Mofaz, peacemaker? 'We have to find a solution'

Pres. Obama drops in on meeting with Mofaz, June 21. (Photo by Pete Souza)

Even if he has his way, we have yet to see if the "centrist" approach associated with Shaul Mofaz, the recently elected leader of the Kadima party and Netanyahu's new deputy prime minister and coalition partner, would be bold enough to move the two-state solution back on track; for example, he has suggested a Palestinian state within temporary boundaries, to be expanded after negotiations are complete.  But the more positive attitude of Mofaz toward peacemaking won him a surprise audience a couple of days ago with Pres. Obama.  The following is from a JTA news service article by correspondent Ron Kampeas, "Mofaz grabs Washington’s attention for peace talks talk, but is Netanyahu listening?"

.... The question is whether the former Israeli military chief of staff and defense minister has the ear of the person whose opinion matters most from the Israeli perspective: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The joining of Mofaz to his government provides a stable platform to proceed toward the two-state solution,” Gilad Sher, a former top negotiator with the Palestinians, told JTA. “But it all depends on what's happening within one person's mind, and that person is our prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu.”
Yet, he added, "[With Mofaz] there is a better chance for this coalition to at least try to move towards a direction that would be more specifically oriented to a two-state solution. ...”

The News Is Mostly Bad

Not such good news friends.  First, READ THIS excellent piece, "The Third IntIfada Is Inevitable," a NY Times opinion.

And this one is a real downer too---Prof. Alon Ben-Meir's newest thoughts on Syria.

All very sobering.  And meanwhile the Social Protestors in Israel are trying to activate the people again, and arrests are taking place. Interesting to read how many policeman there are identifying with the protestors.  

--Lilly Rivlin

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New Settler Housing Undermines Peace Prospects

This is from a Huffington Post article by Hagit Ofran, director of  the Settlement Watch project for Israel's Shalom Achshav/Peace Now organization:

Alice Walker boycotts Hebrew edition of her book

This is a June 20 Associated Press story entitled, "Alice Walker rejects Israeli translation of book":   

American writer Alice Walker won’t let an Israeli publisher release a new Hebrew edition of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Color Purple,’’ saying she objects to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.
Walker, an ardent pro-Palestinian activist, said in a letter to Yediot Books that Israel practices “apartheid’’ and must change its policies before her works can be published there.
“I would so like knowing my books are read by the people of your country, especially by the young and by the brave Israeli activists (Jewish and Palestinian) for justice and peace I have had the joy of working beside,’’ she wrote in the letter, obtained by The Associated Press. “I am hopeful that one day, maybe soon, this may happen. But now is not the time.’’

There was something sweet in that last paragraph from Ms. Walker.  I don't believe she's really a hater of Jews, especially considering that she married one; they divorced "amicably," ten years later, according to Wikipedia. But her obsession with Israel and Jewish issues is more than a little annoying. 

Beinart's 'Crisis of Zionism'

Peter Beinart

Having just completed Peter Beinart's book, The Crisis of Zionism, I emerge with a mix of feelings over this important work. Although his analysis is quite good in spots, Beinart--along with most of our dovish pro-Israel camp--may understate the extent to which episodes of Palestinian violence (e.g., Hamas and Islamic Jihad attacks during the 1990s, the frightful toll on Israelis of the Second Intifada, and the intermittent rocket and other attacks from Gaza following Israel's unilateral withdrawal in 2005) have undermined Israeli trust in the utility of peacemaking.

But his depiction of the failures at Camp David in 2000, the pernicious and inexorable advances of the settlement movement and the ways in which Prime Minister Netanyahu resists a deal that would require a major curtailment of settlements, humbling Pres. Obama in the process---all seem spot on.  Since a deal has especially been possible after Abbas replaced Arafat as president of the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League has been offering a regional peace since 2002, this is all very sad and maddening.

