Meretz USA Weekly Update 12/29/06

Focus on: Government Squabbles

What is the Israeli government thinking? That thought must have crossed the minds of many this week, as government officials made several contradicting promises and authorizations. The Israelis seemed initially to make several concessions to the Palestinians. On Saturday evening, Prime Minister Olmert met, for the first time, with Palestinian President Abbas. During the meeting, Olmert agreed to transfer $100 million of the $500 million in tax money that it has withheld since the Hamas government came into power. At the meeting, the Prime Minister also announced plans to improve the Palestinian's ability to travel in the West Bank, including the removal of 27 checkpoints in the immediate future (there are 400 total in the West Bank). Other plans were to remove 32 other checkpoints; ease security screenings in cars and pedestrians at 16 major checkpoints; increase the number of goods flowing through West Bank crossings, including the Karni and Kerem Shalom border crossings; increase the number of travel permits allowed to Palestinians not involved in terror activities; and to pave interchanges along Route 60 in the West Bank. Early in the week, there were additional signs that the Israeli government would approve a small prisoner release ahead of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which begins this weekend. Such releases often occur around this time of year, and this one would have been as a goodwill gesture, without the simultaneous release of Gilad Shalit, whom the Palestinians have held since the summer. Then, on Thursday, Israel approved an arms transfer from the Egyptian government to Abu Mazen's Presidential Guard, saying that it would "reinforce the forces of peace" in the region. However, the Israeli government also made a decision that was the antithesis of these seemingly conciliatory gestures: on Tuesday, it announced plans, authorized by Defense Minister Peretz, to build the first new settlement in the West Bank, since construction stopped10 years ago. This settlement will be built on a former military outpost, previously inhabited by an IDF Nahal unit. More recently, the area has been the site of a pre-military Yeshiva. It will be settled by families from the former Gaza settlement Shirat Hayam. So what is the reason for these conflicting acts? It's hard to tell for sure, but the answer may lie in the clashing personalities and viewpoints that make up the Israeli government. The rivalry between Olmert and Peretz is no secret, but there are more general divisions in the government. On the one hand is the defense establishment, represented by the Defense Minister Peretz. This week, military and intelligence officials pushed for retaliation in Gaza, following a barrage of Qassam rockets in which two 14 year old boys were injured (Olmert and Peretz ended up authorizing pinpoint strikes against rocket launching cells). In general, the defense establishment is firmly against the Gaza ceasefire as well as the possibility of expanding it to the West Bank, warning that quiet will allow terrorist groups to obtain increased capabilities. On the other hand is the pro-peace, pro-negotiations camp, represented by Foreign Minister Livni who met with Fatah leaders Yasser Abd Rabbo and Salam Fayyad early this week. Livni advocates negotiations, without the precondition of a ceasefire. With Prime Minister Olmert seemingly wavering between the two sides, these contradictory missions are certainly affecting the Israeli government's actions. Certain gestures this week, such as Olmert's meeting with Abbas appeared designed to bolster Fatah in its rivalry with Hamas. Akiva Eldar pointed out in an op-ed that Olmert could easily have released the money without meeting with Abu Mazen. And Gershom Gorenberg's article in the Forward points out that Olmert treated the Palestinian president as the head of a state, flying the Palestinian flag and greeting him as "Mr. President," rather than as "Chairman." Such treatment has never before been accorded to a Palestinian leader. Other gestures -- the decision to build Maskiot -- were clearly aimed in the opposite direction. This decision is being criticized by the US and the EU, and Meretz USA made a statement saying that it "flies in the face of its own commitments... [and] disregards its own best interests." Still other actions appeared confused. The Eid al- Adha holiday begins tomorrow, and so far no checkpoints have been removed and word came today that no prisoners will be released. This week, a Haaretz editorial pointed out that Palestinians may soon have to choose again between a Fatah government and one run by Hamas. Israel must not be a silent observer in this process. It must demonstrate the "rosey" future Palestinians will have if they chose Fatah. At this time, when it's extremely important to work for peace, the Israeli government seems the victim of a tug-of-war between the left and the right. A New York Times editorial writes, "Israel's space for peace diplomacy is tightly constrained." Israel should not now be limiting this space.

In other news

Meretz USA-sponsored student group, the Union of Progressive Zionists (UPZ), has recently come under attack from the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) for its sponsorship of a Breaking the Silence tour. Breaking the Silence is a group of former Israeli soldiers speaking out against some IDF actions. Read the JTA article and the Forward editorial. The debate over Syrian President Assad's negotiation overtures continues, with Military Intelligence and the Mossad disagreeing over Assad's intentions. Syrian blogger Ammar Abdulhamid agrees with the Mossad that negotiations would not be fruitful. However, several US senators have recently made their way to Damascus and would presumably support such talks. Happy New Year!

Cease-fire and summit: Non events?

Israel's government has made two troubling decisions in the wake of what should have been a momentous summit between Olmert and Abbas last week. One was the announcement to establish the first official new settlement on the West Bank in ten years -- a small one in the Jordan Valley. In itself, this need not be horrible; the Jordan Valley is of some strategic interest to Israel and needs to be a point for negotiations. But again it is a unilateral move and tends to undermine the goodwill presumably intended in holding the summit.

The second decision, more understandable, is that Israel would strike back (as they say, in a pinpoint way, but that remains to be seen) at those who continue stupidly and outrageously to launch rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory. At the same time, Israel says it's maintaining the partial cease-fire; this non-cease-fire cease-fire has been a phenomenon in itself, as over 50 rockets have been fired by the brave Palestinian "resistance" against children and other civilians in Israel. I'm all for cease-fires; I wish this one were real. Ami Isseroff reported last week on the Abbas-Olmert non-meeting meeting (click Web link below):

Abbas and Olmert - What meeting?

An Arab voice against Holocaust denial

The following is by an Arab journalist in London, Jihad Khazen. He’s somewhat rough in his English and in his opinions, but he is also well-meaning. This is published in his newspaper column in Al-Hayat and also in his weblog.

Ayoon Wa Azan (The Other Extremism) by Jihad el-Khazen, in Al-Hayat, Dec. 25, 2006

No sooner had the Holocaust conference in Tehran come to an end than the Iranian voters dealt a resounding blow to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his allies in the elections....

.... Ahmadinejad represents the "other extremism." He is as stubborn as US President George Bush, and his knowledge is similarly limited....

The Iranian voters have let down their president mainly for internal reasons like mismanagement, the faltering economy despite skyrocketing oil prices and Ahmadinejad's failure to fulfill his promises to the poor.... The Council of Experts is the body that chooses the supreme leader of the Islamic republic. The president's bloc won only three seats in the 15-seat council, while his own sister Perwin, who chairs the bloc, ranked 11th.

The Western press interpreted Ahmadinejad's loss as it liked. The most important point for the West is Iran's nuclear program. However, this program may be the only thing on which the Iranians unanimously agree....

The denial of the Holocaust has caused Iran, and Muslims in general, many unnecessary troubles. We, as Arabs and Muslims, need to build bridges of understanding with the moderate Jews who advocate peace around the world. Denying the Holocaust does not serve this purpose.

President Ahmadinejad, and whoever is interested, should listen to the following:
Firstly, the Holocaust took place within contemporary history. Some of those who had witnessed the massacre, in which six million Jews were killed, are still alive. This figure has been recorded by trustworthy historians not by the revisionist David Irving or the racist David Duke.

