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American Jews and the Palestinians
The Long Silence
By HOWARD LISNOFF
24/08/08 "Counterpunch" -- - For many years, now decades, I have
been silent as a Jew about Israel’s relationship to, and
treatment of, the Palestinian people and my place as an American
Jew in that equation. Recently, I looked back at the Jews who I
have known personally, as friends and acquaintances, and
examined how their views about Palestinians and Israel have
affected me and deepened my silence.
Following the lightning-fast victory of Israel over Egypt and
Syria in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the resulting
improvement in relations between Egypt and Israel after the Camp
David Accords in 1978, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip appeared solidified. The seeming invincibility of
Israel in both the 1967 and 1973 wars led, I believe, to a false
perception of invincibility and self-righteousness among many
Jews took hold. No longer would Jews be victims, as during the
Holocaust, but they would meet any challenge and react with
force whenever and wherever a threat appeared. It portrayed Jews
as strong as reflected in Israel’s treatment of its neighboring
states, and in particular in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The government of Israel was
showing the world how rapid and lethal a response could be to
attacks, such as suicide bombings, against the people of Israel.
Jews would never again be viewed as weak and subject to vicious
mass attacks and attempted genocide as symbolized by the
Holocaust. The stereotype of Jews as weak would be destroyed
forever! The development of a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons
is perhaps a reflection of the interplay between these historic
and psychological factors. Who is more impervious to an outside
threat than a state that possesses the ultimate power of weapons
of mass destruction?
Jews in the U.S. were expected to accept their roles as
supporters of whatever policy Israel adopted. Those Jews who
wavered would be open to the most vicious attacks. Perhaps no
one better typifies this phenomenon than Professor Norman G.
Finkelstein, who lost his bid for tenure at DePaul University in
May 2008, after a campaign of vicious attacks aimed at silencing
his scholarly criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian
people and the industry that had grown up, primarily in the
U.S., to profit from the horror of the Holocaust. His books,
among them The Holocaust Industry (2000) and Beyond Chutzpah
(2005) have drawn stinging attacks. Among his most vehement
detractors is Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard.
The power of the Jewish lobby in the U.S. is partially explained
by studying the monetary might behind that influence. The most
powerful of these organizations is the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, which in the 2004 alone had a $33 million
budget with a staff of 140.
James David reports in his article “A Passionate Attachment to
Israel,” that the Israel lobby had contributed $41 million to
congressional and presidential candidates over the past 54 years
(2002). University of San Francisco Professor Stephen Zunes
states, in the article “The Strategic Functions of U.S. Aid to
Israel,” that “more than $1.5 billion in private U.S. funds…go
to Israel annually.”
The emergence of the image of Israel as invincible, and any
criticism of Israel by Jews viewed as self-loathing and
self-hating, is paralleled by the growth of the religious right
in the U.S., which sees Israel as part of the biblical
prediction of the final war (Armageddon) fought in the Middle
East as reflected in the New Testament Book of Revelation.
Indeed, the religious Right and Jews are strange bedfellows!
Amid all of the rhetoric of moral support Israel would continue
to benefit greatly from the largess of the U.S., receiving
one-third of total U.S. foreign aid despite the fact that per
capita income among Israelis is among the highest in the world.
Such is the payoff for occupying the position as acting as an
agent for the projection of raw military might in the Middle
East by the U.S.
The antithesis of the Jews who were invincible was the
self-hating Jew, again, usually any Jew who dared to criticize
Israel’s policies toward the people of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. This phenomenon is remarkable for its sheer chutzpah in
that the highest values of Jewish life, both religious and
secular, are the tolerance and acceptance of others, the
universal value of life, the championing of the downtrodden, the
belief in fair play, and the search for peace and justice. These
values are at the very root of the Jewish peoples’ struggle for
survival and irresistible search for knowledge over many
millennia. The most bellicose attacks are reserved for Jews who
are scholars, artists and intellectuals.
One footnote to the attempt to paint U.S. Jews as universally
supporting Israel, and Israel’s handling of the Palestinian
issue, was the incessant propaganda campaigns in the media to
portray the Palestinian people and their leadership as both
totally undemocratic and hostile to the many attempts brokered
by Washington to bring peace to the region. In fact, the most
recent attempt to create an autonomous Palestinian state in the
West Bank and Gaza Strip, during the Clinton administration,
wrongly attributed its failure to the leadership of the
Palestinians, when the actual territory of a supposed
Palestinian state never materialized as part of the
negotiations. The so-called “Two State Solution” never existed
on paper. Meanwhile, Jewish settlements in the West Bank grew,
as does the wall to block off needed access of the people of the
West Bank to Israel. Attacks and counterattacks continue.
Most Jews in the U.S. favor an independent Palestinian state in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, when questioned further
by pollsters, they say that the prospect for peace between
Israel and the Palestinian people is dim. I looked at opinion
polls of Jews in the U.S. and Israel and their attitudes toward
this issue.
Just prior to the Second Intifada, a poll conducted by the Los
Angeles Times among Israelis and American Jews showed a minority
(44%) of Israeli Jews support the two-state concept compared to
68% of Jews in the U.S. Polls conducted by the American Jewish
Committee from 2001 through 2006 indicated that a relatively
consistent 54% of American Jews favored the establishment of a
Palestinian state.
I examined the relationships I’ve had with several friends and
acquaintances to try to learn if the figures cited above are
reflected in the opinions of real people. What I found was very
disappointing!
