Israelis Condemn Racist Attack in Jerusalem

Our thanks to Lilly Rivlin for informing us of this commentary by Anat Hoffman, a former Meretz member of the Jerusalem city council who now serves as executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center.  This JTA op-ed begins with a mention of Lilly's cousin, Reuven Rivlin:

Anat Hoffman

After Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (a leader in the Likud party) visited 17-year-old Jamal Julany, one of the victims of the racist attack in Zion Square he apologized to the victim: "We are sorry... It is hard to see you hospitalized because of an inconceivable act… What happened is the responsibility of every leader and Member of Knesset." 
 


.... An honest evaluation will reveal that this unprovoked attack on three Arab youths by dozens of Israeli teenagers is part of a phenomenon much broader than the character of these youths. It is a result of the chronology of prolonged government tolerance towards Jewish religious extremism and its manifestations and of the Israeli government's tacit acceptance of racist incitement towards Israel’s Arab minority by certain members of Knesset and a number of extreme Orthodox rabbis. 


More on Bernard Lewis

Friends, last week I put out an email on Bernard Lewis' work.  Three of the people on my list, Theo Pavlidis, Alan McCornick and Jack Eisenberg, responded.  Here they are (with Pavlidis first):

My point is not that Islam allows separation of church and  state,

because traditional Islam does not. My point is that for millennia

Christianity did not allow that either. For many "Christian" countries

this is still the case. When the military junta was in power in Greece

(1967-74) Christian civil servants had to attend church on Sunday

or they would lose their job. The following text is part of the last chapter of my notes for the Middle East course that I teach

(see http://www.theopavlidis.com/MidEast/part90.htm for the full text).

End of Bitterlemons.org: Woe are we

I am sending this out because it is a sad day because bitterlemons has announced that they are closing down.  It is sad because Yossi Alpher and Ghassan Khatib, the Israeli and Palestinian co-editors of this unique website are giving up.  As Yossi Alpher says in his essay "Why we are closing", "the explanation is not disconnected from what is transpiring around us in the Middle East and globally."  We are in a new paradigm, and it is right wing and messianic.  I am beyond worried, but I refuse to despair.  It is not good for your health.-- Lilly

bitterlemons.org August 27, 2012 Edition 17 Palestinian-Israeli Crossfire Beyond bitterlemons • Why we are closing  - Yossi Alpher The explanation is not disconnected from what is transpiring around us in the Middle East and globally.  • The arc of the pendulum  - Ghassan Khatib My hope was that bitterlemons would provide a venue for the Palestinian voice to be heard. At our website, www.bitterlemons.org, you will also find past editions, an extensive documents file and information about us, along with relevant subscription information.

Abbas to Meretz: He's Still for 2 States

Abbas flanked by Gal-On (left), and Vilan, Oron, Horowitz. (Photo by Roy Yellin)

On Sunday, Aug. 26, Zahava Gal-On led a Meretz party delegation (including our old friend, Avshalom Vilan) in a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Abbas in Ramallah.  Abbas stated that a PA bid at the UN for "statehood" status is not meant to circumvent the need for negotiations with Israel to establish a two-state solution. This is how the Times of Israel begins its report:  

The Palestinian Authority’s plan to ask the United Nations to recognize Palestine as a non-member state is not a replacement for peace talks with Israel but meant to keep alive the two-state solution, PA President Mahmoud Abbas told a group of prominent Israeli leftwing politicians on Sunday.

Despite a freeze in high-level contacts between Israel and the PA, two MKs from the left-wing Meretz party met Abbas in his Ramallah headquarters. Along with Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On, the delegation included MK Nitzan Horowitz and former Meretz MKs Haim Oron, Avshalom Vilan and Mossi Raz, as well as Ilan Baruch, Gal-On’s policy adviser and a former Israeli ambassador to South Africa.

“We want peaceful coexistence with Israel,” Abbas told Gal-On. “Our appeal to the UN is not a substitute for negotiations but rather a means to keep alive the option of a two-state solution.”

