An open letter in response to J-street's
Dear Jeremy Ben-Ami, Allow me to respond to your open letter to Ambassador Michael Oren with an open letter of my own. I share your worry "that the connection to Israel for a large number of Jewish Americans has become strained over time." I love your statement to the Ambassador, and presumably to the entire pro-Israel community, that "what J-Street shares in common with you far outweighs that on which we disagree." As someone trying to figure out how to sing a new song of Zion for the next generation of Jews and as someone who champions "big-tent" Zionism, like there was during the movement's early days, it sounds like you're singing my song. Alas, when I examine what you advocate and what you ignore, when I read your statements, surf your website and look at your conference program, I am troubled. For starters, I do not see the use of the word "Zionism" anywhere. I wonder if that is tactical or ideological. I wonder if you would display on your website the following statement:
Those are the words of then-Senator Barack Obama, spoken on June 4, 2008, the day after he clinched the nomination. Or what about this:
Obama again. If President Obama is not afraid to affirm Zionist ideals, why do you seem to be? 'J Street' to the Left of me, jokers to the Right...
When one is attacked from both sides, it's easy to feel virtuous. Having opponents from the far left and the far right does not guarantee you're a moderate. It simply situates you in what farmers who trusted butter over its artificial modern substitute would have called the "margarine middle." Last week I was hit from both extremes. There seems to be a missing "nuance gene" when it comes to Israel. The most reasonable people, the most skilled professionals, somehow find themselves behaving irrationally, talking wildly and acting sloppily when the topic is raised. My previous blog, "Israel's self-hating Jews," which condemned Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman for blaming the Obama settlement freeze idea on the president's "Jew boy" advisers, triggered numerous attacks against me for daring to question the mayor's horrific choice of words. You would have thought Mayor Nachman was the holy Reb Nachman of Breslav, given his devotees' intensity. My critics refused to acknowledge that using such language - when trying to convince a State Department delegation, no less - was crude, rude and self-defeating. Nachman's followers took an attack on him as an attack on them, on Israel, on the Jewish people and on truth itself, while perceiving it as a deluded defense of Obama's foreign policy, despite my criticisms of the administration's Israel strategy. Most disturbingly, they felt completely justified using offensive, racist language to describe fellow Jews with whom they disagree, thus undercutting those of us who have been forced to spend far too much time fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, racism, and ethnic stereotyping of all kinds. These rhetorical bomb-throwers confirmed every liberal caricature of the aggressive, self-righteous, my-way-or-the-highway settlers - but characteristically blamed me for helping to perpetuate that stereotype. Let me say regarding the "Jew boy" issue what I say when anti-Semites masquerading as "mere" anti-Zionists compare Israelis to Nazis. Intelligent people can find a rich choice of words to convey disdain without resorting to cheap, ugly, inflammatory anti-Semitic language that reveals the critics' own prejudices. Treat the apartheid slur - the "A-word" - like the "N-word"
Since Neve Gordon published his controversial Los Angeles Times op-ed "Boycott Israel" on August 20, critics have called for officials at Ben Gurion University, his academic home, to punish him or to risk losing donations. Cutting donations to a university because of an outspoken professor or suspending that professor for his views is as shortsighted and self-destructive as an Israeli citizen endorsing a boycott of his own country. Maybe I am perverse, but I relish these moments to demonstrate that Israel has freedom of speech and Israeli campuses have academic freedom - unlike their neighbors. At the same time, it is important to denounce Gordon and others for perpetuating the apartheid smear against Israel. Everyone who cares about peace in the Middle East and truth in the world must stop making the false comparisons between the difficult national conflict pitting Israelis against Palestinians and the ugly racist regime that discriminated against South Africans of color for decades. In his article, Gordon proclaims: "The most accurate way to describe Israel today is as an apartheid state." This may be the trendiest, most politically correct, and most demeaning way to describe Israel today, but for a professor of politics to claim that it is "the most accurate way" is absurd. The unconscionable, inaccurate apartheid label insults anyone who supports the modern Jewish state of Israel as well as everyone who suffered under South Africa's evil apartheid system. 'Queers against Israel' - are gays blinded by hypocrisy?
