I’d like to pose a question. Do you believe that someone who writes the following letter should be forced out of his position as chaplain at an Ivy League university?
To the Editor:
Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza [...]]]>
I’d like to pose a question. Do you believe that someone who writes the following letter should be forced out of his position as chaplain at an Ivy League university?
To the Editor:
Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.
The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.
As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.
(Rev.) BRUCE M. SHIPMAN
Groton, Conn., Aug. 21, 2014
One can, to be sure, disagree with the opinion Bruce Shipman, a former chaplain from Yale, expressed—I certainly do. Anti-Semitism is not the same as opposition to Israeli policies, the two are quite distinct and plenty of Jew-haters fully support even more aggressive and brutal policies either because they hate Muslims and Arabs more than Jews or because they have some apocalyptic vision of where such Jewish behavior might take the Jews.
Anti-Semitism does not increase due to Israel’s behavior. Anti-Semitic activity might, as haters see an opportunity to cloak their hate in something else. But bigotry has a life of its own. More to the point, Israelis will not behave like “good Jews” in order to stem a theoretical rising tide of anti-Semitism. That’s not why Israel should end its occupation, should end its siege of Gaza, and should recognize, with full faith, that Palestinians have the same national, civil and human rights as Israeli Jews. Politics doesn’t work this way, but civil society should be pushing for these things because they are a moral imperative. And Israel should pursue such a course because it is the only way its citizens will ever know peace and security.
So, yes, I think Shipman was wrong. But he was hardly expressing hatred towards Jews. He was speaking out of obvious concern for both Israelis and Palestinians and a hope for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. He may have been wrong about Israeli actions causing anti-Semitism, but he is not the only person who believes this and there is room for reasonable debate on that point. In any case, he was certainly not saying that Israel’s actions justified anti-Semitism. And yet, he was forced to resign.
Is this really where we’ve ended up? Yes. Ideas are fully policed on this issue. Academia, which is precisely the place that disagreements, and especially controversial ideas, are supposed to be debated with civility, has become one of the most heavily policed arenas. The recent controversy at the University of Illinois, where Professor Steven Salaita was “de-hired” because of his outspoken statements on Twitter about Israel’s massive onslaught on Gaza, has now grown to the point where it is threatening the university’s administration. Yet they have not reversed their decision to date.
It’s not like controversial views on both sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict are under such attack. Thane Rosenbaum, for example, called on Israel to kill Palestinian civilians. His op-ed in the Wall Street Journal generated a lot of controversy, but his position at New York University’s School of Law was never in danger, and I wouldn’t want it to be.
Opinions, even hateful ones, need to be out in the open. How can they otherwise be countered? Instead, when it comes to Israel, we have gone entirely in the other direction, but only on one side of the question.
Bruce Shipman, apparently, resigned “voluntarily,” not wanting to create or be in the middle of further controversy at Yale. But there never should have been any such pressure on him. There is no conceivable stretch that can turn what Shipman wrote, regardless of how much anyone disagrees with him, into hate speech. Short of that, any individual should be able to express an opinion. That is especially true about community leaders, which school chaplains obviously are, and the academic world.
So enough with the false allegations of anti-Semitism, which are insulting to those like myself who have experienced physical violence from anti-Semitism. Enough with the extremists supporting the worst Israeli policies who—apparently knowing that their case cannot withstand open debate—threaten and pressure those who raise opposing opinions (I have received death threats from such people as well).
It’s high time for everyone to agree that ideas can and should be debated. Islamophobes and others who do not acknowledge Palestinians’ basic human rights have a national platform with FOX News. More legitimate defenders of Israeli policies and those who are deeply opposed to those policies should also be able to voice their views in public. Everyone who is interested in the Israel-Palestine conflict should agree with this fair and just principle. The only ones who can’t, it would seem, are the naysayers who oppose legitimate debate. I wonder why.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.
Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On Monday, I attended the National Leadership Assembly for Israel. The gathering was more than a little disquieting.
Big names were in attendance and addressed the audience including National Security Adviser Susan Rice, House Speaker John Boehner, Former Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, current Chairman Ed Royce, Senator Ben Cardin, Ambassador Dennis Stephens of Canada, and Israeli Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer. Leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other groups also all spoke. One of the most troubling aspects was that they mostly all had the same thing to say.
Some speakers went further than others. Paul De Vries, the evangelical preacher and president of the New York Divinity School, called Hamas “evil” and said the Islamic State was Hamas’ “twin.” While most statements were not that stark, every speaker placed full blame for all the casualties in Gaza on Hamas. Israel was defended without an ounce of criticism and not even a hint from anyone that maybe, just maybe, the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian children in less than one month could mean that Israel is not taking enough care to avoid harming civilians.
The vice chairman of the conference of presidents, Malcolm Hoenlein, summed it up this way: “Hamas exists to kill; Israel sometimes has to kill to exist. (There must be) no more pressure on Israel to do what it thinks is not in its best interest.”
But it was the conference of presidents’ chairman (who is not as powerful as Hoenlein), Robert Sugarman, who really chilled my bones.
“We are not there,” Sugarman said. “We are not experiencing the rocket attacks. Whatever our personal views may be, we must continue to support the decisions of the government (of Israel). And we must continue to urge our government to support them as well.”
Sugarman knows his audience. There can be no doubt that this particular audience entered the room in passionate support of Israel. He was speaking to the broader Jewish and pro-Israel Christian community across the country. And he was speaking to something worth noting.
Why, one wonders, did Sugarman feel a need to address “whatever our personal feelings are?” What he understands is that this onslaught is making pro-Israel liberals uncomfortable. Yes, they’re uniformly concerned about Hamas’ ability to keep ringing the sirens not just in southern Israeli cities like Sderot and Ashkelon, but also in much of Israel, including Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. Yes, they’re worried about their friends and relatives.
Yet they can’t avoid the images of devastated Gaza on their televisions and computers. Despite continuing anti-Palestinian bias, the tone of the media coverage of this chapter of the confrontation between Israel and Hamas is markedly different from what we’ve seen in the past. Many more images of injured children, destroyed houses, and general carnage are reaching people, and they’re disturbing quite a few who, in the past, found it much easier to give Israel unequivocal support.
Sugarman is worried. He knows very well that when pro-Israel voices become critics of Israeli policies, the Conference of Presidents and, yes, even AIPAC are weakened. He is not sanguine about the turning tide of opinion. He is not deluding himself that the lock-step support of Congress behind every one of Israel’s claims and actions in this onslaught is invulnerable. US policy changes only at a glacial pace unless a calamity pushes it forward. Congress, certainly in this case, will change even more slowly. But Sugarman realizes that such a change can come as Israel portrays itself as ever more heartless, ever more militant and ever more right-wing.
Sugarman is also aware that the hardcore supporters of the most extreme Israeli policies are not the heart and soul of the punch that the Conference of Presidents and AIPAC carry in Washington. Many of the masses from whom they raise money, whose votes and donations Congress values, are essentially liberals who have always had to balance their values with their support for Israel and the occupation.
That support was initially shaken way back in 1987 with the first intifada. I would argue that this, among other factors, was perhaps the key reason that the United States and, soon after, Israel, changed its tactics and embraced a “peace process.” But since the second intifada and the 9/11 attacks, a much more militaristic and rigid rejectionism has gripped both countries, culminating in what we have today where the Israeli government openly, albeit informally, rejects the idea of a two-state solution and the United States accordingly offers Netanyahu unwavering support.
