Window on Israel: Jewish vitality

The latest sources of Jewish panic are claims that Israel has gone crazy in an alleged concern for its defense, and that the American Jewish Left is threatening what had been united support for Israel's essential concerns.
 
The Left is sickened by indications of bloodshed and destruction in Gaza. The Right is frightened by the emergence of the Leftist J Street and signs of its alignment with the White House. Either this new Left is provoking the White House to threaten Israel, or the White House is using the Jewish Left as leverage against Israel.
 
So what else is new?
 
Remember that Moses had his hands full with Hebrew rebels. Ezra struggled unsuccessfully with men attracted to shiksas (non-Jewish women). Josephus described full scale civil war. Since then Jews have produced, followed and been disappointed by no end of spiritual and political messiahs.
 
J Street is the American expression of what Israelis knew as Brit Shalom in the 1920s, and Peace Now from the 1970s onward.
 
If the greatest threat comes from an article in The Nation, then God's people can relax.  

Authors who write: "It's little wonder young American Jews feel increasingly indifferent about a country that has been at the center of Jewish identity for four decades" either cannot count, or do not know enough history to concern the rest of us. 1948 was six decades ago. 
 
And whoever thinks that "the Gaza conflict has helped break down the traditional Jewish resistance to criticizing Israel," has not heard about the fighting that took place in Lebanon from 1982 to 2000. That was described as Israel's first war of choice, rather than necessity. It was a high point in the history of Peace Now and its allies. It produced a demonstration by 400,000 Israelis when the war was only a few months old.
 
The authors of the article in The Nation are thrilled with signs of a grassroots arousal of Jewish youth, intellectuals and rabbis against Israel, some of them urging a boycott and others demanding a fast in order to mourn Israel's "brutality." They are sufficiently alert to notice that revolution will not be easy. There is still a Jewish establishment, and they see few signs that Congress or the White House will put real pressure on Israel.
 
Peace Now is still with us, along with Physicians for Human Rights, B'Tselem, and self-styled anarchists who demonstrate along with Palestinians against the security barrier, or whatever else concerns them.
 
However, a recent article in The New York Times describes the sentiment, widespread among Israelis,  that the IDF's activities in Lebanon (2006) and Gaza (2009) have brought more quiet to the country to the country's northern and southern borders than there has been for years. The article notes that Israelis are wary that the quiet may not last. But it is apparent to many that military force works better than diplomacy with Palestinians and Islamic fanatics. 
 
Left of center Jewish parties did not do well in the election that occurred in the month after the Gaza operation. Meretz won three seats and Labor 13, all-time lows for both those parties. Leftist fortunes have not improved since then. Labor's chairman continues as Defense Minister and senior partner in the Netanyahu government, while five or more of the party's Knesset members are muttering about defecting and setting up a new party with purer ideals.
 
Some right-wing Jews are convinced that a secret Muslim, not born in the United States, and an anti-Semite, has wormed his way into the Oval Office. Less extreme are those who say that President Obama is intense in his hostility to Israel, and overlook his demands - no less onerous - directed at Palestinians and Arab governments.
 
The reality is that the Obama White House is different from the Bush White House, but not by all that much. The president is not oblivious to realities, American commitments, or problems in his preferred course of engagement. He has added to the forces sent to Afghanistan. The future of American involvement in Iraq depends on developments there. The White House has responded with severe criticism to the Goldstone Report, despite its status as a lodestone of the international Left.
 
The latest indication of Jewish vitality appears within the family of Rafael Eitan. Toward the end of his life, the feisty former head of the IDF general staff and founder of a right-wing party married a woman no less outspoken, but from another perspective.
 
Eitan died five years ago. Now the Jerusalem municipality proposes to name a street for him in a new Jewish area being constructed in the Arab neighborhood of Jebl Mukabar.
 
Eitan once said: "The Arabs will never defeat us by throwing stones. Our answer will be a nationalist Zionist solution. For every stone throwing, we'll establish ten settlements. If there are - and there will be - a hundred settlements between Nablus and Jerusalem, no stones will be thrown."

His widow is asking the municipality not to honor him in an Arab neighborhood. "The street does not belong to us. We do not have to be there."
 
Eitan's children from a previous marriage have not joined the widow's protest.