Terror Still Casts Its Shadow

Eeta Prince-Gibson is an Israeli freelance journalist who once was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Report.  Her NY Times op-ed the other day, "Touring Terror in Jerusalem," reminds us of the political and human costs of failing to achieve peace, and the danger looming of giving up on this vital goal today:  

....
... Jerusalemites .... prefer to think that we’ve recovered from the fear and dread that took over our lives from 2000 to 2005, when terror attacks throughout Israel began to subside. The period that Israelis — in a combination of desperation and fatalism referred to as “the situation” — began [the day after] Sept. 28, 2000, when the then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Al Aqsa mosque on the holy site in Old Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, setting off the wave of violence that came to be known as the Second Intifada.
From that September day through the beginning of Operation “Cast Lead,” when the Israel Defense Forces invaded Gaza on Dec. 27, 2008, 6,651 people were killed — 5,524 Palestinians, 1,063 Israelis and 64 foreign citizens, according to figures compiled by B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. More than 10,000 people were wounded.
Between 2000 and 2005, there were 1,048 suicide attacks against Israel, of which 903 were thwarted by Israeli security forces, according to data compiled by the Jewish Virtual Library. ...

Will Israel Attack Iran?

Jody Rudoren, the NY Times' still relatively new Jerusalem bureau chief, continues to make her mark directly, through her byline.  In this piece, she unveils a view that Israel's saber rattling has been meant as pressure on the United States to commit to stronger measures against Iran's nuclear development, including a pledge of military action by mid-2013 if Iran crosses certain "red lines."  If so, Israel's beating of war drums makes sense as a strategy.  This dovetails with what I've blogged previously on the urgent need for the US and Israel to more closely coordinate regarding Iran, to both allay the danger of Israel freelancing and to more effectively deal with the Iranian nuclear challenge. 

Rudoren quotes Israel’s recently resigned national security advisor, Uzi Dayan, that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have not yet decided to strike Iran, but are trying to “pressure the Obama administration and the international community” for tougher measures: 

While Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak have been criticized as “messianic” in their thinking on the Iranian nuclear issue and are widely viewed as ready, if not eager, to take military action to stop it, Mr. Dayan said they would prefer that the United States led any attack, even if that meant waiting until after the November presidential election. But “they have to make the decision whether to strike or not before November,” he said, so they need to hear from Mr. Obama “in the coming two weeks, in the coming month.”

In the meantime, the BBC and The Forward picked up blogger Richard Silverstein's publication of a document detailing a 4-step Israeli attack plan.  If this is not a complete fabrication, it is either a

Meretz Meets PA Leaders in Ramallah

Dr. Nabil Shaath addresses Meretz delegation.

For the first time in many years I went to Ramallah, together with a group of around 70 Meretz activists, to meet with senior Palestinian spokesperson Dr. Nabil Shaath in the Muqata, which most of us remember as Arafat’s headquarters during the 2^nd intifada. The very timely and I think important encounter was initiated and organized by Dr. Meir Margalit, a Meretz member of the Jerusalem Municipal Council.

Since the encounter took place during Ramadan, the Palestinians apologized for their inability to display their usual gastronomic hospitality, but since this was just the first of a series of meetings, they promised to compensate in the future. Here is a link to my description of the encounter that I published in The Times of Israel:   

Nabil Shaath: “The Palestinians Still Committed to Two States”                                                                                                                                   

Dr. Shaath speaks with Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Alau.

Hillel Schenker 

Co-Editor

Palestine-Israel Journal

POBox 19839, Jerusalem

972-2-6282115       

www.pij.org

George Friedman: 'The Israeli Crisis'

If you like playing chess, you may like this article.  It is an analysis of Israel's strategic crisis.  [While we disagree with George Friedman of Stratfor on dealing with the Palestinians, this focus on Israel's military-strategic options hints at the need for Israel to embark upon more creative political thinking.]  The following is from Friedman's conclusion: 

.... Israel's ability to influence events on its borders was never great, but events taking place in bordering countries are now completely beyond its control. While Israeli policy has historically focused on the main threat, using the balance of power to stabilize the situation and ultimately on the decisive use of military force, it is no longer possible to identify the main threat. There are threats in all of its neighbors, including Jordan (where the kingdom's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood is growing in influence while the Hashemite monarchy is reviving relations with Hamas). This means using the balance of power within these countries to create secure frontiers is no longer an option. It is not clear there is a faction for Israel to support or a balance that can be achieved. Finally, the problem is political rather than military. The ability to impose a political solution is not available. ...