But the Lebanon War in 2006, Operation Cast Lead in 2008-09 and, most powerfully, the current attacks on Gaza have all produced images of Palestinian civilians — women and children — being killed and maimed by a massive Israeli onslaught that appears wildly out of proportion to the stated objectives. The more liberal-minded people among pro-Israel Christians and Jews in the US and Europe also often read Israeli newspapers. There they find that Israel knew about Hamas’ tunnels for quite some time and did nothing — and, not to be lost in the shuffle, that Hamas also didn’t use them for any sort of militant or terrorist activity until after this operation started.
That’s what Sugarman is worried about. But what I worry about is his proposed remedy.
Sugarman tells his listeners not to listen to their conscience or their own judgment but to blindly follow Israel over this Solid Cliff.
This chills me on three levels. First and foremost, as a person of conscience and a critical thinker, mindlessly following the decision of any government is anathema to democracy. People, not politicians, must be the ultimate arbiter of policy. Granted, that’s not the way the world is, but it is the world we must work towards.
I also feel horror at this message as a citizen of the United States. Our foreign policy has rarely been humane or even sensible. That’s not limited to the Middle East by any means, although it’s probably most focused there these days. But the idea that we should surrender any foreign policy decisions to the judgment of Israel, a country that has moved very far to the right in the past fifteen years and which is embroiled in a vexing, long-term ethnic conflict is simply terrifying and unacceptable. If the United States ever decides to really remove itself from this conflict — and that means ending our obstruction of UN actions that are critical of Israel and stopping the $3.5 billion per year of military aid as well as our many joint military operations — then there would be a case for letting Israel handle its business without US interference. Until then, the responsibility of the United States is clear even if it has failed to live up to it at every turn. That’s something that needs to be addressed seriously, rather than by just exacerbating the problem.
Finally and most personally, I am filled with dread by Sugarman’s call as a Jew. Is there a more pernicious anti-Semitic trope than that of dual loyalty? Yet here is the leader of a major Jewish organization calling for Jews and other US citizens to subsume their country’s foreign policy to the whims of the Israeli government. Such a call is anathema to the very essence of the Judaism I and many others, including many who support Israel even in this onslaught, have come to embrace. Judaism was founded on critical thinking and asking tough questions. More than that, can there be better fuel for those who only wish harm upon Jews wherever we may be than for so prominent a figure as Sugarman to call for a US policy amounting to nothing more or less than “do exactly what Israel tells you to do, no questions asked?”
Sugarman’s words should be a wake-up call for US citizens about the weakness of Israel’s case in its repeated devastation of Gaza. It should also be ringing in the ears of Jews everywhere. Even if you can’t be concerned about hundreds of dead civilians in Gaza, you can probably still realize that it’s not just Netanyahu who is increasing hatred of Jews around the world. So-called “Jewish leaders” like Sugarman are also fomenting massive anti-Semitism that will eventually come back to haunt us all.
Photo: Palestinians walk past the collapsed minaret of a destroyed mosque in Gaza City, on July 30 2014 after it was hit in an overnight Israeli strike. Overnight Israeli bombardments killed “dozens” of Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 16 at a UN school, medics said, on day 23 of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Credit: Ashraf Amra
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
In the European Parliamentary election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) “stunned France’s political elite on Sunday by taking first place,” reported Reuters. “It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history.”
The shift of sentiment and political [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
In the European Parliamentary election, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front (FN) “stunned France’s political elite on Sunday by taking first place,” reported Reuters. “It was the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history.”
The shift of sentiment and political influence toward the right and far-right in Western Europe is being viewed by some in Israel as an opportunity to garner European sympathy for anti-Arab sentiment and policies. Right-wing European politicians hostile to the growing number of immigrants from Africa and Asia are expected to sympathize with Israel’s tough attitude toward illegal African immigration. Israel’s own political spectrum is dominated by right-wing and ultra-right wing parties. Nationalist fervor aimed at asserting Israel’s character as a “Jewish state” in which Arabs have been regarded as perpetual political and cultural outsiders — even within the “green line” that defined Israel’s boundaries between its War of Independence and the Six Day War — aligns well with growing European unease at the rising percentage of Muslims in Europe’s largest cities.
A photograph of Israel’s UN ambassador attending a Le Pen meeting by “mistake”. Credit: nationspresse.info
Le Pen has been courting Israeli politicians in the three years since she assumed leadership over her father’s National Front Party. During a visit she made to New York in November 2011, Israel’s UN Ambassador Ron Prosor attended a luncheon for Le Pen at UN Headquarters. Prosor claimed he hadn’t actually been invited but found himself there “by accident,” insisting he left immediately upon discovering his mistake. But Prosor was photographed with Le Pen, both of them smiling. As reported by Haaretz, French news agencies quoted Le Pen as insisting Prosor’s attendance was not an error, and there was no way he could have chatted with her for 20 minutes without knowing her identity. “There was nothing unclear or ambiguous about our meeting,” said Le Pen. As he was departing, Prosor told television cameras filming the event as he left, “We spoke about Europe and other topics and I very much enjoyed the conversation.”
Le Pen’s anti-Semitic, anti-Islamic views
The enactment and enforcement of legislation in European countries that restrict or deny Muslims the right to practice their faith, from the left and right, impact both European Jews and Muslims. Among the targeted practices are dietary laws, especially the ritual slaughter of animals; non-medically mandated circumcision; wearing religious symbols and veils in public places; and looking to religious courts as the ultimate governing authority over marriage and divorce.
Le Pen has branded herself as the woman who will restrict these practices. She has, for example, advocated the end to public subsidies for the construction of mosques. In 2012, she not only called for banning head scarves, worn by Muslim women, in public places, but also skull caps (kippot) worn by religiously observant Jewish men. “Obviously, if the veil is banned, the kippah [should be] banned in public as well,” Le Pen told the French daily Le Monde.
After her party fared well in last month’s local French elections, Le Pen said French schools would no longer provide Jewish and Muslim students with non-pork meals. According to Le Pen, the dietary laws of Judaism and Islam prohibiting the consumption of pork were an affront to the values of France as a Christian nation.
French Jews are deeply troubled by the rise of right-wing extremism in European politics. Roger Cukierman, head of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions (CRIF), an umbrella organization of Jewish communities in France, wrote last October an op-ed for Le Monde entitled, “Front National, My Nightmare for 2017.” Polls were already predicting a strong showing for Le Pen’s party in the EU parliamentary election, and suggesting Le Pen’s success might soon propel her to the presidency of France:
It is 8 P.M. on May 14, 2017. The face of [National Front leader] Marine Le Pen appears on the television screens of millions of Frenchmen on the second round of the presidential election, she becomes the Republic’s 8th president…I, who survived World War II as a child in hiding, tremble [at the thought of] our country sinking under a regime whose populism stifles minority views; sidelines those outside its norms and redefines rights and liberties as it pleases.”
Yet some Israelis see a bright side to the growing discomfort of European Jews in their Diaspora home countries. According to a recent report, 75% of Jews in France — whose Jewish population of 480,000 is the largest in Europe — are considering emigration to Israel.
Le Pen has also said she’ll also work with Geert Wilders’ populist, far-right Dutch Freedom Party, which lost one of its 5 seats in the European Parliamentary election. Last November, Wilders and Le Pen announced they would campaign together on an agenda opposed to immigration, Islam and the European Union. Wilders, who called Le Pen “the next French president,” said his party looked forward to working with her.
Wilders visited Israel in late 2010, expressed support for its policies in the West Bank settlements, and said Palestinians should move to Jordan. “Our culture is based on Christianity, Judaism and humanism and (the Israelis) are fighting our fight,” Wilders told Reuters. “If Jerusalem falls, Amsterdam and New York will be next.”