Integrating Arabs into Israeli Society

At an Inter Agency Task Force on Israeli-Arab Issues event on Monday June 18^th, Ifat Baron, social change activist, introduced her presentation on Information Technology in Israel by noting that Israel loses up to 8.9 billion US dollars annually due to low economic participation of its minority citizens. In the room filled with businessmen and women, brought together by a shared connection to Israel, such a statistic silenced the crowd. Baron continued to explain the lack of Arab and orthodox integration into the national economy: “right now,” she said, “Israel has two economies,” the thriving Israeli market, and its sinking Arab counterpart” as well as multiple cultural groups. Baron asserted that this disconnect will cause economic and social problems in Israel’s future if the government does not address the issue.  Economically, Israel will not continue to prosper with the Arab sector lagging behind. Additionally, Israel’s domestic security relies on an integrated society.

As a result, Ifat Baron has taken matters into her own hands, through a company called IT Works.  IT Works is “an independent charity providing technological and vocational training and job placement programs for disadvantaged populations throughout Israel.” According to Baron, only 200 out of 3,000 Arabs that graduate college find job placements despite the fact that there are 8,000 to 10,000 positions available yearly. Less than 1% of those working in the IT sector are Arab. Ifat addresses the structural issues inhibiting Arab economic integration by spearheading job placement programs that train minority groups in Israel. These programs incorporate vocation education courses, resume, cover letter and interview workshops, and coaching designed to build confidence in the participants. The programs address the Arab minority, but has also expanded to include women, disabled and other ethnic minorities. All of programs have been extremely successful; they have certified of employees for work and very high employment rate upon program completion.

Jerome Chanes Reviews 'Out of Palestine'

Writing in The Forward where he's a contributing editor, Jerome A. Chanes, our resident historian, is enthusiastic about Out of Palestine: The Making of Modern Israel.  
The author, Hadara Lazar, is an Israeli novelist who conducted "dozens of interviews with military, civilian and political actors from the Arab, British and Jewish communities to tease out a social, political and military history of 1940s Palestine. Almost the entire book consists of direct quotes...."

It's not that he finds her work flawless, as he notes in a comment on the historical antecedents of a Zionist stream (Hashomer Hatzair and Mapam) that our own organization feels kinship with:

Lazar is not always sure-footed when it comes to historical detail. The Palmach was not simply a function of the Haganah paramilitary force, as Lazar suggests; rather, it came out of deep ideological struggles between the regnant socialist Mapai party, which generated the Haganah, and the more radical leftist Ahdut Ha-Avodah and Hashomer Hatzair kibbutzim, from which emerged the “Plugot Machatz,” or “Striking Forces” of the Yishuv — the Palmach. [Ahdut Ha-Avodah and Hashomer Hatzair merged in 1948 to form Mapam, a predecessor of Meretz.]

Human Rights NGO's = 'Israel's Best Friends'

Forward photo (from Getty Images) and caption: Israel’s government regularly violates international law. By holding the government to account, watchdogs are protecting Israel from greater dangers down the road, Naomi Chazan writes.

Our friend, Naomi Chazan, a former Meretz MK and deputy speaker of the Knesset, is often in the news as president of the New Israel Fund.  In a new op-ed in The Jewish Daily Forward, she argues that “By constantly reminding our government of its obligations according to international law, and of the human, legal and moral cost of 45 years of occupation, human rights activists are guarding the last barrier against Israel’s complete global marginalization.”

New interview with Norman Finkelstein

Norman Finkelstein as pictured at Tablet site (by Jeremy Liebman)

The radical gadfly, Norman Finkelstein, was interviewed extensively the other day for a surprising venue: the centrist Jewish online magazine Tablet.  It's a long piece, but worth a look.

Finkelstein tends to be an absolutist rather than a detached scholar, but it was wrong for Prof. Alan Dershowitz to hound him, even supporting his ouster from DePaul University.  Hopefully, DePaul decided his case for tenure on his merits alone.

You may click on the following embedded titles for this blog's posts about Finkelstein over the years:

Finkelstein Tenure Debate

Norman Finkelstein supports Israel (sort of)

Finkelstein’s embrace of Hezbollah

'Inside Israel's Religious-Secular Culture War'

The other week, our fellow board member, historian Jerome Chanes, published a well-informed essay in New York's Jewish Week newspaper on the growing numbers and power of the Haredim, the utlra-Orthodox, in Israel.  Also in the same paper's "Israel Now" supplement is "What's The 'Jewish' In Jewish State?" by the CEO of the New Israel Fund, Daniel Sokatch, on the problem that non-Orthodox Jews (a majority of Israel's population) do not have full religious equality.

