Saturday, December 24, 2011

True friends of Israel

Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has earned enough moral credit within the Jewish community to speak his mind on Israel.
True friends of the Zionist state, like Friedman, are worried about its future as Israel’s occupation of Arab land has gone from bad to worse over the past four decades.
On December 13, Friedman shows disgust with the Prime Minister of Israel:
I hope that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that   the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.
Critics of Tel- Aviv are gaining courage. In Foreign Policy this week, Mark Perry portrays settlers of the West Bank as “Israel’s Jewish Hezbollah.” Perry argues that the settlers have developed a culture of a sectarian militia.  This community of bulldozers and barbed wires has turned into “a state within a state.” 
The settlers were supposed to add to the security of Israel; instead, they have brought a challenge to Israel’s sovereignty and agony to the occupied Palestinian population.
Insightful friends of the Middle East recognize that Israel is unable to save its democracy and insure its security as it continues to ignore the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians.
Freedman blasted a desperately pandering Newt Gingrich for calling Palestine an “invention” and ridiculed Mitt Romney for trivializing the US role in the peace process.
It is discouraging that David Harris, the president of American Jewish Committee, considers Friedman’s column “inaccurate and insidious.”  Harris argues that the American people love Israel, and Congress expresses its constituents’ will by supporting the Zionist state passionately.
Harris has missed an important point.  Few Americans are willing to sacrifice their national interest to satisfy the unrealistic territorial dreams of the current Israeli government. 
Freedman is not alone in challenging the Jewish establishment. He has contributed immensely to a growing political awakening of Jewish Americans, a “Jewish Spring” of an intellectual character.
The Arab Spring emerged from the streets of Tunis and Cairo to combat ruthless rulers. In contrast, the American “Jewish Spring” is a political awakening of the youth and the liberal who are losing tolerance for Israel’s excesses.
Eighteen months ago, Peter Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic, shocked the Jewish establishment with a strong charge.
In “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,“ a June 10 article in The New York Review of Books, Beinart asserts that American Zionism is gradually losing the support of Jewish youth.
Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC [ American Israel Public Affairs Committee ] and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled.  
It is easy to find other Jewish writers who are losing patience with current Tel Aviv policy. Jeremy Ben-Ami’s book, New Voice for Israel, made a strong case for Arab-Israeli peace, using the 1967 borders as a flexible framework.
Three years ago, a refreshing voice of moderation for Israel emerged in Washington, a voice of “pro-peace, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.” In 2008, Ben-Ami founded J Street, a Washington-based Jewish lobby that advocates the establishment of a Palestinian state and the normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab world. J Street draws its rapidly expanding membership from the young and educated in the Jewish American community.
J Street is the only American Jewish lobby which cooperates systematically with the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP).  The formation of ATFP is also sign of moderation among Palestinian Americans.
The thinking of credible and popular Jewish writers such as Friedman, Beinart and Ben-Ami dovetails with the ( non-Jewish) scholarly work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.  In their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2006),  Mearsheimer and Walt argue with supporting facts, that it is not in the interest of the US  or of Israel  to allow AIPAC to control US policy in the Middle East. 
It is a sad reality that any writer who confronts the US Israel lobby is severely attacked. The attackers are the friends of Israel whom Friedman considers harmful to the Zionist cause.
Friedman brings the words of Abraham Heschel, a twentieth-century Jewish liberation theologian, to vivid reality. 
It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction.
( John Dear, Abraham Heschel prophetic Judaism, National Catholic Reporter,  June 4, 2011)
True friends of Israel
Ghassan Michel Rubeiz
Palm Beach Gardens, Florida
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has earned enough moral credit within the Jewish community to speak his mind on Israel.
True friends of the Zionist state, like Friedman, are worried about its future as Israel’s occupation of Arab land has gone from bad to worse over the past four decades.
On December 13, Friedman shows disgust with the Prime Minister of Israel:
I hope that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that   the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.
Critics of Tel- Aviv are gaining courage. In Foreign Policy this week, Mark Perry portrays settlers of the West Bank as “Israel’s Jewish Hezbollah.” Perry argues that the settlers have developed a culture of a sectarian militia.  This community of bulldozers and barbed wires has turned into “a state within a state.” 
The settlers were supposed to add to the security of Israel; instead, they have brought a challenge to Israel’s sovereignty and agony to the occupied Palestinian population.
Insightful friends of the Middle East recognize that Israel is unable to save its democracy and insure its security as it continues to ignore the rights and aspirations of the Palestinians.
Freedman blasted a desperately pandering Newt Gingrich for calling Palestine an “invention” and ridiculed Mitt Romney for trivializing the US role in the peace process.
It is discouraging that David Harris, the president of American Jewish Committee, considers Friedman’s column “inaccurate and insidious.”  Harris argues that the American people love Israel, and Congress expresses its constituents’ will by supporting the Zionist state passionately.
Harris has missed an important point.  Few Americans are willing to sacrifice their national interest to satisfy the unrealistic territorial dreams of the current Israeli government. 
Freedman is not alone in challenging the Jewish establishment. He has contributed immensely to a growing political awakening of Jewish Americans, a “Jewish Spring” of an intellectual character.
The Arab Spring emerged from the streets of Tunis and Cairo to combat ruthless rulers. In contrast, the American “Jewish Spring” is a political awakening of the youth and the liberal who are losing tolerance for Israel’s excesses.
Eighteen months ago, Peter Beinart, the former editor of The New Republic, shocked the Jewish establishment with a strong charge.
In “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,“ a June 10 article in The New York Review of Books, Beinart asserts that American Zionism is gradually losing the support of Jewish youth.
Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral. If the leaders of groups like AIPAC [ American Israel Public Affairs Committee ] and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations do not change course, they will wake up one day to find a younger, Orthodox-dominated, Zionist leadership whose naked hostility to Arabs and Palestinians scares even them, and a mass of secular American Jews who range from apathetic to appalled.  
It is easy to find other Jewish writers who are losing patience with current Tel Aviv policy. Jeremy Ben-Ami’s book, New Voice for Israel, made a strong case for Arab-Israeli peace, using the 1967 borders as a flexible framework.
Three years ago, a refreshing voice of moderation for Israel emerged in Washington, a voice of “pro-peace, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine.” In 2008, Ben-Ami founded J Street, a Washington-based Jewish lobby that advocates the establishment of a Palestinian state and the normalization of Israel’s relations with the Arab world. J Street draws its rapidly expanding membership from the young and educated in the Jewish American community.
J Street is the only American Jewish lobby which cooperates systematically with the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP).  The formation of ATFP is also sign of moderation among Palestinian Americans.
The thinking of credible and popular Jewish writers such as Friedman, Beinart and Ben-Ami dovetails with the ( non-Jewish) scholarly work of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.  In their groundbreaking book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2006),  Mearsheimer and Walt argue with supporting facts, that it is not in the interest of the US  or of Israel  to allow AIPAC to control US policy in the Middle East. 
It is a sad reality that any writer who confronts the US Israel lobby is severely attacked. The attackers are the friends of Israel whom Friedman considers harmful to the Zionist cause.
Friedman brings the words of Abraham Heschel, a twentieth-century Jewish liberation theologian, to vivid reality. 
It is embarrassing to be a prophet. There are so many pretenders, predicting peace and prosperity, offering cheerful words, adding strength to self-reliance, while the prophet predicts disaster, pestilence, agony, and destruction.
( John Dear, Abraham Heschel prophetic Judaism, National Catholic Reporter,  June 4, 2011)
To survive and prosper, Israel needs more friends like Friedman and fewer like Gingrich.



 



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