He also told Reuters that he would organize an “international freedom alliance” to link grass-roots groups active in “the fight against Islam.” In an interview with Y-Net’s Eldad Beck, Wilders said he had a warm relationship with former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and considered him a role model. “He was also greatly demonized by the West, but was a great politician who serves as a role model for me,” he said. But Wilders, who has referred to the Prophet Muhammad as “the devil” and compared the Quran to Mein Kampf, has lost much of the cautious support of the minority of Dutch Jews he had been able to attract with his pro-Israel stance.
Unholy alliance
For all of her anti-immigrant and Islamophobic views, Le Pen isn’t everything that Israeli far-right politicians are hoping for in an EU politician. “She does not hide her opposition to the settlement policy or her support for recognition of Palestine at the United Nations,” according to Adar Primor of Haaretz, who met Marine Le Pen in 2004, when she was only the youngest daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the National Front in the 1970s. “She does not hide her opinion that the Iranian nuclear plan is ‘defensive’ and that she is opposed to attacking its nuclear facilities, an attack that she says would be ‘a flagrant violation of international law,’” wrote Primor.
This past February, Peter Martino of the Gatestone Institute accused Le Pen of being anti-US and pro-Iran, complaining that her anti-Islamist stance was misdirected at Saudi Arabia. He cited a January 22 foreign policy speech in which “Le Pen advocated that France should sever its links with Saudi Arabia, ‘America’s best ally’ and a ‘dangerous country ruled by extremist clans, who, since the origin of Wahhabism, have but one goal: to dominate global Islam and turn it into jihad against all other civilization.’”
In March, Haaretz reported that Ofir Akunis, a deputy minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, met with a delegation from the separatist Flemish Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) party, an extremist right-wing party with a racist agenda and anti-Semitic elements during its visit to Israel. The delegation was headed by Filip Dewinter, a prominent member of the party whose moniker is “Belgium’s Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
The platform of the ethno-nationalist party advocates the separation of Flanders from Belgium, and calls for “Flemish identity and culture” as a requirement for everyone living in Flanders. Senior party members have a history of holocaust denial and identification with Nazi Germany. Opposed to the Islamicization of Europe, Vlaams Belang favors amnesty to Flemish Nazi collaborators and the repeal of laws that prohibit racism and Holocaust denial, on the grounds of freedom of expression. Akunis, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, was unapologetic about the hospitality shown to the Flemish separatist delegation.
The head and deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council, the settler group that organized the Flemish nationalists’ visit, claimed the Flemish Interest Party was “very friendly toward Israel and the Jewish community,” but neither Israel’s Foreign Ministry nor the Belgian Jewish community want to have any contact with the party. In 2010, the same Council leaders brought to Israel Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria’s Freedom Party — an extreme, right-wing, xenophobic and anti-Semitic organization that gained notoriety under Strache’s predecessor, Jorg Haider. Haider was killed in a car accident in 2008.
Zvi Bar’el writes in today’s Haaretz:
The dilemma facing Israel is clear. Should it condemn the rise of the extreme right and declare Europe to be a continent tainted with anti-Semitism, or should it continue to host representatives of these racist parties, some of whom have voiced their opposition to boycotts directed at Israel and have even forged close and friendly ties with leaders of the settler movement here? The Israeli way out of this dilemma is not complicated. Israel rejects the anti-Semitism but embraces the racism. It views the skinheads and their swastika tattoos with sincere concern, yet shares their opinions and understands their behavior toward foreigners.
From a right-wing Israeli perspective, the “right” sort of European politician would hold the line on Muslim immigration to Europe, thereby blocking Muslims from becoming an influential voting blocking. In other words, this leader would Islamophobic but not anti-Semitic. This person would also be unequivocally “pro-Israel,” permitting and even encouraging settlements in the West Bank and Gaza territory, and embracing Israel’s outright annexation of the settlement blocs and their adjacent security zones, as well as supporting Israel’s “right” to keep expanding the boundaries of “united Jerusalem.” Such a politician would be anti-Arab and harbor no sympathies for Palestinians wanting their own state in the Middle East or demanding civil and political rights under Israeli governance. They would also be opposed to any softening of the European stance toward Iran, and be a staunch supporter of sanctions and war at Israel’s whim.
That’s not Marine Le Pen, at least not yet. However, regardless of the dismay expressed by U.S. and European Jewish organizations, the growing number of European parliamentarians from what were once fringe parties may be, from the perspective of some Israeli politicians, a shift in the “right” direction.
Photo Credit: Blandine Le Cain
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 24, an unidentified shooter opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. Two of the victims were Israelis, and the other two remain unidentified, other than being described as a volunteer and an employee of the museum, respectively.
Nothing is really known yet [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 24, an unidentified shooter opened fire at the Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. Two of the victims were Israelis, and the other two remain unidentified, other than being described as a volunteer and an employee of the museum, respectively.
Nothing is really known yet about the identity or motive of the shooter. A video of the incident offers very little in terms of defining the ethnicity of the murderer. But never fear, because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman know very well who is responsible.
Almost immediately after the attack in Brussels was reported, Netanyahu stated that it was “… the result of constant incitement against Jews and their state. Slander and lies against the State of Israel continue to be heard on European soil even as the crimes against humanity and acts of murder being perpetrated in our region are systematically ignored.”
Lieberman, who has his eye on the prime minister’s office, followed up by saying that “…activity termed ‘pro-Palestinian,’ activity that once again, just like in those dark days, calls for the boycott of ‘Jewish goods,’ and aggressively targets the only democracy in the Middle East, is nothing but anti-Semitic.”
Lieberman, as is his wont, stated bluntly what Netanyahu merely implied: the shootings were caused by support for Palestinians, and, indeed, opposition to the settlements. If you engage in such activity, you are killing Jews.
That may seem like an extreme reading, but examine Lieberman’s words in particular. He does not merely critique boycotts, but everything labeled “pro-Palestinian activity.” In targeting “the boycott of ‘Jewish goods’” Lieberman, himself a settler, intentionally fails to differentiate between calls for boycotts of all things Israeli and the increasing European practice of clearly identifying products from the settlements. This would have the effect of excluding settlement products from European programs to minimize export barriers for Israeli products, as well as letting consumers decide if they wish to purchase such products.
Being realistic, it is certainly possible that support for the Palestinian cause was at the root of this attack. But that is only one of many possibilities, and thus far, there is no particular indication that this possibility is stronger than any other. Belgium Interior Minister Joelle Milquet has not yet officially termed this an anti-Semitic attack, but he did say “there are strong grounds for presuming so.”
Of course that is true. An attack at a Muslim institution, a feminist office building, a multicultural center, or a LGBT center would and should all carry the same presumption. But the shameless, cynical and, quite frankly insulting use that Israel’s current leadership puts anti-Semitism to defies logic, or even the most basic justification.
Indeed, on one level, the Bibi-Yvet (the Israeli nicknames for Netanyahu and Lieberman) response to the Brussels murders contains a hint of desperation. The mammoth, pioneering study on global anti-Semitism, carried out by the Anti-Defamation League, and seized upon by Netanyahu (as was surely the report’s intent), was met with a great deal of skepticism, rather than the supportive outrage Netanyahu and the report’s authors had hoped. Here was an opportunity to capitalize on a real hate crime.
At this writing, though, three days have passed and there has been no public sign that the investigation has gotten very far. The murders were clearly well-prepared for and the murderer, whatever his motive, knew what he was doing. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that we will never know what prompted him to act, or who he truly is. Already, more and more fanciful theories are being bandied about in the media. But, surely more distressing to all concerned, the coverage is already starting to fade.
If this attack was indeed related to Israel’s occupation, it’s only more important to reject the notion that pro-Palestinian “incitement” is the root cause. No matter the motive, this crime was the worst kind of murderous act, targeting innocent civilians in a most cowardly fashion. No Palestinian I know would think this any less heinous than anyone else. And I know plenty of the so-called “inciters,” Palestinian and otherwise.