Secondly, we did not kill those Jews. I do not understand why some Arabs and Muslims insist to deny a crime they never committed. Yet, they paid the price when the Western butcher tried to do penance for his crime by sending those who survived the Holocaust to Palestine.

Thirdly, the Holocaust did not come out of nothing. It did not come by chance either. The Christian West has been killing Jews for the last 1,000 years since the First Crusade in 1099. Then, they killed the Jewish as well as the Muslim populations of Jerusalem. They did the same in every subsequent crusade attack. Making their way to Palestine, the crusaders killed every Jew they met throughout Europe. Some of these massacres have been recorded in details.

Fourthly, Muslims and Jews have lived together for ages. Jews were non-Muslims living under Muslim rule, but they were not being killed. They even took high state positions sometimes, like in Andalusia or in modern times. The mutual massacres between Jews and Arabs, especially the Palestinians, are nothing compared to a single day's lot in Auschwitz or Treblinka.

Fifthly, there are extremists on both sides who justify the existence of each other. They exploit the enemy's hard-line discourse to respond with more extremism in a widening circle death and destruction.
I believe that a big majority of Arabs and Jews wants to live in peace. I also believe that peace is attainable if they renounce extremism and extremists.

If I were Ahmadinejad, I wouldn't organize a conference to deny the Nazi Holocaust through study. Rather, I would invite Muslim and Jewish moderates to a conference to build up bridges of mutual understanding. We should look to the future instead of living in the past. Racism against Arabs and Muslims has been widespread throughout the world. Muslims and Jews are competing in terms of which is being more persecuted than the other....

J. Zel Lurie on Carter’s book

This is one of several views we’ve published on this subject, and still more may come. What follows is an edited version of Zel Lurie’s new column, prepared for publication in the Jan. 2, 2007 edition of the South Florida Jewish Journal. Zel’s candid evaluation, not included in his article, is that: “On the whole it's not a very good book. But his discussion of the apartheid occupation is on the mark.”

Similarly, my feeling is that while Carter's book is factually flawed, his ultimate conclusion is sound. As always, Zel is relentless in presenting his point of view (see below).

Why some Jews are angry with President Carter

I am vexed by the vilification of former President Jimmy Carter by Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz over his book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” They concentrate on his use of the word, Apartheid, which , they say, verges on anti-Semitism and they forget the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate’s formula for Arab-Israel peace.

Apartheid is actually a weak term for the way in which over two million Palestinians in the West Bank are treated. Apartheid in South Africa was based on race. It was defeated by universal sanctions against the government. Apartheid in the West Bank are regulations, roads, walls, fences and checkpoints, which, under the guise of security, are designed to take over land for the expansion of Jewish settlements.

The critics of Jimmy Carter should read the 96-page brochure published last June by B’tselem, a Jewish organization in Jerusalem which monitors human rights in the West Bank and Gaza. The title is “UNDER THE GUISE OF SECURITY: Routing the Separation Barrier to Enable the Expansion of Israeli Settlements in the West Bank.” It’s an easy read that tells a despicable story.

Of course, three years before, the Israel government agreed to freeze all settlement activity as written in the Road Map presented in 2003 by the Quartet – the United States, Russia, the UN and the EU. Carter publishes the 14 caveats which the government attached to its agreement, which made a mockery of the Road Map. Settlements have increased like rabbits ever since, while all eyes were on Iraq.

B’Tselem can’t think of a better word than “apartheid” for what it describes in its 46-page pamphlet on “FORBIDDEN ROADS: Israel’s Discriminatory Road Regime in the West Bank.” It also has plenty of colored maps. Hundreds of miles of roads have been built on expropriated Palestinian farmland, which the Palestinian farmers are forbidden to use.

Another B’tselem booklet is entitled “MEANS OF EXPULSION,” which deals with lawlessness and violence by Israeli soldiers and settlers aimed at expelling the Palestinians from their land.

A fourth deals with “FORBIDDEN FAMILIES” which tells the sad story of the forced breakup of intermarried families. It is ongoing. Last week Mahsom Watch reported on a Palestinian who had gone to the Soviet Union many years ago to study. He married a Russian woman and brought her back home where she gave birth to three children. The family visited Russia recently which was a big mistake. Upon their return home the Russian mother was returned to Russia with her youngest child.

Let me talk for a moment on Carter’s formula for peace. It has three basic premises:
1. Israel’s right to exist and to live at peace within secure borders must be recognized by everyone.
2. The killing of non-combatants cannot be condoned.
3. Palestinians must live in peace and dignity on their own land as specified by international laws unless modified by good faith negotiations with Israel.

Good faith negotiations will never occur without forceful intervention by the president of the United States. Carter should know. When he was president he brought Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin together at Camp David. He did not allow the two to face each other. For thirteen days he shuttled between their cabins. Several times Sadat packed his bags ready to leave. Finally an agreement was fashioned which was supposed to be followed by a peace treaty in three months. But it took almost two years with several trips to the Mideast by Carter.

“To get that agreement ,” comments Rabbi Michael Lerner, “Carter had to twist the arms of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Sometimes that is what real friends do. They push you on to a path that is really in your best interest.”

Carter is a real friend of Israel. But Israel has taken a terribly wrong path in the West Bank and Carter is crying out against it.

A word about Dershowitz’s criticism. He makes ten points [which] deal with Israel’s history and American lobbying. None deal with the central theme of the book, the treatment of the Palestinians. He makes a big tzimmes over half of a sentence on the outbreak of the Six Day War in 1967: “Israel launched preemptive attacks first against Egypt and Syria, then against Jordan.”

Carter knows that the attack on Jordan was not preemptive. [Jordan shelled Jerusalem and suburbs of Tel Aviv– Ed.] In at least two of his 21 books he has correctly described how Jordan foolishly attacked and in three days Israel had overrun the entire West Bank. This may have been an error by an editor who was trying to shorten the history and get to the core of the book.

Meanwhile Jews and others are buying the book in droves. The truth will out. It reached number seven on the best-seller list on December 17 and was up to number five on December 24. If Abe Foxman continues his ad campaign against the book it may reach number one.

The Jews who are buying the book are not the ones who listen to AIPAC. They are [among] the majority of the over 80 percent of American Jews who voted against Bush last November despite his friendship with Sharon and Olmert.

As Tom Segev wrote in Ha’aretz, under the heading, “MEMOIR TO A GREAT FRIEND”:
“One reason the book is outraging ‘friends of Israel’ in America is that it requires them to reformulate their friendship. If they truly want what’s good for Israel they must call on it to rid itself of the territories. People don’t like to admit they erred, therefore they’re angry at Carter.”

An Israeli Rosa Parks

This disturbing news and hopeful holiday wish is from Lilly Rivlin, the president of Meretz USA: “I bring to your attention the [Dec. 15 Haaretz] article below and I ask, how can this be happening in democratic Israel? Has a new Rosa Parks arisen? May the women of Israel be inspired, again, to take action. This is morally reprehensible.”

Ms. Rivlin “sent this to our [Meretz] M.K. Zehava Gal-On, and she replied that she has made inquiries to the Egged bus company and to the minister of transportation regarding what happened on the bus.”

Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat By Daphna Berman

A [religious] woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."

Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."

'Stupid American'

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police."

Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus."

"It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through due process," she said. "Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated bus] are a majority - and I don't think they are - they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else."

Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it."

Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded an e-mail detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number of groups, including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement; and the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the issue of segregated Egged buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in touch with Shear and is considering including her in the petition.

Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to indicate this. "There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem," she said.

"Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the gender segregation] even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said.

On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver.

The official responses

In a response from Egged, the bus driver denied that Shear was physically attacked in any way.

"In a thorough inquiry that we conducted, we found that the bus driver does not confirm that any violence was used against the complainant," Egged spokesman Ron Ratner wrote.

"According to the driver, once he saw that there was a crowd gathering around her, he stopped the bus and went to check what was going on. He clarified to the passengers that the bus was not a mehadrin line and that all passengers on the line are permitted to sit wherever they want on the bus. After making sure that the passengers returned to their seats, he continued driving."

The Egged response also noted that their drivers "are not able and are not authorized to supervise the behavior of the passengers in all situations."

Ministry of Transportation spokesperson Avner Ovadia said in response that the mehadrin lines are "the result of agreements reached between Egged and Haredi bodies" and are therefore unconnected to the ministry.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under investigation.

‘Tis the Season to be Pagan

At first I chuckled at the subject-line of an e-mail addressed to the “Facing A Challenge within” (FAC) listserve: “just sharing my great news about progress in the pagan community.” But then I came to share the writer’s good feeling and had some serious thoughts – which I hope won't offend anyone.

FAC is a progressive e-mail list that emerged from the 2004 Oakland, California conference on antisemitism within the left. Evidently, the writer is a neo-pagan who also shares her Jewish heritage to an extent with her co-religionists.

In Biblical times, 2500-3000 years ago, the Israelite religion (evolving into but not yet Judaism as we'd recognized it) was at war with polytheism and probably paganism as well. But Christianity came to be by far the most cruel and effective anti-pagan force, systematically suppressing the Wickan tradition and other nature-worshiping religions. Under the rule of medieval Christendom, Jews and pagans both suffered persecution.

Judaism remains very different philosophically from forms of paganism, but Judaism similarly expresses itself seasonally. The Hebrew calendar is key; as Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: Judaism builds "cathedrals in time." Many holidays track closely with nature's annual cycle -- spring planting (Passover), harvest (Sukkot), and winter (Hanukkah). And Janette's story reminds me that both Hanukkah and Christmas are, at their roots, winter solstice celebrations (emphasizing lights).

Greetings of the season to all of our readers!

On 12/21/06, Janette wrote:
Hi folks, I couldn't resist dropping in with a lovely little report back from the Reclaiming winter solstice ritual that I just came from. After the main ritual was over I announced that we'd be lighting the menorah in observance of Hanukkah, and that anyone who wanted to could participate. We ended up with a group of about 12 - 15, singing Hanukkah songs and then dancing the hora around the menorah (hey, that rhymes!).

Afterwards, a few stayed around singing lots of other Yiddish & Hebrew songs and finally this one guy remarked that he's been seeing more & more Jewish stuff at the rituals & how awesome it was! Eventually, we brought the menorah back near the main bonfire & drummed for quite awhile with everyone dancing. It is really remarkable, that by now I don't even feel nervous about openly announcing a Jewish observance at these rituals. It shows how far I've come.

People are getting used to this and seem to have dropped the mentality of "Judaism is oppressive and no self-respecting pagan would have anything to do with it" (my paraphrasing). I know that I got the strength and motivation to do this as a result of being part of the facing a challenge conference, so a big thank you to everyone!!

Factional fighting: a microcosm of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Again, an excellent item by Jonathan Edelstein, appearing in his blog, The Head Heeb.

>> Arieh

A choice of models
Sometimes it's hard not to look at the current Palestinian factional fighting as a microcosm of the overall Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So many of the elements are there: the tit-for-tat escalation of rhetoric and violence, the intransigence of both parties in compromising their power and ideology, the factional indiscipline that prevents truces from lasting long enough to become self-sustaining, the constant degeneration of peace talks into bickering over petty details. I suppose it's only natural that this should be so; like the conflict between Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, the power struggle between Hamas and Fatah stems from competing nationalist visions for the future of the same land. Civil wars are the most bitter of conflicts, and both the intra-Palestinian fighting and the battle between Palestine and Israel bear many of the stamps of civil war.

By now, the events that triggered the present round of violence should be familiar. On December 11, in an atmosphere already fraught with tension after national-unity talks collapsed, gunmen sprayed the car of Fatah-affiliated intelligence official Baha Balousheh with bullets, killing his three young children and sparking a firestorm of rage. Although the identity of the gunmen has yet to be ascertained, Fatah supporters immediately blamed Hamas for the attack, and responded with retaliatory strikes including an attack on a Hamas rally in Ramallah and a possible assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

On Saturday, amid the rising violence, President Mahmoud Abbas announced that he intended to dissolve the Hamas-dominated parliament and call fresh presidential and parliamentary elections. This isn't something that he has the power to do: the PNA Basic Law allows the president to dismiss the prime minister but not to dissolve the legislature, and requires even his own resignation to be approved by a two-thirds majority of parliament. Although he justified it as a necessary measure to end factional infighting, Hamas was quick to describe it as a coup attempt, and indeed, the doctrine of necessity is most often used to justify coups. Alberto Fujimori, also faced with civil disturbance, would view Abbas as a kindred spirit.

Whatever Abbas' reason for making this announcement - whether he intended to strong-arm Hamas into resuming talks on a unity government, or whether he genuinely believed new elections were the only way out of the crisis - it had the effect of bringing matters to a head. On Sunday, after another attempted hit on foreign minister Mahmoud a-Zahar, the two sides called a truce with terms that included an end to incitement and resumption of unity negotiations. The same indiscipline that has stymied Israeli-Palestinian ceasefires also dogged this one, however; a number of the Fatah-affiliated militant groups refused to accept the truce, Hamas responded in kind, and today full-scale fighting broke out on the streets of Gaza. At least five people have been killed - three slain in battle, and two kidnapped and executed by Hamas - and the governments of Jordan and Egypt suddenly found themselves taking time out of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking to put out the Gaza fire.

As I argued in the opening paragraph, there are distinct parallels between the factional fighting and the larger regional conflict, and it's hard to escape the thought that they might end the same way. Although all sides are now professing their commitment to a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, there's neither a mechanism nor a sufficient level of mutual trust to achieve one, and it doesn't seem that either party has yet given up its dream of total victory. The result, as in other places, may be an ongoing stalemate with neither side able to win a military victory but both seeing no readily available alternative. In such a war, there is no victor and no vanquished, but in the worst possible way: rather than becoming a basis for a peace settlement, the inability of either side to win a decisive victory degenerates into an endless low-level bloodletting powered by the cruel force of inertia.

But the fighting also carries echoes of another, and paradoxically more hopeful, model: opening stages of the Irish Civil War. I'm aware that comparisons only go so far, especially across cultures and continents, but the situation in Ireland at the end of 1921 bears more than a passing resemblance to that in Palestine now. The Irish were in the final stages of a bloody and inconclusive independence struggle, and were faced with the choice of fighting on or accepting a partition of their country. Like the Palestinians, they were divided into a number of militant factions, not all of which answered to the provisional government and which were sharply different in their ideology and goals. The result was a year of factional fighting between the pro- and anti-Treaty forces, which was distinguished not only by its bitterness but by the use of unconventional tactics and the concentration of fighting within the political class.

It's hard to miss the echoes of that war within the current Palestinian political class. Faced with the prospect of statehood on less than ideal terms and disputes over the allocation of domestic power, the bitterness between the "pro-Treaty" Fatah leadership and the Hamas "Republicans" is escalating, and each has become the other's target. The raids, street gunbattles and kidnap-executions happening in Gaza now wouldn't have been out of place in Dublin in 1923 and, like the earlier conflict, the political leaders of both sides are the ones at the greatest risk. The situation seems as much poised to replicate the Irish conflict as the intifada.