But it should be noted that non-Orthodox rabbis have just won a double-barreled advance for religious pluralism (albeit limited) with the Attorney General's ruling to grant a Reform rabbi the right to a state salary, coupled with another Reform rabbi taking membership in a regional religious council, pursuant to a 2009 High Court decision---rights heretofore granted only to Orthodox rabbis.   The other articles in this special section also deal with the issue of diversity or the lack of same in how Judaism is regarded in Israel.

How to write [about] anti-semitism

Wilhelm Marr, inventor of 'antisemitism'

To start on a note that may strike some as trivial or pedantic, I favor writing "antisemitism" in the British way, as one word without a hyphen.  Antisemitism--a term invented by a 19th century German (Wilhelm Marr) to label his Jew-hating belief system--is an ideology, but "semitism" is not; there is no such thing as "semitism."  Furthermore, antisemitism is not about the hatred of all people who speak a Semitic language---the linguistic family that includes Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic; to speak of "Semites" and "Aryans" as distinct ethnic groups or "races" is (whether inadvertently or not) to accept the Nazis' racist classification system.  Consequently, it's not a misnomer to refer to Arabs who hate Jews as antisemites---as some people, who downplay the problem of antisemitism, claim.

A longtime board member of ours, Jerome Chanes, a historian and contributing editor of The Forward, has recently written a review of the latest in the epic list of books on the subject.  He concludes with the common understanding that this is a problem of non-Jews, not a Jewish problem as such.  I know what he means, of course, but I disagree slightly. 

Yes, among hardcore antisemites, Jews are guilty of something bad regardless of what they do.  Such people cannot even accept Jews when they convert to Christianity, or when they are completely assimilated into the non-Jewish majority culture, eschewing any interest in or attachment to a community of self-affirming Jews.  But antisemitism becomes a dangerous affliction when these bigots are able to stir up the passions of otherwise non-fanatical non-Jews by pointing to real or imagined wrong-doing by Jews. 

Such is what happened in recent years when the widely disseminated visuals of the Second Intifada and of the Israeli military response inspired antisemitic outbursts against European Jews

Madonna's 'Concert for Peace'

I was at the Madonna “Concert for Peace” last Thursday night (at the Ramat Gan national soccer stadium). No, I wouldn’t have paid for a ticket, but since she contributed 600 tickets to Israeli and Palestinian NGOs working for peace, as a gesture of support, two to each organization, I went.  These were my impressions [published in their entirety as "Madonna for Peace" at the Times of Israel website]:

“You can’t be a fan of mine and not want peace in the world,” declared Madonna to a crowd of some 30,000 enthusiastic fans in Tel Aviv last night. The singer and general phenomenon chose to open her current world tour in Israel, at the Ramat Gan National Soccer stadium on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, because, as she explained in a mid-concert speech, “the conflict in the Middle East has been going on for generations, for thousands of years,” and “if there is peace in the Middle East, there can be peace in the whole world.”

Madonna at Ramat Gan stadium (photo by Flash90)

She chose to call the event a “Concert for Peace,” and gave out 600 free tickets to the 100 civil society organizations of the Palestinian-Israeli Peace NGO Forum, which comprises 60 Israeli and 40 Palestinian peace, human rights, interfaith and democracy organizations.

.... A special gallery on the side of the stage was built to host the peace activists, with a big sign hanging over the railing, facing the general audience: “Working for Peace – the Peace Organizations’ Forum.” About half of the activists in the section were Israeli; the other half Palestinian. Also present were the two co-chairs of the Peace NGO Forum, the Israeli Dr. Ron Pundak, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, and Palestinian journalist and veteran activist Saman Khoury, a co-architect of the Geneva Accord.

Yael Dayan speaks (45 years after 6 Day War)

Yael Dayan

Moshe Dayan's multi-talented daughter, Yael--the author of seven books (including five novels), editor of one, former Labor Member of Knesset for over ten years, a one-time deputy mayor of Tel Aviv and currently chair of the city council of Tel Aviv (the latter two as a member of Meretz)--appeared in Manhattan on June 3rd, at an event organized by B'Tselem USA, the US office of the Israeli NGO working for human rights in the occupied territories, and co-sponsored by Partners and Americans for Peace Now. I remember Uri Zaki, B'Tselem USA's director, from his days as head of the youth section of Israel's Meretz party.  