The very term “incitement,” which has been sheepishly adopted by the United States and sometimes also European governments, is being rendered meaningless by Israeli propaganda efforts. Every Nakba memorial, every Palestinian act affirming their own connection to the land or recalling the injustice visited upon them by Zionism is called incitement. There are certainly examples of bigoted, false and threatening statements in Palestinian media. But the same kind of statements are also issued by the Israeli government and certain Israeli media, as Yizhar Be’er, head of the Israeli media watchdog Keshev points out. But “incitement” has now become just another buzzword, meant to frighten people, to enhance Israeli propaganda efforts painting Israel as the eternal victim, and to cow critics into silence.
Maybe the attack in Brussels had something to do with the Israel-Palestine conflict. Maybe it was connected to the burgeoning populist right in so much of Europe. To me, the latter explanation seems more likely as tensions between the Jewish Belgian and Muslim immigrant Belgian communities are very low, while there is a growing and well-organized fascist/racist white supremacist fringe in Belgium that is very focused on anti-Semitism. But we simply don’t know yet. What we do know is that the attempt by Netanyahu and Lieberman to turn this tragedy into anti-Palestinian propaganda is morally repugnant. It’s up to sensible people to make it politically unviable as well.
Photo: A still from security camera footage of the man who shot four people on Saturday at the Jewish Museum in Brussels.
]]>by Jim Lobe
It’s no secret that much of the foreign policy establishment here — most notably in recent memory, former CentCom commander Gen. David Petraeus (ret.) — consider the perception of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s actions in the Middle East as contributing to anti-American sentiment throughout the region. This [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe
It’s no secret that much of the foreign policy establishment here — most notably in recent memory, former CentCom commander Gen. David Petraeus (ret.) — consider the perception of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s actions in the Middle East as contributing to anti-American sentiment throughout the region. This is not just at the popular level, but at the elite level as well. In a remarkable exchange with Foreign Policy CEO David Rothkopf, even former Israeli Amb. Michael Oren admitted this was a problem, noting, “As for arousing enmity, I have no doubt that America’s alliance with Israel fans Middle Eastern outrage.”
In addition to fueling anti-Americanism, it appears that Israeli actions may also promote anti-Semitism. At least that’s what I glean from a closer look at the monumental survey on global anti-Semitism released earlier this week, which both Marsha and I covered at the time. (Please note that the ADL does not agree with that conclusion. You will see below its response to that hypothesis.) Among many other questions, the survey, which, despite numerous complaints (see here, here, and here), contains an amazing wealth of material, asked its more than 53,000 respondents in 102 countries and the Occupied Territories several questions, the answers to which deserve broader attention. The questions included:
1) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable or unfavorable opinion of Israel?
2) Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Palestine?
3) Do actions taken by the State of Israel influence your opinions about Jews, or do they not influence your opinions about Jews? Respondents were given options of “major influence,” “minor influence,” or “do not influence.” They could also volunteer that they don’t know.
4) Would you say that the actions Israel takes generally give you a better opinion of Jews or a worse opinion of Jews? This question was asked only of those who in question 3 above said the actions of Israel influence their opinons of Jews.
Now, one of the great things about this interactive survey is that you can find out how respondents in each country and region answered these questions. (To get to specific answers, go to the global map, and press the “See More” caption just under the circle that provides the “index score.” After you press “See More,” you press “Choose a Subject” on the middle right side of the screen to see all the various topics covered by the survey. This post is based primarily on the “Attitudes Toward Israel and the Middle East” subject on that list.)
Now, at the global level — that is, for all 53,000-plus respondents — here are the results:
On question 1 about how they felt about Israel, 35% said they had a favorable opinion; 30% unfavorable, and 35% declined to rate.
On question 2, about Palestine, 36 percent were favorable; 25% unfavorable, and 38% didn’t rate.
On question 3 — whether actions by the State of Israel influenced respondents’ opinions about Jews — 16% said “major influence,” 19% “minor,” 42% said none; and 23% volunteered that they “didn’t know.”
And on question 4, for the 35% who said Israel’s actions did influence their opinions about Jews, 25% said they had a better opinion, but 57% said their opinion of Jews was worsened by Israel’s action, while another 17% volunteered that they didn’t know how they were influence.
Now, those are not insignificant numbers. According to the ADL, the 53,000-plus respondents represent nearly 4.2 billion people, which means the 35% who said that Israel’s actions influenced their opinions of Jews represent nearly 1.5 billion people. Fifty-seven percent of those 1.5 billion adults translates to 855 million people who, if we extrapolate from the survey’s methodology, are willing to tell pollsters outright that Israel’s actions make them see Jews in a more negative light; which is to say, make them anti-Jewish or more anti-Jewish than they already were.
Of course, as you might expect, this is most pronounced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the only area in which there is a strong and consistent correlation between anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment, according to the ADL. Only nine percent of respondents there have a favourable opinion of Israel; 84% are unfavourable, while, conversely, 84% are favourable to Palestine; only 11% unfavorable. And 58% percent of respondents in the region said Israel’s actions exert either a major (46%) or minor (12%) influence on their view of Jews, which is significantly higher than any other region. Finally, of that 58%, nearly nine out of ten (89%) say that influence is negative.
On to Western Europe, where 46% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of Israel, 26% unfavorable, and 28% declined to answer. Remarkably, sentiment about Palestine was very similar: 48% favorable; 24% unfavorable; 28% declined to answer. On the question of whether actions taken by Israel influenced respondents’ views about Jews, a not insignificant total of 40% said they did, 18% in a major way, 22% in a minor way, and 52% of respondents said Israeli behavior had no influence on their opinion of Jews. Of that 40% who said they were influenced, however, 64% said it affected their opinions of Jews for the worse, while only 16% said they had a more positive view. These findings must surely be of concern to Bibi Netanyahu who, of course, knows very well that Western Europe is Israel’s biggest trading partner by far and that the Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS) movement appears to be gaining momentum.
In Eastern Europe — despite the fact that the ADL survey found it to be the second-most anti-Semitic region after MENA — more than six in ten respondents (61%) said they had a favorable opinion of the country, compared to only 46% who said the same about Palestine. Just over a third of respondents (34%) said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews (14% major influence, 23% minor). Of that 34%, 55% said Israeli actions gave them a worse opinion of Jews; 21% said Israeli actions gave them a better opinion.
Sixty-one percent of respondents in the Americas, which is treated by ADL as one region, also hold a favorable opinion of Israel (73% in the U.S.), while only 40% have a similar view of Palestine (45% in the U.S.). Only one in four respondents (16% in the U.S.) said they believed Israeli actions influenced their opinion of Jews, equally split between major and minor. Of those, 35% said Israeli actions gave them a better opinion of Jews, while 45% said they gave them a worse opinion. In the U.S. those percentages were roughly reversed — 46% better versus 36% worse. In fact, the U.S. was just about the only country outside of sub-Saharan Africa where Israel’s actions gave respondents a better impression of Jews than a worse one. In Canada, for example, of the 21% of respondents who said Israel’s behavior influenced their opinion of Jews, 69% said they were affected negatively. Even in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand), where two-thirds of respondents reported having a favorable opinion of Israel (and 60%, remarkably, a favorable opinion of Palestine), of the 23% of respondents who said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews, 71% said those opinions were affected negatively.
In Asia (which included Caucasian states like Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as India, China and Japan), opinions about both Israel and Palestine were roughly evenly split — 26% favorable, 30% unfavorable and 28% favorable, 25% unfavorable, respectively. About one third of respondents (34%) said Israeli actions influenced their opinions about Jews (13% major, 21% minor). Of those, 54% said their attitudes were affected negatively; 27% positively.
