Mondoweiss

Jaffa Is Still Contested Space (Even in Jewish Hearts and Minds)

Against Commentary Magazine, a reader has offered me this Jaffa blogger. Her name's Yudit, an artist. I want to believe she's Jewish. Oh my god, there are some beautiful Jews in the world! She says Jaffa, once  "bride of the sea" to the Arab population, is now a slummy suburb of Tel Aviv. She resists continuing efforts to push Arabs out, and describes a demonstration the other night at the Etzel Museum, a museum of the Irgun, right in historic Jaffa: 

At the etzel museum a small audience listens to a sound & light heroism performance,
We are kept at "a safe" distance, but using old pots and sticks as well as small flutes we raise a lot of noise. Banners tell the story of the naqbe in Jaffa, of the acts of terror carried out by Etzel against civilians. Sixty years ago, the naqbe.

Reuven Abergil tells the story of how that happened, while the Brits and the Hagana conveniently looked in the other direction. They controlled the road blocks on the way to Jaffa and the Etzel people dressed to look like local Arabs, passed through with their weapons and explosives. Bombs hidden inside a watermelon cart and a truck exploded in Jaffa's market. Children and women were murdered. The aim was to create terror and make the population want to flee away.

Neocons Don't Have Time for Golf. Or Didn't. Maybe Now They Do?

Scott McConnell comments on Bush's promise of giving-up golf while the war's on:

There’s also a more complicated sociological point to be made here: that the WASP establishment which ran the country’s foreign policy rather decently in the years after World War II has been nudged from the central halls of power, and one is now more likely to find its scions working on their handicaps or plotting elaborate middle age man getaways to this historic courses of Scotland than clawing their way up the ranks of the foreign affairs intelligentsia.

I agree, and wonder why there isn't any journalism on the subject of the new establishment. The answer, my friend, is: the fear of another Holocaust if we talk about Jewish power. So journalists betray their mission of informing the public on the grounds that the public is not to be trusted, and then tell themselves that the public is too stupid to notice this anyway. But people aren't too stupid. They know that significant changes have taken place in the sociocultural makeup of the establishment, especially the foreign-affairs branch; but they get little information about it, and the result is that commenters on my blog can claim that Jews run America, when obviously it's not that simple...

If Israel Is a Democracy, Why Does a Liberal Jewish Leader Forswear a Coalition With Arabs?

It's too bad that Huffington Post runs bellicose articles like this one by Amitai Etzioni, in which he rationalizes the Israeli occupation and dismisses the idea of separation between church and state as high-falutin' western values. I thought Huffpo was more enlightened than this.

I just heard Ehud Olmert speaking about democracy on television, introducing George Bush. I was in the barber shop, and had brought Righteous Victims, Benny Morris's book, with me to read while I was waiting. I came on the following episode, in Chapter 14:

Following elections in 1999, Ehud Barak, the Labor leader, wanted to create a new coalition to replace Netanyahu. Barak had 50 votes from Labor and four other centrist and left-wing factions, short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. "Another 10 votes, held by three Arab parties, could be expected to go along with Barak on the peace process, but the new prime minister was loath to induct them into his coalition and make it dependent on Arab consent," Morris writes. So Barak ended up making a coalition with the religious right, Shas. I.e., a center-left guy built his coalition with religious right Jews so as to escape the Arab grasp.

This is interesting for a few reasons. Barak failed at Camp David the following year to make a peace with Arafat. I generally blame Israeli intransigence (insistence on an undivided Jerusalem, on a security force on the Jordan river, and unjust appropriation of West Bank colonies) but Arafat surely also deserves some blame. Whatever-- If Barak had had Arabs in his coalition, would he have behaved differently? Would Arafat and the Arab world Arafat had to represent, visavis the holy sites in Jerusalem, have behaved differently?