It may seem strange to describe the Irish civil war as a "more hopeful" model, given the bloodletting and atrocities that occurred during that conflict. But in contrast to the endless stalemate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Irish factional fighting resulted in the political class becoming as war-weary as the public, and ultimately led to a general amnesty and the conclusion of a stable peace. The civil war didn't end the conflict entirely, and its loose ends came back to bite both sides on many occasions during the next three generations, but it resulted in an arrangement under which the Irish could get on with their lives and eventually cooperate in settling the future of Northern Ireland. If the Palestinian infighting also ends in consolidation of the pro-Treaty forces - and, by the end of the Irish civil war, even the Republicans acquiesced in the Treaty - then it might be possible to build something from the ashes.

-- December 19, 2006

Hanukkah's Zionist Legacy

For about a half year, I've been locked in an epic e-mail argument with David McReynolds (retired leader of the War Resisters League and the Socialist Party candidate for US President in 1980 and 2000) and a few of his comrades. All are vehemently anti-Zionist, and some quite vile about it. What follows is one of my responses in this dialogue, which also attempts to place Hanukkah and Zionism in historical context. – R. Seliger

I want to comment on a mistaken idea that came across in one message that the Jews only had a "kingdom of Israel" for two centuries. But even speaking as a Zionist, I don't believe that the Jews' origins in the ancient land of Israel provides full justification for modern political Zionism. The only moral justification for Zionism as the quest for a secure homeland was the unacceptable situation of harsh antisemitism that the Jews experienced in most lands where they lived – especially in Europe.

However, when the Jews' national culture transformed into a mostly religious culture during nearly 2,000 years of diaspora, the revered memory of the ancient homeland and the time of national sovereignty provided Zionism's spiritual basis. This became important when some Jews advocated various schemes for establishing some refuge or "homeland" for the persecuted masses of Jews in the late 19th and early 20th century ( e.g., Patagonia and Uganda). When Theodor Herzl himself, desperate for some place of refuge during these years of mounting antisemitism in Europe and widespread impoverishment and pogroms in Russia, embraced the British notion of a Jewish homeland in Uganda, his own World Zionist Congress overwhelmingly rejected it (and him) in favor of the original vision of Palestine. Herzl had to publicly repent before the Congress to regain leadership of the movement.

The tenure of the Hebrew tribes in ancient Israel, and then of what became the Jewish people, was much longer than two centuries (add a thousand years and you're closer to the truth). First, there are the years (probably more than one century) of the tribal Hebrew confederation that had no king. Then there's the united kingdom of Saul, David, Solomon and one of Solomon's sons; this united kingdom did not last long, being split into the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of "Israel." It's probably the two-century existence of the northern kingdom of Israel that is mistakenly being taken as the "only time" that the Jews were sovereign in ancient Israel/Palestine.

The northern kingdom was destroyed by the Assyrians. The southern kingdom of Judah (whose capital was Jerusalem) remained another couple of centuries until destroyed by the Babylonians. It is from Judah that the Jewish people take their name.

The Jews survived captivity and exile in Babylonia and were permitted to return under Persian rule; a large diaspora Jewish community remained in Mesopotamia voluntarily, but returnees rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem and rebuilt a political community under Ezra and Nehemiah. A couple of centuries later (around 300-200 BC), after Alexander's conquest of the Persian empire, Judea (as it came to be called) was fought over by the competing Greek dynasties in Syria and Egypt (Cleopatra was the last of the Greek rulers of Egypt). It was during this confusing time of dynastic warfare that the Jews rebelled under the leadership of the Hasmonean priestly family (the famed Maccabees, celebrated during Hanukkah).

The Hasmoneans eventually established their dynasty as rulers of the kingdom of Judea and conquered all or most of what came later to be known as Palestine. The Hasmoneans were rotten dynastic rulers and during the last century BC, their rule ended violently when Herod married into their family and maniacally murdered the last of them, including his son and his beloved wife.

Soon after, Judea fell under Roman rule – not by war, but the Romans cleverly infiltrated their influence until an exhausted Judea fell into their hands like ripe fruit. In the first century of the Common Era, the Jews launched a massive rebellion that was brutally put down and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed (this is also the time of the famous mass suicide at Masada); and Jewish prisoner-slaves built the Coliseum in Rome. A large Jewish population remained, however and they again rebelled in the 130s AD under a talented military leader known as Bar Kochba. Again, however, after a long, hard fight, the Jews suffered catastrophe. And this time, the Romans eradicated the name of Judea, renaming it Palestine.

The mass killings and forced expulsion of the Jews by the Romans in both wars, but especially the last – what we would now call ethnic cleansing – mostly depopulated "Palestine" of its Jews. Still, Jewish communities have returned over the centuries, especially to Jerusalem, Tiberias and Safed. (A significant Jewish population was massacred by the Crusaders upon their conquest of Jerusalem.)

To reiterate my point before this historical discourse: ancient history does not justify Zionism, but it establishes the spiritual basis. The Jews would never have thought of Palestine as a potential place of refuge, without the memory, preserved by the Jewish faith, of the ancient homeland(s).

Carter’s new book reviewed by Gidon Remba

Gidon D. Remba is co-author of the forthcoming book, “The Great Rift: Arab-Israeli War and Peace in the New Middle East.” He served as senior foreign press editor and translator in the office of Israel’s Prime Minister during the Egyptian-Israeli peace process of 1977-‘78. His essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the New York Times, the Nation, the Jerusalem Report, Ha'aretz, Tikkun, the Forward , the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Chicago Jewish News, JUF News, and the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle.

He currently lives in Chicago where he’s active in the Zionist peace camp and blogs at “Tough Dove Israel.” The following is a version of his review that was published at the British online publication, the Engage Forum, at my suggestion as an advisory editor. It should be emphasized that Remba does not view Carter as an enemy of Israel and feels that the situation in the West Bank actually does bear a resemblance to apartheid, but this detailed critique appears harsh because of the factual shortcomings of “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.”

A close reading of Carter's Palestine-Israel book leads to the inescapable conclusion: it's even worse than the critics say. The book is replete with major errors of fact, all systematically biased against Israel. Carter never makes a single factual error that works in Israel's favor, or against the Palestinians. He offers an abundance of misstatements and distortions that paint Israel black. Some of the most egregious have already been highlighted by others. But Carter's approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is as one-sided as that of the Israel haters.

Though Carter himself is no Israel hater, at times he does an uncanny impersonation of one, serving up a morality tale of Israeli demons and Palestinian angels forced to descend to hell by the depredations of the evil Israelis. Throughout the book Carter unfailingly shows deep sympathy for Palestinian perceptions, while displaying little understanding for Israeli attitudes or needs. The book suffers from a deep and uncritical pro-Palestinian bias that makes a mockery of Carter's pretensions to fair arbiter and peacemaker.

To read the entire article, click here.

What I should have said to Tony Judt

On the evening of Dec. 4, New York University historian Tony Judt, having achieved the esteemed rank of "University Professor," delivered an address before a packed auditorium at the NYU School of Law. As expected, he was erudite, eloquent and feisty. He also continued as a side theme – not his main focus – to drum away at the integrity and honor of the State of Israel.