Finally, in sub-Saharan Africa, Israel was viewed favorably by 52% of respondents, unfavorably by 22%, while only 27% felt positively about Palestine compared to 39% who had an unfavorable impression. A total of 35% of respondents reported that Israel’s actions influenced their views about Jews, evenly split between major and minor. Of that percentage, slightly more respondents said Israeli actions gave them a better impression (44%) than a worse one (42%).
So it’s quite clear that MENA is very much the outlier (although, given its proximity to Israel, it’s quite a pertinent one) on the question of to what extent Israeli actions contribute to negative views of Jews in general. But of those respondents who say that Israel’s behavior influences their views of Jews, pretty solid majorities in Western Europe (64%), Eastern Europe (55%), Asia (54%) and Oceania (71%) — and a plurality in the Americas (45%) — assert that their impression of Jews is more negative. It is difficult, therefore, to escape the conclusion of some correlation between Israeli actions and the rise or intensification of anti-Semitism as a result in key regions beyond MENA. ADL, however, as you can see below, rejects this notion.
Now, of course, many of the respondents who said Israeli actions gave them a negative impression of Jews were already anti-Semitic (as defined by the ADL Index), in which case the cause and effect are very difficult to disentangle. In addition, it’s worth noting that the vast majority of respondents have no personal connection to Israeli actions and depend on other sources, notably mass media, for their understanding of those actions. On the other hand, however, it seems safe to say that Israel’s actions — at least as reported by those same mass media — do not help the cause of eliminating anti-Semitism around the world, and especially in its own neighborhood where, in fact, Israeli actions have been felt most directly.
I asked ADL to comment on these observations, and their director of international affairs, Michael Salberg, was kind enough to send me the following reaction, which should also be taken into consideration.
Based on our experience in dealing with the very difficult question of overlap between expressions of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism, we know that often, though not in every case, the two can be closely connected. This is especially so in the Middle East, but also in European society and elsewhere.
Our pollsters have concluded there is no clear evidence in the data that anti-Israel feelings are causing anti-Jewish sentiment, or vice-versa. There are countries where anti-Israel sentiment is much more prevalent than anti-Jewish sentiment. And there are other countries where anti-Jewish sentiment is much more prevalent than anti-Israel attitudes.
In MENA there are high levels of both anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Jewish sentiment. But in other regions, things are more complicated and regression analysis does not show a strong correlation between Israel’s unfavorable rating and anti-Semitic attitudes.
It is true that people who say the actions of the State of Israel influence their opinions of Jews tend to have higher Index Scores than people who say the actions of Israel do not affect their opinion of Jews. However, in every region but MENA, the vast majority of people, 60 percent or more, say that the actions of Israel have no impact on their opinions of Jews or they don’t know:
To reinforce this point, only 35% of respondents worldwide are unfavorable toward Israel, and of those only half, 51 percent, say that the actions of Israel affect their opinions of Jews. So the worldwide Index Score of 26% is higher than the percentage who are unfavorable towards Israel and say Israel’s actions affect their opinion of Jews. We are reluctant to use or describe the data as support for links between attitudes towards Israel and anti-Semitism outside MENA. Even within MENA, ascribing cause and effect was beyond the scope of the survey.
In any event, as I noted above, this is a very rich survey of international opinion that is well worth exploring in the varying levels of detail which it offers.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
The results of a new survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as deplorable as they are, show that Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East.
Not that the ADL is doing anything to point this out in their just-released report entitled, Global 100: An Index of [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
The results of a new survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as deplorable as they are, show that Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East.
Not that the ADL is doing anything to point this out in their just-released report entitled, Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism. This surprising fact can only be uncovered by comparing Iranian responses with those of other Middle Eastern countries.
According to the index scores of the more than 100 countries around the world included in the survey, the most anti-Semitic place on earth is the West Bank and Gaza (93%). Iraq isn’t far behind the Palestinian territories, which are, of course, under Israeli occupation. But Iran doesn’t even make it into the survey’s worldwide top 20 anti-Semitic hotspots.
The first of the eleven statements to which respondents were asked to categorize as “probably true” or “probably false” was Jews are more loyal to Israel than to [this country/to the countries they live in]. While 56% of Iranians responded in the affirmative, in other MENA countries the percentage of respondents agreeing with this assertion were significantly higher: Saudi Arabia 71%; Lebanon 72%; Oman 76%; Egypt 78% Jordan 79%; Kuwait 80%; Qatar 80%; UAE 80%; Bahrain 81%; Yemen 81%; Iraq 83%; West Bank and Gaza 83%. (It’s too bad that Israel was not among the countries surveyed. It would be interesting to know what Israelis believe on this point.)
The other indicators of anti-Semitic attitudes were:
Jews have too much power in the business world. Iran 54%; Saudi Arabia 69%; Oman 72%; Egypt 73%; UAE 74%; Lebanon 76%; Qatar 75%; Bahrain 78%; Jordan 79%; Kuwait 79%; Yemen 82%; Iraq 84%; West Bank and Gaza 91%.
Jews have too much power in international financial markets. Iran 62%; Oman 68%; Egypt 69%; Saudi Arabia 69%; UAE 71%; Qatar 71%; Jordan 76%; Bahrain 76%; Lebanon 76%; Kuwait 77%; Yemen 78%; Iraq 85%; West Bank and Gaza 89%.
Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust. Iran 18%; Yemen 16%; Saudi Arabia 22%; Egypt 23%; Kuwait 24%; Lebanon 26%; Jordan 29%; Iraq 33%; Oman 42%; UAE 45%; Bahrain 51%; Qatar 52%; West Bank and Gaza 64%.
Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind. Iran 50%; Egypt 68%; Oman 70%; Lebanon 71%; Kuwait 73%; UAE 73%; Saudi Arabia 74%; Jordan 75%; Qatar 75%; Bahrain 75%; Iraq 76%; Yemen 80%; West Bank and Gaza 84%.
Jews have too much control over global affairs. Iran 49%; Oman 67%; Saudi Arabia 70%; Egypt 71%; Qatar 73%; UAE 73%; Bahrain 76%; Iraq 77%; Lebanon 77%; Jordan 78%; Kuwait 80%; Yemen 80%; West Bank and Gaza 88%.
Jews have too much control over the United States government: Iran 61%; Oman 67%; Saudi Arabia 70%; UAE 72%; Jordan 73%; Lebanon 73%; Qatar 73%; Egypt 74%; Bahrain 77%; Kuwait 78%; Yemen 79%; Iraq 85%; West Bank and Gaza 85%.
Jews think they are better than other people: Iran 52%; Lebanon 61%; Egypt 66%; Oman 66%; Qatar 67%; Bahrain 68%; UAE 68%; Saudi Arabia 69%; Kuwait 71%; West Bank and Gaza 72%; Jordan 73%; Yemen 76%; Iraq 80%.
Jews have too much control over the global media: Iran 55%; Bahrain 61%; Oman 65%; Egypt 69%; Saudi Arabia 69%; Qatar 70%; UAE 70%; Kuwait 72%; Lebanon 73%; Iraq 77%; Jordan 77%; Yemen 79%; West Bank and Gaza 88%.
Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars: Iran 58%; Qatar 64%; Lebanon 65%; Oman 65%; UAE 65%; Kuwait 66%; Saudi Arabia 66%; Egypt 66%; Jordan 67%; Bahrain 71%; West Bank and Gaza 78%; Yemen 84%; Iraq 85%.
People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave: Iran 64%; Lebanon 76%; Bahrain 77%; Kuwait 80%; Egypt 81%; Oman 81%; Iraq 81%: Saudi Arabia 81%; Qatar 82%; UAE 82%; Jordan 84%; West Bank and Gaza 87%; Yemen 90%.