I’ve known Robert for twenty-five years. He was a well-regarded
and liberal professor. He had become a favorite of students
during the Vietnam War because of his strong antiwar stance. I
recall one student I had in class for an undergraduate course
who had had Robert in a single course as an undergraduate. The
student railed at Robert’s liberalism. Robert and I usually
spoke several mornings following our workouts at a local
community center. During one session I was shocked to hear
Robert referring to Israel as “Eretz Israel,”meaning the
biblical land of Palestine referred to in the Old Testament. He
had always been critical of my criticism of Israeli policy
toward Palestinians, but claiming the biblical homeland as
solely Jewish was difficult to accept from a person who was
otherwise thoughtful and articulate in discussing foreign
affairs, and who had been a staunch antiwar spokesperson.
I’ve known Sheila and Paul since taking a graduate course Paul
taught. Our families have socialized for years. They are both
Orthodox Jews. Paul never served in the military, a position I
had no problem with having been a resister during the Vietnam
War. Years after our families had grown, and Sheila and Paul’s
oldest son had begun college, I was dumbfounded to find a
picture of Paul and his son in a local newspaper. They both wore
uniforms of the Israel Defense Forces, and the caption beneath
their picture stated that they were involved in a summer program
to aid the IDF by performing work on an Israeli military base so
that soldiers could be freed from those duties.
Rebecca and Philip have been friends for four years. Philip’s
father served in the Israeli army during the 1948 Arab-Israeli
War. Rebecca holds both an Israeli and U.S. passport, her family
having immigrated to Israel after the Holocaust. Recently, while
I was visiting with Philip, Rebecca arrived at their house,
exiting her car with arms flailing. She could hardly contain her
anger. “I just heard a report on National Public Radio. Those
monsters are going to allow Al-Jazeera to be broadcast in
Vermont. I can’t believe they’ll allow that propaganda on the
radio!” What Rebecca was referring to was the decision of one
media outlet in one area of Vermont to broadcast Al Jazeera, a
news service in the Middle East that has produced a separate
English-language counterpart in the U.S.
Philip seethes with anger and animosity toward Palestinians. I
cannot bring the subject up when we speak. One wall of their
home is covered with pictures and news stories of his father’s
exploits during the 1948 war. During the Vietnam War Philip was
deferred from the draft because of his employment in the defense
industry.
I have known Richard and Diane most of my life. Both of their
children have taken part in the March of the Living, a
remembrance of the Holocaust and its victims that passes many
World War II concentration camps. Both children have traveled in
Israel as part of the Birthright Israel program that conducts
free tours of Israel for Jews from other countries. Richard is
the son of Holocaust survivors. His voice turns to a growl when
discussing Palestinians. One of his often-repeated statements
is, “You can’t trust an Arab.” It is impossible to engage him in
a meaningful debate or discussion about a Palestinian state. I
realize that there is a definite psychological impact being a
close relative of a Holocaust survivor; however, what I can’t
understand is the absence of compassion as a result of the
terror that was done to Jews in Nazi Germany.
I also know liberal Jews. They are strongly in favor of the
establishment of a Palestinian state; some also favor
reparations for Palestinians who left, or were driven from their
homes during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. More typical however, of
the people I come in contact with is the man who works out in
the gym of a community center. One day I overheard him talking
to another person in the gym in support of the wall being
constructed between Israel and the West Bank. When I interject,
“Don’t you think that building a wall is somewhat reminiscent of
the wall constructed around the Warsaw Ghetto during World War
II?” He yells, “I can’t believe that a Jew would say such a
thing! Are you a maniac? Do you want to harm Israel?”
Israel has not fared well in either the General Assembly or the
Security Council of the United Nations, although Israel can
depend on U.S. support in the latter. More than half of the
resolutions dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict have either
criticized or opposed Israel. In the General Assembly, away from
the veto power of the U.S., 429 resolutions relating to Israel
have been passed, of which 321 condemned Israel (1967-1989).
Resolutions passed relating to Israel involve what is called the
“Pacific Settlement of Disputes,” and are not enforceable.
Figures showing the number of deaths resulting from the Second
Intifada, the uprising against Israeli rule in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, showed 4,269 Palestinians killed between 2000 and
2006, while 1,017 Israelis were killed during the same period
(Other estimates indicate that the number of Palestinian deaths
have been far higher). These figures reflect the military
superiority of the IDF and their backing, both politically and
with military hardware, from the U.S.
In examining my own beliefs as a secular Jew I read Judaism in a
Secular Age: A Anthology of Secular Humanistic Thought (1995). I
wanted to assess the thinking of Jewish scholars, artists and
writers over the past several hundred years to attempt to learn
about early attitudes toward the establishment of a Jewish state
and its relationship to the people of Palestine. What I found
was a generally liberal view of live and let live in
relationship to Palestinians who had coexisted with Jews in
Palestine prior to the founding of Israel. Consistent with the
Jewish secular tradition, I found openness to the high value
placed on tolerance of the differences of others.
Over the past decade I have had two interactions with one of the
most prominent Jewish organizations in the U.S., the
Anti-Defamation League. In 2001 I went to the group after a
neighbor threatened me by saying, “Hitler should have killed all
the Jews,” because of his reaction to letters against war that
were published in the local press. In 2007 I again approached
the group after the paper The Truth At Last was left on my
driveway. The “paper” contained both racist and anti-Semitic
articles. In both cases my impression of the group was that
their only concern was to collect data on anti-Semitic
incidents.
I think writing this piece has been a kind of purging for my
years of silence regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinians in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip. As Israeli settlements expand in
the West Bank and the blockade of the Gaza Strip continues, I
can no longer remain silent.
Howard Lisnoff is an educator and freelance writer.
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