Entitled "Liberal Intellectuals in an Illiberal Age," he began by noting the hundredth anniversary of the exoneration of Captain Alfred Dreyfus and how a now-obscure right-wing French intellectual had advocated for the interests of "the nation" over universal values. His was an artful talk that critiqued United States policy for taking a neoconservative direction in its perceived self-interest. He also defended the university as the last bastion of the disinterested intellectual who has the freedom and the duty to speak truth to power; he indicated the ebbing of this role with the disappearance of intellectual journals and the growing prominence of privately funded think tanks. So far, so good.

Judt is cold to the argument that he may be stirring up antisemitism with his views. He insists on "the truth" but also, curiously, admits that "free speech is not completely non-negotiable." He provided the example of a planned Berlin production of a Mozart opera to be staged with the severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammad. Judt came to discuss this with German defenders of this staging and suggested that they should have added the head of a rabbi. This produced the shocked objection that that would be insensitive and hateful. And that was Judt's point about the heads, particularly Mohammad's head. My point is that this commendable awareness of Muslim feelings is completely absent when he addresses emotional Jewish issues.

Still, he very validly decried the "binary fallacy -- that everything is either itself or its opposite." Yet my concern is that he is contributing to an intellectual climate that does something like this to Israel – that if Israel is not a good example of a Western, peace-loving liberal state, then it is the opposite, without legitimacy.

His comments included a cutting remark on the Bush administration taking Israel's side and delaying a cease-fire in the recent war against Hezbollah (without his mention of Hezbollah's aggression) and a riff on US silence in the face of a "fascist," Avigdor Lieberman, being elevated to Israel's cabinet. He contrasted this with the outcry when Haider's party rose to a share of power in Austria. Yet Judt did not also indicate that parties that are arguably fascist, and clearly antisemitic, form the government of the Palestinian Authority and are in the government (and fighting for power) in Lebanon.

Judt feels no compunction about discomforting American Jews, whom he derides for being so well off and influential, yet so insecure. It's astonishing to me that an historian with a global vision of the past – when Jewish havens in such place as Moorish Spain, Poland and Germany turned bad – would take this insensitive view.

In the Q & A, I was surprised at the relative lack of response (other than an ovation) to his speech from the hundreds, up to a thousand, in the hall. I felt my heart thumping as I decided to get to the wide-open mike a few feet away. I asked if Prof. Judt still held with his view that "an ethnic state" in this day and age was "an anachronism," prefacing this by pointing out that the proposed European constitution had been defeated by popular referenda and that there were other examples of the Europeans shying away from further consolidation in the European Union.

Judt flashed a knowing smile and reminded the audience of his article in the New York Review of Books ("Israel: The Alternative," Oct. 23, 2003) in which he described Israel as an "ethno-religious" state that’s "an anachronism" and argued for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his response, he mentioned the extreme-right Flemish nationalist movement in Belgium – which he gratuitously mentioned won many Jewish votes despite its antisemitic roots. But somehow (I doubt that his reasoning was strong here because it went totally by me), he wound up reiterating his notion that Israel's Law of Return, privileging Jews, is unique and unjust.

I had made a tactical error in sitting down for his answer. If I had still been up there, I might have responded that Germany and other countries have promulgated a similar right of return for ethnic kin and that Israel, although less than perfect in civil rights terms, is more liberal than any other country in the Middle East in the access of all its citizens (including Arabs) to judicial redress and the democratic process. (This is not to mention the separate problem of Palestinian Arabs in the territories who do not have comparable protections.) I might also have added that Israel's Law of Return should be regarded as affirmative action for a minority group that has widely suffered persecution and discrimination throughout history.

Until Jan. 1, 2000, Germany did not even confer citizenship upon German-born children of "guest workers"; Germany has over two million people, mostly of Turkish origin, living long-term as non-citizens. As indicated in the Wikipedia: "children born on or after 1 January 2000 to non-German parents acquire German citizenship at birth if at least one parent:

* has a permanent residence permit (and has had this status for at least 3 years); and
* has been residing in Germany for at least 8 years.

Such children will be required to apply successfully to retain German citizenship by the age of 23."

If Judt were only advocating liberal positions and making valid criticisms of Israel, he would be unremarkable. I remember fondly his great book reviews in The New Republic – a moderately liberal pro-Israel publication that once listed him as a contributing editor and now doesn't even include his relatively recent articles in its online archive (a real pity). What is profoundly disturbing is that a liberal such as he, not an extremist, questions Israel's right to exist.

Hanukkah: A Cautionary Tale

First, a cautionary note to this cautionary tale: Parallels from ancient times with more contemporary events and social categories are inexact. A version of this article was published in several Jewish community weeklies six years ago. Since that time, I could add a point that would disrupt its thematic flow somewhat, but bears considering: the anti-Hasmonean faction, which I refer to in quotes as “liberal,” was also a wealthy cultural elite that did battle with the lower classes who were championed by the Hasmoneans (or Maccabees). -- R. Seliger

History is of necessity an interpretive process, and these interpretations often spawn self-serving myths. National myths are not usually complete fabrications, but they tend to romanticize and sanitize real events.

The traditional Hanukkah story serves the Jewish people as a source of pride and a mobilizing image for Zionism. We are taught that a small army of freedom fighters, the Maccabees, led by the heroic priestly family of Mattathias and his seven sons, successfully resisted the cruel pagan tyranny of the ancient Greco-Syrian Seleucid dynasty. The Maccabees’ victory is celebrated in symbol and ritual by lighting the menorah, commemorating the divine miracle of a one-day’s supply of oil lasting a full eight days during the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem.

We are usually not taught the far more complex reality that the Maccabean war of liberation was also a civil war between rural “fundamentalist” religionists of the old order and the more educated and cosmopolitan Hellenized Jews of the city, who voluntarily and eagerly embraced the “liberal” Greek culture of the Syrian empire. The Maccabees surely killed many of these “liberal” Jews in their struggle.

We are also not taught that a short time after the Maccabees’ triumph in Jerusalem, a Syrian army returned in overwhelming strength, laid siege to Jerusalem, and were at the point of utterly defeating the Maccabees when an extraneous threat to the imperial capital of Antioch by a dynastic rival suddenly caused the Syrians to withdraw.

What is more surprising and ironic is that the Hasmonean family— the Maccabees’ ruling dynasty— within one generation of the victory for Jewish values over Hellenism, was taking Greek names, speaking Greek and transforming Judea into a Jewish Hellenistic kingdom! These rulers alienated the masses of the Jewish people by extreme acts of cruelty and debauchery, e.g., crucifying their enemies at royal banquets and slaughtering protesters in great numbers. Their military prowess ultimately undermined their rule, as conquered peoples were converted to Judaism by the sword; Herod emerged from one such Judaized people to marry his way into the Hasmonean clan and murder them into extinction.

Herod’s disastrously corrupt reign led to Judea’s disintegration as an independent state and its domination by Rome. Our ancestors’ understandable but evidently unwise impatience with the Roman yoke led to the heroic but doomed rebellions which resulted in the catastrophic exile from Zion.

Nevertheless, the Maccabees were brave and valiant warriors who did in fact win great victories over a powerful and authoritarian foreign enemy. This is the picture of Hanukkah which is revered in Jewish and Israeli tradition. But to take this snapshot in time as the whole picture is to accept a one-dimensional myth. For some of the reasons mentioned, Rabbinic Judaism accorded Hanukkah a minor religious status.