Also, if Israel is a true democracy, why is there an objection to giving power to Arabs in a coalition dependent on them? After all, that is the character of a representative democracy: one man, one vote, and some day, some way, your vote may be the determinative one. Arabs were denied that opportunity by the Israeli left, in favor of Jewish parties. The same Jewish parties that are now forcing Olmert to build more illegal colonies. Imagine for a moment an American group being left out in the cold politically on a racial basis--it's unimaginable, especially in post-Obamaland. This just shows: Israeli-Arabs are second-class citizens.

Finally, I would note that Benny Morris is garlanded by the pro-Israel mainstream American press as a balanced sage. He is the darling of the New Republic, the New Yorker has lately written that he flatters no one's prejudices, least of all his own. Can you imagine an American historian, or an Arab one, passing along this disturbing information in such a matter-of-fact manner, without comment?

Bush's Jewish Guest List to Israel Bash Feels a Little Throw-Backy

Here's Bush's guest list at the 60th birthday party in Israel. I'm still learning my way around the politics of the Israel question, but here are my scores in the free-skating competition:

Sheldon Adelson, the biggest Republican donor, a Netanyahu guy, Iran/Iraq guy, very scary, now quizzed in the Olmert investigation. Kenneth Bialkin--his firm, Skadden, Arps hosted Ambassador Gillerman when the ambassador said Jimmy Carter had blood on his hands, an establishment CFR and ADL guy, I believe, and don't you ever dare impose a solution, while the settlements continue. Matthew Brooks of Freedom's Watch, neocon. Tony Gelbart of Nefesh b'nefesh and Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Jewish nationalist, make sure the kids don't marry non-Jews. Rabbi Marvin Hier. Scary. Believes Jews to be "endangered," as Elie Wiesel does, who's here too. Michael Oren, military intellectual (by which I mean, military justice is to justice as military music is to music). Mort Zuckerman, Conference of Presidents, along with Malcolm Hoenlein. Abe Foxman, say no more. Leslie Wexner of the Limited, giving fellowships to build Israel's leaders and Jewish leaders here, too. Ethnocentric. Dan Senor, a neocon, allied with the Republican Jewish Coalition crowd, but also a little unfriendly to the Iraq bitter-enders. Leonard Sands and Matthew Brooks, more RJC people. Sands has moolah. Bill Safire, former Times columnist.

There are a lot of names, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, tell me who I'm missing, but it seems like the Iraq bitter-ender Zionists aren't here. No Richard Perle or Dore Gold. What we have are mostly donor base and ethnocentric Jews like Gelbart, along with the U.S. and Israel are joined at the hip Jews, the Michael Oren types. Neocons by another name. I wish there'd been a few progressives. Why not a surprise or two, a Dem, an Ambassador Kurtzer. A Nakba Jew, just to shake things up. Guess I gotta wait for President Obama. Have fun, guys.

Oren Shows, It's Not that Zionism Is Racist, It's that It's Selfish

This morning Michael Oren was on NPR's "Morning Edition," speaking of Israel's achievement, and Renee Montagne asked him what he hoped for in the next 60 years. Oren said, he wants an Israel at peace with its neighbors and at peace with itself. By peace with itself, he said he meant that it contained considerable diversity and that he hopes that it can reconcile that diversity with its own identity as a Jewish and democratic and Middle Eastern state. (That's pretty close; I'm paraphrasing because I don't want to have to listen to him a second time.) Montagne asked whether that meant a Jewish state. Oren said, Well I would "prefer" a Jewish state, as would most Jewish Israelis.

Two things leap out at me from the interview. First, Oren, who works at the Shalem Center in Israel, said he preferred a Jewish state, i.e., he was not absolute on this score. This seems to me a significant reflection of where things are going today. Even this Zionist, who moved from the U.S. to Israel, who has fought for Israel, as has his son, who has helped confuse the borders between Israel and the U.S. with all his work, and who has distorted U.S. history with a superficial book claiming that the U.S. has been religious and pro-Israel from the start, thereby claiming that these two countries are joined at the hip--even Oren is reduced to saying, I prefer. This is the Obama Effect. The world is moving past tribal distinctions, the western world is.