The occupation therefore continues, with the Palestinians holding the initiative. Unrest begins when they want it to begin and takes the form they want it to have within the limits of their resources. The Israelis are in a responsive mode. They can't eradicate the Palestinian threat. Extensive combat in Gaza, for example, has both political consequences and military limits. Occupying Gaza is easy; pacifying Gaza is not.

NPR: Will Israel Annex Area C of West Bank?

National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program featured a report on events in the West Bank.  The IDF plan to evict hundreds of Palestinian villagers to use the area for a firing range, a decision in which Defense Minister Ehud Barak must play an important role, undercutting his stated concern for Israel to reach an accord with the Palestinian Authority.  This NPR report by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro begins as follows:

Demolition of Palestinian home (Abed Al Hashlamoun/EPA/Lando

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been frozen for almost two years.  But ... that doesn't mean events aren't happening on the ground.  Recently, the Israeli military issued orders calling for evacuation and demolition of nearly a dozen Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank. Palestinians see this as evidence of Israeli plans to annex the territory, though Israel denies this.
....
The Israeli military, though, says it needs the area for a firing range, and it's pushing to get the villagers out through the Israeli courts.

Barak & Netanyahu Differ Re Palestinians

Sunday's cabinet meeting (photo by Alex Kolomvisky)

This news analysis in Haaretz about last Sunday's meeting of Israel's cabinet shows that, despite being in lockstep regarding Iran, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak differ significantly regarding the Palestinians.  Barak articulates the need for Israel to negotiate an agreement or at least come to an accommodation with the Palestinian Authority, while Netanyahu seems disdainful of this possibility:

....
During a debate on anti-Israel incitement in the Palestinian media that took place on Sunday morning, Barak said, "the issue of incitement is very important, but it is only part of the broader picture."
"I suggest that we convene the security cabinet and debate between us the Palestinian issue, the meaning of the stalled peace process, and ways that we can progress," he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not directly respond to Barak, although he revealed the differences of opinion ... in his closing remarks at the end of the meeting.

No to War with Iran!

Following last night’s first of many demonstrations outside of Ehud Barak’s apartment in Tel Aviv, I published a blog post, with the above title, in The Times of Israel (reproduced here in part):

Barak & Sect. Clinton in July (Handout/Getty Images Europe)

Last night a few hundred angry and worried demonstrators gathered outside Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s luxury apartment in a new hi-rise building in the heart of Tel Aviv to protest against the possibility of an Israeli-initiated war with Iran. ....
In my neighborhood, and as I wander around Tel Aviv, people are anxious about all the war talk, and they really don’t understand what is going on.
The weekend scare headlines declared “Netanyahu and Barak are Determined to Attack Iran in the Fall” (Yediot Aharonot).  And yesterday Netanyahu asked for and received more executive powers from his cabinet.
And yet we are told that the entire current senior security echelon – IDF Chief of Staff General Benny Gantz, Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel, Mossad Head Tamir Perdo and Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, are opposed, though they are not allowed to speak about this in public.  Recently retired heads of the security establishment, who can speak in public, including former Chief-of-Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former Mossad Head Meir Dagan and former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin have all spoken out strongly against the move.  And they have been joined by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and head of the opposition Shaul Mofaz, also a former Chief of Staff.  Even the majority of the eight members of Netanyahu’s inner cabinet,  Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon, another former Chief of Staff, and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Intelligence and Atomic Energy Dan Meridor, are opposed.
Most importantly, President Barack Obama and all of his representatives have repeatedly stated that there is still time for the combination of sanctions and determined diplomacy to work. ....

On Jewish 'Self-Hatred'

To start with, I don't believe that anti-Zionist or anti-Israel Jewish activists are literally hating themselves.  Israel has engaged in quite enough wrong-doing and morally questionable policies to explain their way of thinking.  Yet I still see Jewish self-hatred as having credibility as an analytic concept, and perhaps in explaining the vehemence of many such views.  

Raphael Magarik's article in The Forward, "Self-Hatred as Self-Help," reviews On the Origins of Jewish Self-Hatred by Paul Reitter (Princeton University Press). The young Magarik is described as "a freelance writer, luftmensch and soon-to-be Dorot fellow in Israel." The book he reviews looks at so-called Jewish self-hatred as having begun as a kind of intellectual parlor game or pretentious "code" employed by Austro-German-Jewish cultural elites hob-nobbing and squabbling with each other in cafe society.  