When considered within its historic context of bloody Jewish civil wars and despotic rule, both imbedded within the Hanukkah story itself and in the eventual downfall of Judea within its wake, Hanukkah may provide as much a warning to us today, as a cause for celebration. [Eleven] years after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Hanukkah cautions us on the dangers of fratricidal hatred, of demonizing our political foes, and of failing to understand the need at times for compromise and accommodation.

Can a 'Jewish State' be for all its citizens?

The official Meretz answer to the question above is an emphatic ' yes'. The following article by Tom Segev (from the Nov. 24 issue of Haaretz), depicts the failure of a panel of liberal-minded Israeli Jews and Arabs to agree upon Israel's fundamental identity. While it is worrying for a liberal Zioinist like myself that Israeli Arabs (or Israeli-Palestinians, as the PC crowd would have it) tend not to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, perhaps this is less important than most of us think.

Wouldn't Jews and Arabs get along better if Israel becomes more equitable in its treatment of all its citizens? The hard work's in changing governmental policy so that funds and services are distributed more fairly to Arab municipalities and communities.-- R. Seliger

Breakdown (from Haaretz ... Nov. 24, 2006) By Tom Segev

One day, a few years ago, the historian Adel Manna attended the graduation ceremony of his son, who had just obtained a law degree. The event was held at the Sultan's Pool in Jerusalem. Toward the end of the ceremony, the Manna family decided to leave, before the singing of "Hatikva," the national anthem. They did not want to remain seated while everyone stood and sang, nor did they want to stand.

Embarrassingly, they had not managed to reach the exit when the singing began, and people shouted at them, "What's going on here? What kind of behavior is this? You want equality, but you're not ready to respect the state?!"

Manna, who is generally a model of composure, lost his patience and responded, "Shut up, already! You go on singing your Hatikva. It's not mine. What do you want from me?"

Manna afterward described the incident to his colleagues in a working group that was convened by the Israel Democracy Institute, with the aim of formulating a charter to define and regularize the essence of the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel.

The group consisted of twelve Jews, headed by the jurist Mordechai Kremnitzer, and eight Arabs, headed by Manna. None of the participants expressed the most extreme view; they agreed that Israel should be a democracy. The Jews agreed on a series of arrangements intended to reduce discrimination against the Arabs, including land arrangements and affirmative action in various spheres, and Kremnitzer even agreed to change the anthem, the flag and the state emblem.

They met once a month for two years, generated fascinating interpersonal dynamics, and treated the charter they were asked to draft with profound seriousness, as though it were to be a historic document, matching Israel's Declaration of Independence in importance. Every word uttered in the meetings was recorded, and in time hundreds of pages of transcripts piled up. Journalist (and Haaretz columnist) Uzi Benziman has now edited them for publication.

"Whose Country Is This?" (in Hebrew) is one of the most important, most depressing and most worrisome books that has been published in a long time. Because the talks broke down. The Jews demanded that the Arabs recognize that Israel is a Jewish state, and the Arabs refused, because if Israel does not define itself as the state of all its citizens it will not be a true democracy and will perpetuate discrimination against the Arabs. The group broke up, charterless.

One of the guests who was invited to the discussions of the group of 20 was the then head of the Shin Bet security service, Ami Ayalon. He tried his best to give a businesslike, liberal impression. He has no objections to Israel's Arabs serving in the Israel Defense Forces, if they so wish, and if they serve in the IDF, they can also serve in the Shin Bet. He has no objections to an Arab member of Knesset being a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. He hopes to ease the security check that Arabs undergo at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

The Shin Bet does not view the Arabs in Israel as a threat, Ayalon maintains, but the organization's basic working assumption, as he described it, indicates the opposite: "The degree of fear of the Jewish society in Israel [fear also of Israel's Arabs] dictates everything. This is the basis for the construction of consciousness and also for the shaping of the Shin Bet."

Ayalon also said that the Shin Bet should be involved in the Arab school system (and in the Jewish one, too): "The serious educational messages of extreme groups in the Arab and Jewish society get through and trickle into [people's] hearts and consciousness through the education system, and therefore the question of who teaches and who must not have the right to teach has security implications."

Ahmad Saadi, from the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, responded to Ayalon's remarks: "One of the problems with the Shin Bet's concept of the Arab population is the one you yourself presented here. The thoughts are the source of the danger. In fact, your thinking is the source of the danger."

About a year after the panel began to meet, the intifada broke out, together with the "events of October." It is tempting to believe that the discussions failed because of the violence; in retrospect, some of the participants wondered whether they would have achieved more if the discussions had been conducted differently. Like the first Zionists, the Jews in the group almost begged the Arabs to define Israel as a Jewish state, but they spoke in give-and-take terms: the underlying assumption was that the Arabs of Israel are sort of sub-tenants who have to pay in return for the civil rights they get from the Jewish landlord.

"They want to get all they want without paying anything," law professor Ruth Gavison complained, looking back, and added, "You [Arabs] want National Insurance, public education, health ... and on the other side there is a state, a burden, problems ... Lend a hand! Lend a hand! ... You do not want to lend a hand because 'it's theirs,' it belongs to the Jews. So go somewhere else."

Avigdor Lieberman couldn't have put it better, although he, at least, claims he is offering the Arabs equality. Not Gavison: "One of the fraudulent things about the Israeli-Jewish left is the statement that yes, there will be equality. There will not be equality. There will be dispute. It will be better than [elsewhere] in the region; it will be better than in many other places; there will be a process; but there will not be equality ...." She likened the Israeli Arabs to the Mizrahim - the Jews of Middle Eastern descent - in that both groups are themselves to blame for the discrimination they have endured.

"A great deal of the distress of the Muslim-Arab population - not the Christian - in Israel is due to the culture of large families, lack of education and an unreliable and unqualified workforce for modern life. All of that creates poverty, even without ethnic discrimination. From this point of view, the Muslim Arabs resembled the Mizrahi Jews, who are not succeeding in breaching the cycle of passive, uneducated, uncompetitive culture. This is a major cultural problem in itself, and with the Arabs it is heightened by another problem: their being Arabs."

On the road from the presidency of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel to the commission to investigate the second Lebanon war, Gavison moved right, in a process which she describes in the following words: "For many years I had an unpleasant feeling that we were not being fair to Israel's Arab citizens. I will confess that, amid all the processes and events of recent years, in the light of their attitudes and those of their political leadership, my feeling of guilt toward them is gradually diminishing."

But the book's greatest disappointment is not Gavison - it's Kremnitzer. At one point he threatened to resign as the group's facilitator. That happened when it emerged that the Arab participants were refusing to accept the text defining Israel as a Jewish state.

"That was a moment of truth," Kremnitzer, a law professor, recalled afterward. "On this question the distance is vast and unbridgeable, both from the Jews' point of view and from the Arabs' point of view ...."

He tried to persuade the Arabs with politics: "Without an explicit statement concerning the state's Jewish character, the document will be shorn of most of its power to influence, because it will be perceived by the majority of the population as a list of demands or requests which are intended to strengthen the Arabs at the expense of Israel's character as a Jewish state."

He put forward a legal argument: anyone who does not recognize that this is a Jewish state is liable to act against it, in violation of the law. But at this point, the discussions went deeper, below the shell of politics and the law, and presented Kremnitzer with the need to examine the foundation of his identity. Committed to human and civil rights, a possible candidate for the Supreme Court, he clung to his identity as a Zionist. Everyone displayed good will and ignored the difficulty of defining who is a Jew, but at the moment of truth reverted to the first square of Zionism: a Jewish state.