The other thing that leaped out was, Not a word about Palestinian self-determination in all his hoping. Not a word about a Palestinian state, not a word about the dignity of the Arabs under occupation, not a word about the futures of the people living in Gaza. No, Israel has not had peace for "a nano-second" since its founding, Oren said; and so presumably anything that befalls these people is their own fault. His indifference to Palestinian statehood was so stark in these comments it suggested that he still hopes for a Greater Israel. 

The other day a pro-Israel paper (Canada's National Post) likened Israel/Palestine to India/Pakistan in historical terms--partition and bloodletting--and then stated that, Ha!, there was far more bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in India/Pakistan than during the Nakba.  Maybe this is true; I should study that question. But as I have said before here, for 60 years Pakistanis have had a state, and for 60 years since the U.N. called for statehood, the Palestinians have had none. They've been disqualified for countless reasons, even as Israel gobbles land. What do I hope for? I hope that a stateless people who have no meaningful political representation be represented democratically, in a state that respects minority rights. Without that, there will be no peace.

Walt & Mearsheimer Must Be Brought Into the Mainstream (Just Ask Haaretz)

I've often argued that our journalism has done our country a real injury by marginalizing Walt and Mearsheimer. I say this anew because of two pieces I just read in (as usual) Haaretz. 1, Haaretz essentially echoed much of what Walt and Mearsheimer wrote about the stranglehold on policy in this interview with Haim Saban, the Israeli-American financier of the Brookings Institution and of the Democratic Party.

You said once that you are a one-note person, and that note is Israel. Why?
 
"You can't explain love."...
 
Do you still feel, as you once did, that America's attitude toward Israel is liable to deteriorate?

"At the moment there is no sign of a crisis. But we must not be complacent. The two pillars of the state are the Israel Defense Forces and the U.S.; Dimona [the site of Israel's nuclear reactor] and Washington. We must do all we can to maintain the alliance with America. A major crisis at the wrong time could be a disaster, a disaster." [emphasis mine]

Amid Tears, Brandeis Student Senate Declines to Congratulate Israel at 60

The world keeps changing. The Globe has a shocking story on Brandeis's student senate tabling/killing a resolution to congratulate Israel on making 60.

The resolution sparked more than two hours of debate on the senate floor on March 9, leaving some students in tears, according to a senator who was there. Critics questioned whether it was appropriate to have student leadership delve into Middle Eastern politics on a campus that hosts students from 100 countries, some of which oppose Israel's policies.

Such a resolution "shuts people like me up," said Lisa Hanania, 20, a Christian Palestinian-Israeli student from Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish city outside Tel Aviv. "For me it's 60 years of Nakbah - Catastrophe - of the Palestinian people."

"The senate is not the place for a discussion about the State of Israel," said Senator at Large Jessica Blumberg, 21, a junior from New York's Westchester County. "There are people going to Brandeis who are Palestinian refugees."

Following the discussion, student senators voted, 13 to 6, with one abstention, to "postpone indefinitely" a vote on the resolution, effectively killing it.

A few comments: Brandeis is half-Jewish, it keeps blowing my mind. These kids are the most sophisticated about these issues in the country. I visited it last year and was stunned by the support I saw for Jimmy Carter. Zochrot visited it last month and was welcomed. Jessica Blumberg and Noam Shuster, an Israeli-American who has co-founded Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine, are clearly the way the arrow is pointing for young Jews. Wonder how many of Commentary Magazine's readers are under 40?

Thanks to Joachim Martillo for the tip.

Obama Vs. Goldberg (Or, Why the Jewish Experience of the U.S. Civil Rights Struggle Is Israel's Only Hope)

Yesterday Richard Silverstein offered a criticism of Times reporter Ethan Bronner's comments on the Nakba:

[Ethan] Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954...

Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.

...[F]or Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. [All emphases mine]

Prophetic. Now flash back nearly 20 years, the most important moment in the making of Barack Obama, the Harvard Law Review's presidential election of 1990. From the Boston Globe:

In the fall of 1989, when Obama returned to campus for his second year, students were protesting the lack of minority law school faculty. They staged sit-ins in the law library, camped outside the office of Dean Robert C. Clark, and carried signs that read "Diversity Now" and "Homogeneity Feeds Hatred."