Iran has a complicated relationship with its Jewish community, and has a long way to go before it can be considered a safe haven for Jews, even if some Iranian Jews may disagree. Still, the ADL’s data makes it clear that Iran is not only the least anti-Semitic country in its region, it also scores far better on every one of the ADL’s eleven survey indicators by a statistically significant margin. That’s something worth thinking about.
Photo: Persian Jews celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot in a Tehran synagogue last October. Credit: CNN screenshot.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
On May 2 Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Yediot Ahoronot, published an article that blows the lid off the failure of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s attempt to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Nahum Barnea, one of Israel’s best-known reporters, got several U.S. officials who were involved with the talks to open up to him, anonymously, about what happened.
Barnea says that the version the U.S. officials present “… is fundamentally different to (sic) the one presented by Israeli officials.” The implication from Barnea, and the way most will read the U.S. revelations, is that Israel was the main party at fault. But a more sober and critical reading of what these officials say paints a different picture than the ones that the Israeli government, Barnea, or most of the initial reactions do.
In fact, what comes out is that Israel was not the primary culprit here. As has long been the case, the main reason for the failure of talks was — and is — the United States.
Combining amazing ignorance not only of the Palestinians but also of Israel and its politics, with a hint of anti-Semitism and a contemptuous attitude toward the Palestinians, tossing in some willful blindness to the realities on the ground and in the offices of politicians, the United States initiated a process that put the final nail in the two-state solution as it has been understood for years. Some, myself included, might consider that a good thing, as it enables the re-thinking of all the options, including other ways to conceive of two states (which I favor), as well as one state ideas. But the way this event has evolved has strengthened hard-liners in Israel, made the U.S. Congress even more myopic in its blind support for Israel and made it less likely that there will ever be a negotiated, rather than a violent, resolution to this conflict. In any case, this latest episode has likely kicked any resolution even farther into the future than it already was.
The U.S. failure goes well beyond the usual absurdity of the global superpower pretending to act as an honest broker in a conflict that involves an ally whose relationship with the U.S. is routinely described as “unshakeable” and is a regional superpower involved in a forty-seven year occupation of a completely powerless people. The U.S. culpability for this failure comes through in almost every response the anonymous diplomats make to Barnea’s questions. An examination of those responses and their implications is warranted.
The very first statement, in response to Barnea asking if the talks were doomed from the outset, would be shocking in its implication of incompetence if this wasn’t par for the U.S. course for the past twenty years. One of the anonymous diplomats says: “We didn’t realize Netanyahu was using the announcements of tenders for settlement construction as a way to ensure the survival of his own government. We didn’t realize continuing construction allowed ministers in his government to very effectively sabotage the success of the talks.”
How could they not realize this? Not for the last time in this article, one thinks they must be lying about their ignorance, but then, if they were going to lie, why would they make themselves look so stupid? You’d be hard-pressed to find a thoughtful analysis of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies that doesn’t touch on this issue. Certainly one cannot read the Israeli press, across the political spectrum, and be unaware that settlement expansion was a key demand from much of Netanyahu’s coalition, including his own party. The idea that the U.S. negotiating team had such a paucity of knowledge, much less understanding, of their ally renders any U.S. involvement moot at best and destructive at worst, given its role as superpower patron and ostensible broker of negotiations. In the best of circumstances, a mediator cannot have a positive effect if she is this ignorant of either party to a dispute, let alone one they are so close to.
It gets better. The diplomats go on to say: “Only now, after talks blew up, did we learn that (settlement expansion) is also about expropriating land on a large scale. That does not reconcile with the agreement.” One is tempted to think the diplomat is lying here. It isn’t possible that they could have been unaware of the many statements made by Israeli leaders from Likud, HaBayit HaYehudi and other parties about annexing pieces of land. It is equally hard to believe that the U.S. has been deaf for years to the many cases brought up by oppositional Israeli groups regarding land appropriation.
Many of those groups, such as Peace Now and the human rights group, B’Tselem have a presence in Washington and regularly meet with State Department officials, as I can attest from first-hand experience. There has been no shortage of Israelis telling the U.S. that this was about land expropriation, whether through reports from the peace camp or pronouncements from the right-wing. But then one stops and again, has to ask, if they were lying, why would they make up a lie that shows the U.S. to be this incompetent and ignorant?
When asked why they pushed for these talks, one of the diplomats said, “Kerry thought of the future — he believed, and still does, that if the two sides can’t reach an accord, Israel is going to be in a lot worse shape than it is today.”
Now, granted, this was an interview with an Israeli reporter, but this sort of remark is still indicative of the U.S. bias. All this time the Palestinians have been living under occupation, without civil rights, seeing homes demolished, water taken, enduring settler attacks, and all the other inevitable hardships of military occupation. While one can understand the political necessity of doing this “for Israel,” the real imperative here is that millions of people under Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live without the basic rights most of us in the West take for granted. If remedying that, whether Israel likes it or not, doesn’t underlie your efforts, at least behind closed doors, you will inevitably fail. When there is no credible military threat in the region — and there has not been for many years despite Netanyahu’s frequent histrionics — the incentive for Israel to reach an agreement simply can’t be as great as it is for the Palestinians.
I mentioned above that the anonymous diplomats hinted at some anti-Semitism as well as contempt for Palestinians. The contempt for Palestinians has been evident throughout the process. The United States has long ignored the very significant concessions Palestinians have made over the years, and President Barack Obama and Kerry have been no different. On top of acknowledging that Israel would have control of 78% of what had been Palestine under the British Mandate before 1948 and repeatedly recognizing Israel without any reciprocal recognition by Israel (in Oslo, Israel merely recognized the PLO as the legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people), one of the interviewees noted:
[The Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Mahmoud Abbas] agreed to a demilitarized state; he agreed to the border outline so 80 percent of settlers would continue living in Israeli territory; he agreed for Israel to keep security sensitive areas for five years, and then the United States would take over. He also agreed that the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and agreed that the return of Palestinians to Israel would depend on Israeli willingness. ‘Israel won’t be flooded with refugees,’ he promised. He told us: ‘Tell me if there’s another Arab leader that would have agreed to what I agreed to.’
And then there’s the attitude the U.S. officials anonymously express toward Jews: “The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”
I see! We Jews are smart and stubborn. So Israel has acted this way because it has a Jewish-majority population and is run almost entirely by Jews and, well, we Jews just can’t help ourselves because the stubbornness of ours stomps outdoes our superior intelligence. With this sort of thinking, is it any wonder the U.S. can’t grasp the basics of Israeli or Palestinian politics let alone their intricacies?
There’s also a scary bit of ignorance evident in the statement that “The Oslo Accords were Netanyahu’s creation.” Whatever else might be said about how Netanyahu gamed the Oslo Accords, he certainly didn’t create them. Indeed, he was so vocal in his opposition to them that many still hold him partially responsible for inciting the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who did, actually, sign the Accords.
But ignorance of history is not nearly as bad as complete cluelessness about the present. Barnea asked his interlocutors about Abbas’ stance in the latter stages of the process, and they said he had named three conditions absolutely required for continuing talks: Israel must agree to the outlining of borders as the first topic of discussion within a three-month deadline; Israel must agree to establish a timeline for evacuation of whatever settlers need to be evacuated; and East Jerusalem, whatever its borders, must be the capital of Palestine. All of those are necessary pieces of a framework for talks, but Israel flatly refused all of them.
When Barnea pointed out that agreeing to any of these would have meant the collapse of the Netanyahu government, here is how the U.S. officials responded: “We couldn’t confront the two sides with the painful solutions that were required of them. The Israelis didn’t have to face the possibility of splitting Jerusalem into two capitals; they didn’t have to deal with the meaning of a full withdrawal and the end of the occupation.” So then, can someone explain just what this was all about? If the U.S. is too timid to even broach with Israel the topics of sharing Jerusalem and ending the occupation, what is there to talk about?