But this phenomenon should be seriously examined apart from this tiny self-referential setting, and also as apart from the condemnatory lens of right-wing ideologues like the Jerusalem Post columnist and blogger Isi Liebler who abuse the term to attack liberal and left-leaning Israelis and Jews.  In the case of Liebler, he explicitly denies doing this, even as he does it: i.e., he concludes his "self-hatred" screed by warning against applying this term "indiscriminately against naïve well-meaning 'bleeding hearts' or legitimate critics of Israeli policies with whom we may disagree."  Yet in the scores of columns and blog posts I'm aware of, Liebler almost never grants legitimacy to such critics.

Alarms grow of Israel bombing Iran nuke program

Here's a brief list of recent alarming headlines (with links to the articles on Haaretz online), beginning with this by the Meretz-supporting writer, David Grossman:

As Netanyahu pushes Israel closer to war with Iran, Israelis cannot keep silent 
'Why aren't ministers and defense officials standing up right now, when it is still possible, and saying: We will not be a party to this megalomaniacal vision, to this messianic-catastrophic worldview?'

Israeli official says Netanyahu's top ministers haven't discussed Iran in months

By Reuters and Haaretz | Aug. 03, 2012 

Ex-Mossad chief said what should be clear to everyone – Israel has never been so close to attacking Iran By Anshel Pfeffer | Aug. 03, 2012 

Israeli strike would only delay Iran's nuclear program by two years

By Amos Harel | Aug. 03, 2012 

Netanyahu: If Israel attacks Iran, I will take responsibility for the consequences

By Barak Ravid | Aug. 03, 2012

As I've written previously, I fear both the consequences of Iran going nuclear and of Israel and/or the U.S. attacking Iran to prevent this eventuality.  On balance, I remain opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, and hope against hope that diplomacy and sanctions may yet get Iran to allow effective international monitoring to insure against having it develop nuclear weapons.  But I fully understand Israel's alarm at what many or most Israelis believe is an existential threat.  What the U.S. does overtly or covertly seems critical in this situation.  The following is from an extensive interview with one who is of that opinion, an anonymous "engineer" described by Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit in his weekend magazine article as having "made a major contribution to Israel's existence":

Reuven Rivlin Sees 'Hypocrisy' in Arab Draft

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin

Hillel Schenker sent me a link on my cousin Ruvy.  A good position: 

Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin said calls to draft Israeli Arabs into the army were “hypocrisy,” citing uneven funding of Israel’s Jewish and Arab sectors. ....

Rivlin said that Arab-Israeli communities face budget discrimination, and before Arabs enter a draft, the Knesset must pass laws ensuring full equality for all of Israel’s citizens. 

The Times of Israel reported that Rivlin called instead for a separate government administration to draft Arabs into civilian national service. Yisrael Beiteinu, a right-wing nationalist party, recently introduced a bill to draft Arabs at age 18. ...

On defining our terms and drawing our lines

Jay Michaelson

In the current issue of The Forward, columnist Jay Michaelson makes a valuable contribution to our pro-Israel/pro-peace discourse with "When the Right Is Right About the Left." Michaelson is a left-liberal gay activist/writer who declared some disenchantment with Israel three years ago; but here he writes in detail on how anti-Israel gay activists and others on the anti-Israel left have gone over the top in their one-sided and constant attacks on Israel, as if it is the primary source of evil in the world and the Palestinians and other nations do no wrong.

He also challenges the anti-Israel left to be honest that they don't just deplore Israeli policies--as he and we often do--but also oppose Israel's existence as an expression of self-determination for the Jewish people.  (Interestingly, this brings to mind a complaint registered by Norman Finkelstein---an Israel-basher if there ever was one, but who actually supports Israel's existence in a two-state solution and criticized the BDS movement for being dishonest in this regard.)

Still, there's one point at which Michaelson opens up a problem from our common progressive perspective.  It's in how we define our terms.  The very fact that Michaelson and pro-Israel/pro-peace activists like myself--along with the left-wing Israel-bashers we deplore--all call ourselves "progressive" or "left" is a problem in itself.