[In February 1990, the election lasted] until just after midnight, when only Obama and a 24-year-old Harvard graduate named David Goldberg remained  contenders .

At about 12:30 a.m., the editors called Obama into the room, told him he had won, and broke into applause. [Kenneth] Mack, another black editor, pulled Obama in for a hug.

"It was a hard hug, and it lasted a while," Obama told the Harvard Law Record, the school newspaper, at the time. "At that point, I realized this was not just an individual thing. . . but something much bigger."

A few additions to this important parable of American life: Obama's presidency put him on front pages around the country and led to his book deal. The Globe's fine reporting was done by Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman, who I assume are like myself, upper-middle-class Jews drawn to journalism.  David Goldberg is, I believe, a progressive lawyer specializing in public law in New York, working for poor women denied health care.

The Declaration of independence that Silverstein cites promised that Israel would " ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex..."

The lesson of this story is a simple one. After World War II, Jews in America and Israel set out to guarantee civil rights to all, even in the wake of horrors like the Holocaust and slavery/segregation. In America, we also were a minority, and Jewish activists in the David Goldberg tradition succeeded beyond the world's wildest dreams. In Israel we have utterly failed. Homogeneity breeds hatred. Diversity now.

More Evidence of Obama's Post-Racial Appeal

A month or so back I said that Obama was going to pull racists into his coalition. Today's dailykos has proof, a poster describing how his/her mother in Kentucky said she wasn't "ready for a colored man to be president," and changed her mind in the last couple of weeks, because of the war, because of Hillary: 

"Well, you know, he’s half white," she pointed out, as though that was some special revelation.  "Maybe that’s a good thing, to have someone who can see things from the point of view of black people and white people."

Identity meant more when a mountain range--or a quota, or a color ban-- separated you  from the next tribe. The world's too small for all that. And identity is evolving before our eyes. Black, white, southern, Jewish, Catholic. Just watch the kids, it's fluid...

'LA Times' Bravely Addresses 1-State Solution

It seems that Israel's 60th birthday is not triggering wild celebration around the world. Even the American discourse is changing. The cheers are muted.

In Le Monde Diplomatique, they are openly savaging the "ethnic cleansing of Palestine" and repudiating the settlements, and quoting Avraham Burg.

Here in the Philadelphia Inquirer, an editorial celebrating Israel's birthday is a little dejected. The U.S. is the only one supporting Israel, and it may be that way for generations, the editorial says. Well, think about that; why is that? (Do we want to be in Iraq for 100 years?) The editorial writer seems to understand that's not a good answer, but can't take that on. Meantime, the peace process seems busted. To which the editorial adds,

In that context, the future for Israel is murky.

Meantime, the LA Times does its readers a tremendous service by openly addressing the idea of a one-state solution in Israel/Palestine.

Palestinians who favor the idea say they would have no problem living with Jews as equals. If Jews were to give up their superior status and allow Palestinians the right to vote and move about the country, they say, Islamic extremists would lose their appeal.

Emphasis mine. Radical notion--that took 60 years?

The article quotes the Israeli Meron Benvenisti, who is for one state.

"Israelis and Palestinians are sinking together into the mud of 'one state,' " he writes. "We need a model that fits this reality. . . . The question is no longer whether it will be bi-national, but which model to choose."

I haven't seen such a fair treatment of Israel's crisis in the American mainstream press before. It was written by men named Richard Boudreaux and Ashraf Khalil (yes with help from Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem). I assume they are non-Jewish. That is a necessary part of this crisis: America needs non-Jewish Americans to speak their minds on these issues!

P.S. The Times went further, here with a blogpost where Khalil lists lots of sources on the one-state question, including Electronic Intifadah and Ali Abunimah, as well as Uri Avnery's opposition to it. God bless America.