How could hatred of Israel be so intense that it blinds people to what they usually perceive as their most basic self-interest? This past Sunday in Montreal, a few dozen marchers in the 2009 Montreal LGBTA Gay Pride parade marched against what they called "Israeli Apartheid." Witnesses reported that many onlookers cheered these anti-Israel ideologues as they paraded by. Similarly, in late June in Toronto 180 protesters from "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" (QuAIA) marched in an attempt to "reignite Toronto's queer community in the fight against apartheid," which is the latest trendy accusation against Israel. These antics take anti-Zionism to an absurd extreme. As I argued in a Montreal Gazette op-ed the day of the parade, identifying as "Queers Against Israeli Apartheid" defies logic, perverts history and distorts priorities. It reflects such hatred against Israel that maligning Zionism overrides all other causes, including gay liberation; it eclipses all identities, including one's sexual identity. The dirty little secret QuAIA must suppress is that Israel is the safest refuge in the Middle East for persecuted homosexuals, including Palestinians. Defending Israel is not Smearing Obama or Bullying Mary Robinson
Just as savvy lawyers teach their associates to pound the table harder the weaker their argument becomes, Israel's critics are accusing its defenders of "smear" tactics and "bullying." In the toxic atmosphere which pollutes Middle East discourse, rife with accusations about super-powerful Jews doing their dirty work through the omnipotent "Jewish lobby," Israel's defenders are frequently put on the defensive. These unfair, hysterical accusations undermine the democratic discourse essential to governing effectively, especially in a complicated, messy policy arena such as the Middle East. Let's face it, no one wants to be accused of McCarthyite tactics, and few people have the stomach these days to be on the wrong side of Barack Obama and his minions. People who dare criticize the American president get the kind of treatment Marc Stanley, the chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council, meted out in The Jerusalem Post this week. Obama at 100 days
Barack Obama has just completed his first hundred days as president, an artificial benchmark rooted in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. John Kennedy proved more successful than his first hundred days suggested, marred as they were by the aborted Bay of Pigs attack against Cuba. George W. Bush's presidency ended less successfully than it began. Still, a presidential character starts forming during this honeymoon, while story lines emerge that determine a president's destiny. Obama's greatest challenge has been saving America's economy, but he cannot ignore foreign policy. Domestically, Obama wants to match Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, presidents who restored hope, revived the economy, and redefined Americans' relationship with government - in this case correcting Reagan's anti-government drift. Regarding foreign policy, Obama appears to follow Theodore Roosevelt with a twist. TR advised: "Speak softly and carry a big stick." So far - and the presidency remains young - Obama is speaking softly to enemies, treating friends coolly and carrying a medium-sized stick. Israeli 6th graders learn hope, not hate
On Monday, just before Yom Hazikaron, Israel's Remembrance Day, and shortly after I returned from the Durban Review Conference in Geneva, I was invited to talk about Durban to my son's 6th grade class in Jerusalem. He attends a Dati-Mamlachti, religious public school, Efrata, in Baka. I have spoken to elementary school classes at various Jewish day schools in Montreal over the years, so I have some sense of what kids this age know and don't know about current events, and about Israel. What shocked me - and then in many ways impressed me - (beyond their excellent, polite behavior throughout the class) was how shocked so many of the sixth graders in Jerusalem were by the depth of anti-Israel hatred on display at the Durban II conference. Message at Durban: I am a Zionist and proud of it
DURBAN DIARY Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. He is attending the Durban Review conference as an observer. After four days in the Durban Review conference's upside down, bad-is-good Orwellian world, my soul hurts. Here in Geneva, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is lionized, despite his genocidal threats toward Israel and the United States, despite his regime's sexism and homophobia, despite his government's suppression of dissidents, while Israel is demonized, despite its peaceful aspirations. Here, absolute dictatorships like Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria condemn imperfect democracies like the US, Canada and Israel. Amid this travesty, my soul hurts as a Jew, because I reject this libel that Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, is racist. Remembering the Holocaust after Ahmadinejad denied it
DURBAN DIARY Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. He is attending the Durban Review conference as an observer. Thanks to tremendous prep work by the Jewish community along with human rights organizations and democracies ashamed by Durban I, Durban II has been mild. Despite the undercurrent of hostility - and the occasional security threat -- the UN's move from Durban to Geneva worked. The NGO delegates' lounge has the festive schmoozy air of any conference. The streets have been relatively quiet. Ahmadinejad's antics, the UN's perversity
DURBAN DIARY Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. He is attending the Durban Review conference as an observer. "The UN really is a beautiful thing," I thought as I waited to pass through security at UN headquarters in Geneva. I was standing in a living, breathing poster for multiculturalism, amid delegates of different colors, from different cultures, representing different countries. My reverie was interrupted when the security guards pulled aside one delegate just ahead of me from an Arab country. Emblazoned on the folder he used to carry his papers was the slogan ZIONISM IS RACISM, with a swastika added for good measure. This, alas, is the reality of the modern UN. The great betrayal comes from hijacking noble ideals as a masquerade to obscure harsh hatred. Casually walking around with a 'Zionism is Racism' folder reflects an identity of negation, built around hate, rather than around something positive. This is modern Palestinian nationalism's great tragedy - and crime. |
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