Adel Manna summed up: "The discussion exposed the internal contradiction in people who define themselves as democrats and liberals. Effectively, they want two opposite things. On the one hand they want equality and democracy in Israel, while on the other they want the Arab population to recognize the character of the State of Israel, which is not democratic but anti-democratic, in return for various arrangements they [the Arabs] will be granted."

The belief in a Jewish and democratic Israel has made life pleasant for many Israelis, much like the belief in peace. In the crucible of the group of 20, that belief turned out to be an illusion, if not a fraud. In the meantime, more and more Israelis have also stopped believing in peace. A lot of disillusionment for one decade.

Nobody Can Deny: Iran does it again!

Holocaust Denial Is No Joke
The Iranian Holocaust conference is sordid and cynical, but we must take it seriously By Anne Applebaum (Slate, Dec. 12)

On Monday, the Iranian foreign ministry held an international conference. There's nothing unusual in that. Foreign ministries hold conferences, mostly dull ones, all the time. But this one was different. For one thing, the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust dealt with history, not current politics. Instead of the usual suspects—deputy ministers and the like—the invitees seem to have included David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader; Georges Thiel, a Frenchman who has called the Holocaust "an enormous lie"; and Fredrick Töben, a German-born Australian whose specialty is the denial of Nazi gas chambers. The guest list was selective: No one with any academic eminence, or indeed any scholarly credentials, was invited. One Palestinian scholar, Khaled Ksab Mahamid, was asked to come but was then barred because he holds an Israeli passport—and also perhaps because he, unlike other guests, believes that the Holocaust really did happen.

In response, the United States, Europe, and Israel expressed official outrage. The German government, to its credit, organized a counterconference. Still, many have kept their distance, refusing to be shocked or even especially interested. After all, the Holocaust ended more than six decades ago. Since then, the victims of the Holocaust have written hundreds of books, and the scholarship on the Holocaust has run into billions of words. There are films, photographs, documents, indeed whole archives dedicated to the history of the Nazi regime: We all know what happened. Surely Iran's denial cannot be serious.

Unfortunately, Iran is serious—or at least Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is deadly serious. Holocaust denial is his personal passion, not just a way of taunting Israel, and it's based in his personal interpretation of history. Earlier this year, in a distinctly eerie open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he lauded the great achievements of German culture and assaulted "the propaganda machinery after World War II that has been so colossal that [it] has caused some people to believe that they are the guilty party." Such views hearken back to the 1930s, when the then-Shah of Iran was an admirer of Hitler's notion of the "Aryan master race," to which Persians were meant to belong. Ahmadinejad himself counts as a mentor an early revolutionary who was heavily influenced by wartime Nazi propaganda. It shows.

Of course, Holocaust denial also has broader roots and many more adherents in the Middle East, which may be part of the point: Questioning the reality of the Holocaust has long been another means of questioning the legitimacy of the state of Israel, which was indeed created by the United Nations in response to the Holocaust, and which has indeed incorporated Holocaust history into its national identity. If the Shiite Iranians are looking for friends, particularly among Sunni Arabs, Holocaust denial isn't a bad way to find them.

And yet—this week's event has some new elements, too. This is, after all, an international conference, with foreign participants, formal themes ("How did the Zionists collaborate with Hitler?" for example), and a purpose that goes well beyond a mere denunciation of Israel. Because some former Nazi countries have postwar laws prohibiting Holocaust denial, Iran has declared this "an opportunity for thinkers who cannot express their views freely in Europe about the Holocaust." If the West is going to shelter Iranian dissidents, then Iran will shelter David Duke. If the West is going to pretend to support freedom of speech, then so will Iran. Heckled for the first time in many months by demonstrators at a rally yesterday, Ahmadinejad responded by calling the hecklers paid American agents: "Today, the worst type of dictatorship in the world is the American dictatorship, clothed in human rights." The American dictatorship, clothed in human rights spouting falsified history: It's the kind of argument you can hear quite often nowadays, in Iran as well as Russia and Venezuela, not to mention the United States.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that this particular brand of historical revisionism is no joke, and we shouldn't be tempted to treat it that way. Yes, we think we know this story already; we think we've institutionalized this memory; we think this particular European horror has been put to rest, and it is time to move on. I've sometimes thought that myself. There is so much other history to learn, after all. The 20th century was not lacking in tragedy.

And yet—the near-destruction of the European Jews in a very brief span of time by a sophisticated European nation using the best technology available was, it seems, an event that requires constant re-explanation, not least because it really did shape subsequent European and world history in untold ways. For that reason alone, the archives, the photographs, and the endless rebuttals will go on being necessary, long beyond the lifetime of the last survivor.

Anne Applebaum, a Washington Post and Slate columnist, is currently a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.
Copyright 2006 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

More on Arendt at NYU

There was much to like in this event. In particular, I appreciated the observations of Samantha Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner with her first book -- "' A Problem From Hell': America and the Age of Genocide" -- a professor of human rights at Harvard, and a leading authority on issues of international humanitarianism and the struggle for human rights. She is currently writing a biography of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ("the best the UN had to offer") who was killed in a pivotal attack by "Al Qaeda In Iraq," three years ago.

It was illuminating to hear how she had regarded the invasion of Iraq during the debate leading up to the war. Admitting today to having been only "half right," she had thought that overthrowing Saddam would benefit the Iraqis, but opposed it on the grounds that the illegality of the invasion would make the world a less safe place. She contrasted this with her former Harvard colleague and fellow writer on international human rights, Michael Ignatieff, who still wholeheartedly supports the decision to go to war.

Interestingly, Ignatieff has left the ivory tower of academia to be elected to parliament in his native Canada and was a major contender for the leadership of the Liberal party. Ms. Power was constantly checking her laptop for word from the Liberal party convention, happening even as she spoke. (It turned out that Ignatieff was the leading candidate who peaked at 45 percent and then lost when the second and third-place contenders joined forces on the next ballot.)

Because of their difference on Iraq, Ms. Power hoped that he would lose, but marvelled that an international human rights activist had turned to "real" politics and was coming close to being the main opposition leader, an election away from becoming the prime minister of a country. She, herself, has been serving as an advisor to Sen. Barack Obama on international humanitarian issues.

We also heard from Kanan Makiya, the Iraqi-born writer who now teaches at Brandeis University, speaking on a phone link from London. His "Republic of Fear," published in 1989, remains the classic text on the nature of the Saddamist regime. Makiya had been a Marxist in his youth who knew nothing of Arendt but later found much in her work to assist his evolution as a liberal thinker. He does not regret his early support for the invasion and still wishes that the international coalition had destroyed the Saddam regime in 1991. He contends that the draconian UN sanctions after 1991 had much to do with the present failure of Iraq to change itself for the better. Makiya's despair at the current situation was quite evident.

Makiya's respondent was the left-liberal journalist, Jonathan Schell. He backed up Makiya's somber assessment with the observation that "What is very black about Iraq is that the insurgency has no political agenda."

Earlier, in his turn as featured speaker, Jonathan Schell had made the counter-intuitive observation that Ronald Reagan had moved closer to the "Arendtian" ideal that superpowers are obsolete than Bill Clinton. Schell discussed how Reagan and Gorbachev had come tantalizingly close to eliminating nuclear weapons at the Reykjavik Summit of 1986.