More to the point, writers in newspapers all around the world, including many who clearly sided with Israel, have speculated on the inevitability of Netanyahu’s government falling if he reached an agreement with the Palestinians. Indeed, since 2011, both leaders of the Labor Party, the Israeli opposition’s largest party, Shelly Yachimovich and Isaac Herzog, have openly declared that they would join Netanyahu’s government to save his premiership for the sake of a peace agreement, as has the Meretz Party. One can speculate about whether that would have sufficed to save Bibi, or discuss how uninterested Netanyahu has always seemed to be in such an option. But, apparently, the U.S. delegation was not even aware of these considerations. It never occurred to Barnea’s interlocutors to discuss what could have kept a peace deal afloat and Netanyahu in office, even though such thinking appeared in countless media pieces in Israel, the U.S. and Europe. The only reasonable conclusion is that this entire line of thought never came up in State Department planning. If so, how could these talks have possibly succeeded, without some plan to save Netanyahu if they could get him to sign on the dotted line?
All of this begins to build the case that it is Israel that is acting according to its own interests as perceived by its leaders, while the U.S. is screwing up what diplomacy can possibly take hold here through its fecklessness, ignorance and simple incompetence. In part two of this piece, I will sum up this case and explain why Obama’s “time out” will not change the situation or exonerate the United States.
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
A white supremacist in Kansas went on a shooting spree targeting Jews. He killed three people, but none of them were Jewish.
This tells us a good deal about right-wing racism in the United States. Frazier Miller, a 73-year old, twenty year army veteran, was a leading figure among [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
A white supremacist in Kansas went on a shooting spree targeting Jews. He killed three people, but none of them were Jewish.
This tells us a good deal about right-wing racism in the United States. Frazier Miller, a 73-year old, twenty year army veteran, was a leading figure among white supremacists. When he lived in North Carolina, he headed the White Patriot Party, the local KKK chapter. He even ran for the Senate in Missouri as recently as 2010, after having failed to secure much support in a couple of other races in Missouri and North Carolina.
Miller can be heard in his own words demonstrating amply the stereotype of the ignorant, white racist. For many in the US, he is a relic from the past, one which is dying out in the 21st century. Unfortunately, despite the decline of white supremacist ideology over the past century, reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. In fact, the diversity of hate groups in the United States makes their ongoing activity somewhat more subtle and easy for the public to miss. This stands in contrast to Europe where fewer but considerably larger white supremacist groups are visibly rising to power in a number of countries.
There are good reasons why we might become complacent about anti-Semitism and about white supremacy. Racism in the United States has receded as a political force, though few are naïve enough to think it has disappeared. Jews have established a solid place in US culture, but there are also real causes for concern.
Bigotry in general and anti-Semitism in particular have historically flourished during times of economic crisis. Despite positive indicators on Wall Street and in other national measures, most US citizens are continuing to see their economic situation decline, whether it is the poor getting poorer or the middle class struggling more to make ends meet. In Europe, we’ve seen the results of declining economies and rising xenophobia in the escalation of radical right-wing, fascist political parties. It’s been milder in the United States, but classical conservatives of the Eisenhower/Goldwater/Nixon type have lost the Republican party to radical right-wing forces. While those forces have not manifested anything like the overt racism of some of the far-right parties in Europe, their anti-immigrant language is similar and, in general, they have made radical right-wingers feel more at home than they have been for a long time in a major US party.
Miller is representative of the pure form of anti-Semitic ideology, and it is also the enduring form. Connections between anti-Semitism and the Israel-Palestine conflict globally, and especially with the Israel lobby here in the US have garnered a lot of focus in recent years. In that regard, there is a sort of anti-Semitic duality. On one hand, Israel and its supporters have tried to paint supporters of the Palestinian cause as anti-Semitic by definition, and some have even mixed this tactic with their own Islamophoba to paint an image of a so-called “new anti-Semitism.” Yet, on the other hand, some actual anti-Semites, most notably David Duke, have tried to cloak their hatred of Jews as anti-Zionism.
Both of these are not just morally wrong, but also factually so. In Europe, for example, where some of the ugliest incidents of violence against Jews have indeed been perpetrated by Muslims immigrants, the far-right campaign of hate melds anti-Muslim xenophobia with classical anti-Semitism. As Miller makes clear, white supremacists in the US target Jews first and then they move on to anyone else they can find.
So, what does all of this mean? Anti-Semitism matters, even today when it is at a historically low level, especially in the West. It remains a manifestation of hate that galvanizes a host of bigotries. At the same time, anti-Semitism is not the main reason Israeli policies are opposed, or the reason Israel is held to and is recognized in much of the world as failing to live up to Western standards of human rights. If there is one concept that influences public thinking in the United States that has to change, it’s the notion that criticism of Israel equals anti-Semitism.
But that is not going to change as long as advocates for a change in US policy toward Israel fail to recognize the very real concerns of anti-Semitism. It is far too easy, and even glib, for people to look at the current condition of Jews in the US and say that anti-Semitism is no longer a threat. That belief was prevalent in the Europe of the 1920s and in 15th century Iberia, but events on the ground didn’t work out that way. There are powerful indications that this belief is flawed today, too.
Distorting the notion of anti-Semitism, both by hyping it and minimizing it, hurts all the wrong people. Hyping the claim that all criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-Semitic bias hurts the Palestinian cause, most obviously, but also Jews, because it not only elides the real victims of anti-Semitism and subsumes them to another agenda, it also creates a mindset among Jews all over the world that reinforces our view (I am Jewish) of ourselves as eternal victims; permanent others.
Anti-Semitism in general must be put in its proper perspective, neither minimized nor hyped. Part of that process involves understanding the Jewish drive for self-determination even while we insist that such a need does not justify dispossessing and occupying another people. Being willing to stand up to both anti-Semitism and to the propaganda that tries to use the long and tragic history of Jewish suffering for political ends comprises the other part. And, when it comes to US policy, there should be zero tolerance for any sort of bigotry. As we saw in Overland Park this week, the victims of anti-Semitic hate don’t have to be Jewish. Frazier Glenn Miller killed three Christians while targeting Jews. It’s too easy to simply pass him off as just another lunatic with a gun.
Photo: The suspect in deadly shootings at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement community in Overland Park, Kansas, identified as Frazier Glenn Cross, is seen in police custody, April 13, 2014. Credit: KCTV
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
US Secretary of State John Kerry was shuttling between Jordan and Saudi Arabia on Sunday, shoring up support for his efforts to find some kind of framework for negotiations that Israel and the Palestinian Authority could both sign on to. But back in Israel, the difficulties Kerry faces [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
US Secretary of State John Kerry was shuttling between Jordan and Saudi Arabia on Sunday, shoring up support for his efforts to find some kind of framework for negotiations that Israel and the Palestinian Authority could both sign on to. But back in Israel, the difficulties Kerry faces became even more apparent.
First, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that, while he believed the deal Kerry envisions is the best Israel is likely to get, he would not support any peace deal that did not involve transferring Arab towns in Israel to the Palestinian Authority. In other words, Lieberman is insisting on a condition he has long held that forces the expulsion from Israel of some significant number of its Arab citizens. That is something that even the United States will find difficult to endorse, although most in Congress probably would have no problem with it (as long as AIPAC pushes them in that direction). The PA is not going to accept that condition, so Lieberman is basically putting a poison pill inside conciliatory language.
