underpin our existence, command us to [perform] humanitarian solidarity with the persecuted.” This was what Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev told a small group of Sudanese refugees who were touring the museum that commemorates the struggle of Jews in the Nazi period. Many Jews, both in Israel and the Diaspora, feel that solidarity with the refugees from Sudan means absorbing a large number into Israel.

And this is undoubtedly what will happen, despite the fact that Israel has only a limited capability to absorb such refugees.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Darfur

On July 8, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) wrote about the perceived tension between Zionism and democracy:

Zionism’s purpose was to create a society that is “normal” socially and politically, but not ethically or religiously. More specifically, the Zionist founders were always clear that the Jewish state exists to promote the religion, civilization, and culture of the Jewish people and its dominant Jewish majority.

Does this mean that Israel’s Arab citizens must suffer certain disabilities? It does. They are a minority, and there is a price to be paid for minority status. Jews have paid that price for the last 2000 years, and nearly half of the Jewish people continue to pay it today….

But – and this is critical – Jews as a minority have always demanded that their host countries grant them full civil and political rights. The Jewish state, therefore, must do no less for its minority citizens. Yes, Israel’s majority culture should be aggressively Jewish, but there is no excuse for discrimination against individual Arab citizens in housing, employment, or education, and neither can discrimination in public funding for Arab municipalities be tolerated. — Eric Yoffie, Reform Reflections

Yoffie agrees with me in supporting the Jewish character of the state — the Jewish majority, its symbols, and — I presume — the Zionist goal of settling the Land (although he would probably qualify this by saying that this refers to the pre-1967 Land, perhaps with some minor adjustments).

Importantly, he does seem to be clear about the difference between civil rights and national aspirations. Arabs who live in Israel have the first, but must understand, as the Jews did for 2000 years, that they must look elsewhere for the second.

But he seems to be taking an antithetical position today:

America’s largest Jewish denomination is issuing calls for the Israeli Knesset to reverse course on a controversial piece of legislation declaring that Jewish National Fund lands can be leased only to Jews.

The legislation, introduced by three Israeli Knesset members, passed last week in a vote of 64-16 in its first reading. In order for the bill, which would bar JNF lands from falling into Arab hands, to officially become law, it needs to come before the Knesset two more times.

This week, the Reform Movement joined a growing chorus of calls from left-wing Jewish groups roundly condemning the bill as racist and undemocratic.

“It’s very hard to imagine any circumstance where a Jewish minority in any Diaspora country would accept with equanimity a bill that would forbid Jews from purchasing land,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism. “Therefore it is essential that when the Jewish majority in Israel exercises power, it extend to others the rights it always demanded for itself when we were in the minority.” — Forward

On the face of it, this sounds highly undemocratic. How can you deny someone the right to purchase land on the grounds of ethnicity? Doesn’t this fall under the heading of civil rights?

Not exactly.

The JNF was founded in 1901 long before the state of Israel. Its function was to purchase land in Ottoman-controlled Palestine that would eventually become part of a Jewish state. The resolution passed in the Fifth Zionist Congress establishing the fund said that “the fund shall be the property of the Jewish people as a whole”.

Jews around the world contributed to the JNF. My grandmother maintained a tin box in our kitchen, a pushke, into which extra change (and there wasn’t much in the 1940’s) was put — “for the Jews”, she said.

So the contents of this fund doesn’t belong to the state of Israel; it belongs to the Jewish people worldwide, who contributed to it on the grounds that it would help create a Jewish state, by making it possible for Jews to acquire land.

In 1962, however, the JNF made an agreement to allow the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) — part of the government of Israel — to manage JNF lands. And this led to demands that they be made available to any citizen of Israel, Jewish or not. And the bill that Rabbi Yoffie, et al, oppose is an attempt to prevent the abrogation of the understanding between the JNF and the generations of Zionists, like my grandmother, who gave money with the understanding that it would be used to create and develop a Jewish National Home.

The Reform leadership is not unaware of this history (they had grandmothers too). But here’s what Rabbi Andrew Davids, executive director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) is reported as saying (if anyone can provide a more complete reference, I would be grateful):

“This is not the time for Israel to be looking at policies that differentiate between different cohorts of its citizenry.”

Though the JNF was entrusted with bringing a Jewish state into being, some institutions need to be “reevaluated,” said Davids.

“What we are seeing is the maturation of an Israeli democratic society, and some institutions need to be reevaluated with regards to the current demographics. Israel will never be a state exclusively for Jews,” he said.

I find this profoundly troubling, especially as it comes from a ‘Zionist’. Davids simply ‘reevaluates’ out of existence the very essence of the JNF, as it has historically been defined, and deliberately blurs the distinction between “a Jewish state”, which the proposed law supports, and “a state exclusively for Jews”, which the law does not in any way promote.

Technorati Tags: Israel, JNF, Yoffie, Davids, Zionism