I was charmed by Azar Nafisi, author of the acclaimed "Reading Lolita in Teheran," who spoke on the crimes of the Islamic Republic of Iran, viewed through the lessons taught by Hannah Arendt in "The Origins of Totalitarianism." Iran is a difficult subject to analyze from the point of view of totalitarian theory. She emphasized that "Iran is a self-critical and vibrant society... there is a vibrant civil society," but the regime itself has a totalitarian impulse. The totalitarian state "makes victims complicit in their victimization," compelling people to parrot its view of the world.

As she sees it, just as critics have "fabricated a picture of Arendt and constructed stories around it," so have they taken the notion of the Iranian revolution and ignorantly accepted it as "Islamic." "How dare we not protest evils against girls and women," because of the contention that it's "their culture."

Along with China, Iran executes many more people than any other country. One horror she described relates to the practice of raping virgins before execution, because virgins are believed to go to heaven. She recounted such a situation with the rapist even visiting the parents of the executed victim, declaring himself to be their daughter's "bridegroom." Routinely, this regime would send fanatical supporters to the homes of "martyrs" killed in the war with Iraq, celebrating their "martyrdom" and denying the family their right to grieve.

Ms. Nafisi made it clear that she is not right-wing, announcing her opposition to the Iraq war and her hope that Ignatieff loses his political contest. She mentioned that some people are so stereotypic in their thinking that she, herself, has been accused of starting the war; one such critic felt vindicated upon finding Bernard Lewis included among her acknowledgments. "They read acknowledgments, not books," she exclaimed in exasperation.

Nafisi is a gentle iconoclast unusual for our polarized time. It's a shame that so many people need to be reminded that, "Just because you see Bush as bad, this doesn't make Ahmadinejad good." She warned also of the "belittling of thought" -- of "knowledge being replaced by facts."

I remember Ms. Nafisi fondly from her speech at the YIVO and New Republic-sponsored conference on antisemitism, three years ago; she is someone whose liberal passion and humane judgment are beyond question. She also admitted very warmly after, how she, a Muslim, feels so comfortable being surrounded by Jews as her friends and colleagues. She is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, where she teaches and is director of the Dialogue Project at the Foreign Policy Institute.

The Academy's Anti-Israel Imperative

Even when not explicitly on the agenda, knocking Israel seems to be a favorite pastime in the academy nowadays. I recently attended two events at New York University. One was a conference over the weekend of Dec. 2-3, honoring the legacy of Hannah Arendt on the hundredth anniversary of her birth. The other, which I will discuss at another time, was a speech by the outspoken NYU historian, Tony Judt.

Arendt was a controversial and complex character -- a political philosopher and vocal social critic, whose most contentious work was probably "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." It stemmed from her observations at the momentous trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel in 1963, which she covered as a correspondent for The New Yorker magazine. She's probably been attacked as much or more for the subtitle as the content of her book.

She did not truly regard either Eichmann or evil as "banal," but insisted on regarding this gray emissary of death in human terms, not as a demonic "other" radically apart from the rest of us. He was a bureaucratic careerist, who made sure that the trains ran on time to the death camps and was possibly not even antisemitic in a personal sense.

Arendt's book included an indictment of the Jewish Councils, the Jewish community leaders ensnared by the Nazis into collaborating in the Holocaust. In placing them on the same continuum of evil as Eichmann, she may have gone too far in blaming the victims, but I'll have to read her more closely before passing judgment. The judgment she passed on the Jews, however, was too harsh for some critics to bear. But as someone who fearlessly (or brazenly) confronted us with the moral imperative to take responsibility for our actions, she became an heroic figure to many others who read her.

What doesn't help her with many stalwart Jews is that she is also on record as a critic of Zionism. But, as the screening of an interview conducted with her made clear, after leaving Nazi Germany for Paris, she worked with great dedication and satisfaction for Youth Aliya, preparing young German and Polish Jews to move to Palestine in the 1930s. Then she emigrated to the US where she helped make the New School for Social Research (along with other exiled Jewish academics) into a pioneering institution.

A number of great Jewish-refugee minds from this period are honored in certain intellectual circles, not only for their academic work, but also for supposedly being critics or opponents of Zionism. Most of this is anti-Zionist wishful thinking or exaggeration; for example, Albert Einstein probably preferred a dovish stand toward the Arabs, but he was a renowned supporter of Zionism and Israel. The same can be said of the famed theologian-philosopher Martin Buber, who definitely was a peacenik, but spent nearly half of his long life as an oleh in Palestine and Israel.

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl is a psychoanalyst who has written two books on Hannah Arendt. She co-organized the Arendt program at NYU. I missed her presentation early in the conference, but I did catch her later. She articulated a psychoanalytic theory of "Israeli militarism" that Israelis obsessively repeat the trauma of persecution or the Shoah with the goal of "getting it right this time." I don't appreciate this reductionist and caustic way of thinking about Israel's predicament.

This statement was made at a session with Rony Brauman, the writer for a film on the Eichmann trial, "The Specialist." His main claim to fame was as president of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) from 1982 to 1994, when MSF withdrew from humanitarian efforts in Ethiopia and in eastern Zaire/Congo; both were situations that implicated humanitarian organizations in politically-induced crises. His discussion focused upon the need for taking responsible decisions under morally difficult circumstances, something that made him find inspiration in the work of Arendt.

For whatever reason, Mr. Brauman had to add that he, a secular Jew, was "not Zionist" (supposedly like Arendt). During his rambling presentation, in his halting English, Brauman even gratuitously made the bizarre claim that the 1967 war was caused by Israel being a nuclear power.

At the following and final session, another difficult moment occurred for me when Steven Wasserman, a New York literary agent, recounted Arendt's response to Gershom Scholem's accusation that she didn't "love the Jewish people." Her response was that she couldn't love the Jewish people or any people -- an abstract entity -- because this makes no sense.

In the Q & A, I indicated that I knew what Arendt meant logically, but that she was ignoring the deep sentiment that Scholem expressed. Was he really wrong in feeling "love" for his people? And, at any rate, he was simply a scholar of Jewish mysticism; he didn't do anything wrong.

Wasserman responded that Scholem wasn't such an innocent; he had tried to get the refugee-intellectual Walter Benjamin to join him in immigrating to Palestine. At which point I quickly interjected, "And this would have saved his life." Wasserman had to admit that to be true.

On the panel with Wasserman was Walter Mosley, the famed writer of crime stories. In responding positively to my complaint, he reminded the audience that he's Jewish on his mother's side, as well as African-American via his father. Mosley said that people have the right to identify as they want, but sooner or later the reality of who you are tends to hit you in the face.

Now Wasserman is not exactly a cold non-Jewish Jew and he indicated that Arendt was not either -- that she was actually proud to be a Jew. Wasserman recommended a new anthology by Pantheon Books of Arendt's "Jewish Writings," due to be released in January. He also recalled seeing a seven-hour German film on Hitler some years back in LA (he edited the Los Angeles Times Book Review for a decade until last year) and going to the men's room to find himself at a urinal next to Walter Matthau (the now deceased comedic actor) -- to whom he exclaimed in wonderment, "Nu, two Jews seeing a film about Hitler!" Matthau explained that he never missed a film about Hitler; Wasserman's point was that it's too bad that only Jews seem interested in Hitler.

But Wasserman still felt compelled to express a visceral hostility toward Zionism, which emerged awkwardly as if he objected to people saving themselves from the Holocaust. Whether it's Mr. Wasserman or Hannah Arendt, intellectuals can be so high-minded and lofty in their criticisms, that they are blind to the realities on the ground.