By the end of the day, Yuval Steinitz, a far right wing member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud coalition and Minister of Intelligence, Strategic Affairs and International Relations, stated that Israel could not accept anything less than a sole Israeli military presence for an indefinite period in the Jordan Valley, a clear non-starter. Steinitz made this statement despite the insistence of the former head of the Mossad that the Jordan Valley was not a vital security concern or Israel, so one has to wonder about the motivation for Israel’s insistence on this point.
And in between, Steinitz set off a row in a cabinet meeting by presenting the latest update of the so-called “Palestinian Incitement Index,” and claiming it is proof that the current negotiations are futile. Minister of Justice and lead Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians Tzipi Livni took umbrage at that, and must have been even more convinced of her own irrelevance when the Prime Minister, though stopping short of agreeing with Steinitz that the talks were futile, agreed with him that the report reflected hatred of not only Israel but of Jews in general and that this was why the talks were not succeeding.
The report in question was recently compiled, according to the Israeli media, but the conclusions seem to be virtually identical to the one that was issued one year ago and is available in powerpoint format at the Prime Minister’s web site. Most of that report is simply a rehash of familiar Israeli claims, with some threadbare innuendo mixed in with a few examples of youth contributions to school Facebook pages that do reflect some very objectionable images and statements that are clearly anti-Semitic. It is the greatest stretch of argument to claim that this report (compiled by the Netanyahu government itself) can amount to the “core reason that peace is unattainable” as Netanyahu has repeatedly claim.
The link above takes you to the report, which you can judge for yourself. There is no doubt that some of the images and messages are offensive, even classically anti-Semitic, and, as a Jew, this author was certainly bothered by them. But nothing there indicates to my eyes anything like the pattern of indoctrination of hate that the Netanyahu government has claimed.
On a personal note, as a Jew who has been the victim of anti-Semitic violence in my youth, I am highly sensitive to such images as the objectionable ones in the report. I hope that more thoughtful members of the Palestinian community will intervene against such images and the ideas they reflect. But they are not indicative of some massive conspiracy among the Palestinians to indoctrinate youth into a culture of hate. As the Israeli peace activist (and former Irgun militant) Uri Avnery has pointed out, Israel, with its killings, closures, denial of rights, destruction of homes, confiscations of land and other activities, does this quite adequately all by itself. Conflict breeds hate of the other, and the effect is visible for Israelis as well as Palestinians.
It is precisely to stop that very cycle of suffering that the occupation needs to end and Palestinian rights and security, hand in hand with Israeli rights and security, need to be firmly and equally established and protected. Unfortunately, that is still not the approach the United States is taking.
]]>It was Eric Alterman who observed in The Nation a year ago:
If a Jew-hater somewhere, inspired perhaps by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, sought to invent an individual who symbolizes almost all the anti-Semitic clichés that have dogged the Jewish people throughout history, he could hardly come [...]]]>
It was Eric Alterman who observed in The Nation a year ago:
If a Jew-hater somewhere, inspired perhaps by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, sought to invent an individual who symbolizes almost all the anti-Semitic clichés that have dogged the Jewish people throughout history, he could hardly come up with a character more perfect than Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson, of course, is back in the news — on the front page of the Sunday New York Times — for his suspected role as one of the anonymous donors behind the ongoing ad campaigns in key states and related efforts against the nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense. We don’t know whether Adelson, who, as Alterman noted, likes to boast that he is “the richest Jew in the world,” is indeed providing actual financial support to these mysteriously funded campaigns, although the Times confirmed that he is definitely part of the effort to defeat Hagel’s nomination:
For instance, the biggest individual financier of the so-called super PACs that sought to defeat Mr. Obama, Sheldon Adelson, is so invested in the fight over Mr. Hagel that he has reached out directly to Republican Senators to urge them to hold the line against his confirmation, which would be almost impossible to stop against six Republican “yes” votes and a unified Democratic caucus.
Given the more than $100 million he donated to the anti-Obama effort last year, no lawmakers need to be reminded of his importance to their future endeavors. People briefed on his involvement said Mr. Adelson, chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and a longtime supporter of Israel, was calling in conjunction with the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group he has financed for several years.[Emphasis added.]
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in December, Mr. Adelson said he was prepared to “double” his investment in politics in the coming year.
But it is unclear whether he is directly financing any of the anti-Hagel advertising. An associate of his, speaking about Mr. Adelson’s thinking on condition of anonymity, said he did not believe that expensive television campaigns are the answer to every political push given that Mr. Obama’s re-election team accomplished so much of its success through online and volunteer efforts.
Now, if Adelson is personally reaching out to Republican senators to persuade them to oppose Hagel, I doubt very seriously that those on the receiving end of such calls think that the multi-billionaire casino king and single biggest individual campaign donor in the 2012 election is expecting them to carefully weigh the substantive arguments for and against Hagel. As indicated by the Times, I suspect that those senators believe they will either be rewarded or punished when they face re-election and that the reward or punishment will come in the form of dollars, either directly or through some of those super-PACs and their ads. (This, incidentally, is the kind of thing that Hagel was probably referring to with respect to “intimidation” of members of Congress below.)
The targets of this pressure must find the choice between Hagel and Adelson acutely uncomfortable. After all, Hagel is a decorated war veteran and two-term Republican U.S. senator whose nomination has been endorsed by virtually everybody who is anybody in the U.S. foreign- and defense-policy establishment (most recently on “CNN’s State of the Union” by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and former NSA and DIA director — and senior Romney adviser — Gen. Michael Hayden) and by virtually every veterans’ organization whose members have historically been partial to Republicans. Adelson, on the other hand, has made clear that he would have preferred to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rather than in the U.S. Armed Forces. Indeed, it was Adelson who was video-taped telling an Israeli group back in June, 2010:
I am not Israeli. The uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform, although my wife was in the IDF and one of my daughters was in the IDF … our two little boys, one of whom will be bar mitzvahed tomorrow, hopefully he’ll come back– his hobby is shooting — and he’ll come back and be a sniper for the IDF.
…All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli born, Israel is in my heart.
And remember that, when asked why Adelson was backing his seemingly futile presidential campaign with millions of millions of dollars, it was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who told by NBC’s Ted Koppel simply:
He knows I’m very pro-Israel. That’s the central value of his life. I mean, he’s very worried that Israel is going to not survive.
In that context, recall Hagel’s most-controversial quote in an interview with Aaron David Miller several years ago:
“The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here. Again, I have always argued against some of the dumb things they do because I don’t think it’s in the interest of Israel. I just don’t think it’s smart for Israel.
Now, everyone has a right to lobby; that’s as it should be. Come see your senator, your congressman, and if you can get the guy to sign your letter, great, wonderful.
But as I reminded somebody not too long ago, in fact it was a group I was speaking to in New York, and we got into kind of an interesting give and take on Iran. A couple of these guys said we should just attack Iran. And I said, ‘Well, that’s an interesting thought; we’re doing so well in Iraq.’ And I said it would really help Israel.
And this guy kept pushing and pushing. And he alluded to the fact that maybe I wasn’t supporting Israel enough or something. And I just said let me clear something up here, in case there is any doubt.
I said, ‘I’m a United States senator. I’m not an Israeli senator. I’m a United States senator.’ I support Israel, but my first interest is I take an oath of office to the Constitution of the United States — not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel. If I go run for Senate in Israel, I’ll do that. Now I know most senators don’t talk like I do.”
(Of course, Hagel subsequently apologized for his use of the phrase “Jewish lobby.” But I’m not aware that Adelson has expressed any regret for his expression of disappointment over having served in the U.S. military.)
Photo: Sen. Chuck Hagel addresses audience members at the nomination announcement for Hagel as the next Secretary of Defense and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan (right) as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in the East Room of the White House, Jan. 7, 2013. (DOD photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley)
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