Prior to listening to the great singer/activist David Broza perform and Ms. Dayan speak, I was approached by a young publicist on whether I'd write about the event. She mentioned coverage in connection with "the anniversary," but I had to be reminded that June 5th marked 45 years since the beginning of the Six Day War; she referred to it as the beginning of "the occupation."  I don't disagree, but while I look upon the resulting occupation as a great misfortune for both Palestinians and Israelis, I know that the military victory was absolutely necessary (a subject I will return to shortly).

Uri Zaki looks on as Dayan speaks (photo by Tamar Latzman).

Yael Dayan regards all of Israel's wars following the Yom Kippur War of 1973 (launched by Egypt and Syria to reverse Israel's victory in '67) as "choice wars" rather than defensive. She spoke in a casual, witty and knowledgeable way on the dangers to Israel's democratic and Jewish character in the situation today, with the current ascendency of intolerant nationalist and ultra-religious forces.  And she advised liberal American Jews to stand up for what they believe: "Don't let Israel stand between you and your sense of right and wrong."  

She mused on the euphoria following Israel's great victory in '67, when most Israelis felt that they finally held territorial assets they could trade for peace.  During the Q & A, I was delighted to be able to ask her about an aspect of history, which she knows directly through her famous father, the iconic Israeli general and politician with an eye patch (he had lost an eye on a mission in Syria during World War II).

Attacks on African Refugees Shame Israel

Haaretz photo by Daniel Bar-On

When Yael Dayan, chair of the Tel Aviv city council, spoke at an event co-sponsored by Partners in New York City on June 3rd, she was somewhat reluctant to use the term "pogrom" (coined when mobs murdered many Jews in the waning decades of the Russian Empire)  to characterize the violence against African asylum seekers who live in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv.  But it wasn't for lack of concern  over what was described by the Israeli collective of activist photographers, Active Stills, as "a racist mob [roaming] the streets chanting racist slogans, setting garbage on fire, attacking African shops & bars and hunting down Africans after a demonstration against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv's Hatikva neighborhood on May 23, 2012."  

She spoke with compassion for the approximately 60,000 refugees from Sudan, South Sudan and Eritrea who live a marginal existence in poor quarters, mostly in Tel Aviv, and are generally denied work permits.  She says that Israel is obligated as a signatory to the international convention on human rights to take them in, but that they are given no real governmental assistance.  And she indicates that it's not a surprise that extremists in the pro-settler movement and in some political parties have made statements inciting hatred and violence.

In the statement of J Street's president Jeremy Ben-Ami, entitled "Incitement in Tel Aviv," he also applauds mainstream Israeli and Jewish leaders for their condemnation of the violence:

Renewal of Social Protest Movement

So I was there Saturday night.  This is from what I wrote about it in the online "Times of Israel":

There was a lot of energy in the air in Tel Aviv last night, as over 10,000 demonstrators gathered at Habima Square, next to Rothschild Boulevard, where it all began in the summer of 2011. Smaller demonstrations also took place in Haifa and Jerusalem. ...

People were equipped with pots and pans, banging away to accompany the rhythmic shouts of “The people demand social justice.” Blue and white Israeli flags mingled with red flags of the revolution and green flags of the Meretz Party. Signs demanded a return of the welfare state, “We are the 99%!” echoing the slogan of the Occupy movement around the world, and a number of demonstrators even carried an iconic tent, recalling the tent cities that sprouted like mushrooms in Tel Aviv and throughout the country last year.

…. Some speakers sent barbs to the leadership: “Has anyone seen (Kadima leader) Shaul Mofaz in the audience, who claimed after he was elected that ‘he would lead the protest movement’?! And Ehud Barak, who [like Mofaz] was elected as head of the Labor Party to be an opposition to the government and its policies, and then stole the seats to create the Atzmaut Party and remain in government? And what about Prime Minister Netanyahu, who called for elections and then beat a hasty retreat?” ….