Lobby Obama and Congress, Not Netanyahu

There is a powerful opinion piece in this morning's Haaretz, "Diaspora Jews Want to Be Israel's Partners--Not Only Its Donors," by Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.  It is worth quoting at some length, before I comment on it: 

"In January, a group of rabbinical students spending the year in Israel showed up at the Prime Minister’s residence with a stack of 725 letters from North American rabbis, cantors, rabbinical and cantorial students from all denominations of Judaism, and from throughout the United States and Canada, asking Prime Minister Netanyahu to cease plans for a new settlement that has roundly been criticized as an obstacle to long-term peace."

"The Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem declined to send even a low-level staff person to speak with the future leadership of the North American Jewish community, or to accept letters from many hundreds of its current leaders. To date, we have received no response from the Prime Minister....  a mistake that reflects a broader trend of dismissing the concerns of North American Jews."

"We are increasingly disturbed by the settlement project...We have seen the human rights crisis created by these settlements. Settlers steal Palestinian land in order to expand their holdings. Restricting certain roads to Jews only prevents children from attending school, parents from traveling to work, and families from visiting one another. We are outraged when we see pictures of violent settlers, wearing kippot, vandalizing mosques, destroying olive trees, and assaulting Palestinian civilians. Images of segregated buses in the West Bank prompt ugly flashbacks of the pre-Civil Rights era in the United States."

"We believe that Israel must continue to exist as a safe and secure Jewish state. But we’re not willing to stand by as the current Israeli government destroys the chances for peace, isolates itself from the world, and angers the United States—its closest ally....[We] must explain to members of other communities, members of our own communities, and even our children why a state built on Jewish values perpetuates a military occupation of another people....We are increasingly unwilling to give the Israeli government a pass on the standards to which we hold the rest of the world."

Excellent points, all of them--but delivered to the wrong address.  Netanyahu--and most Israelis, it must agonizingly be admitted--are impervious to such arguments.   The much more important audience would be Congress and Obama. 

There's no chance for an end to the Israeli occupation and an Israeli agreement to allow the creation of a genuinely independent and viable Palestinian state, in the absence of serious and sustained US pressures on Israel. And there's no chance of such pressures unless the American Jewish community educates and yes, pressures Congress and the president to end the traditional American policy of near unconditional support for Israeli policies.

In short, the letters, the protests, the lobbying of concerned American Jews must be focused not so much on the Israeli government, but our own.  The message: we love the fact that you love Israel and the Jews, but please stop loving us to death.  Now there would be a true "Jewish Lobby" worthy of our support.

Good News: Comparisons to Nazi Germany Are Exaggerated

 

In the Israeli documentary, The Gatekeepers, former heads of the Shin Bet make some rather serious charges. One says that Israel is “making the lives of millions unbearable, into prolonged human suffering.” Ok, that seems demonstrable—but when another says that Israel has become “a brutal occupation force similar to the Germans in World War II," I don’t know.

With all due respect to former Shin Bet chiefs, who I concede are better informed than I am, comparisons of Israeli behavior to that of the Nazis seem to go a bit far. It’s time to confront this exaggeration head on, so here is a partial list of ways in which Israel is not like Nazi Germany:

*Throughout its history, Nazi Germany killed millions of innocent people; Israel has killed only, say, fifty thousand innocent Palestinians, Lebanese, and Egyptians-- tops.

*For the sake of deterrence, Nazi Germany would kill ten innocent people, randomly selected, for every one of its own people killed by the resistance. By contrast, Israeli retaliation is less random; indeed, it doesn’t kill even the family members of Palestinian militants who attack Israelis, but merely demolishes their homes.

*Nazi Germany had contempt for all Jews and black people, most of the rest of the European peoples and societies, and the United States. By contrast, while Israel has contempt for Muslims, black people and most European states (the goyim), it has contempt only for some Jews (e.g. Jewish critics of Israel), and not (by and large) for the United States, at least if you don’t count its black President.

*Nazi Germany ruthlessly cracked down on all internal dissent and protest; Israel’s recent pressures on dissenters and other attacks on civil liberties are not as extensive.

*Even before the Holocaust, Nazi Germany passed many laws excluding Jews from all normal participation in their country. True, Israel discriminates in many ways against Arabs, but not as extensively.

*In Nazi Germany, there was no democracy. In Israel, despite the increasing anti-democratic trends, if you don't count the Arabs democracy is still generally intact—especially for Jewish Israelis who support the government’s policies towards the Palestinians.

No doubt additional comparisons could be made, but the point should be clear: Nazi Germany was much worse than Israel. What a relief!

Chuck Hagel's Confirmation Hearing

Chuck Hagel is taking a lot of heat from people on my side of Israeli, Iranian, and Iraqi issues.  Yes, there's no doubt that he has abandoned his past forthright and entirely sensible statements on these issues, but does this make him "craven?"   What is he supposed to do, given the importance of getting confirmed?  If he reiterated his past positions, almost certainly he would be rejected.

What then?  Not difficult to predict.  Obama would surely nominate someone whose views on all these issues, not to mention arms control, are squarely within the current consensus of the ignoramuses who dominate the accepted discourse in U.S. politics.   Would that be better for sound US policies than if Hagel proudly and defiantly stood his ground, bravely going down with all flags flying?

No way.  Far better to have Hagel as Secretary of Defense, where he can then quietly--or maybe even not so quietly, work for sane policies towards Iran and Israel.