UPDATE: I just got back from a Huffington Post discussion on Israel, and boy are my arms tired

May 8, 2010 admin 13 comments

UPDATE: A link to this article was posted on http://thebrothersofjudea.blogspot.com . The Brothers of Judea is a website dedicated to fighting Antisemitism in HuffPo Talkback. If you want to read even more on this subject and get some good ideas on how to fight back I highly recommend reading it.
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So, a funny thing happened to me the other day.

I started my day, as usual, by checking my email, Facebook and The Huffington Post. At HuffPo I was greeted by a pop-up window announcing a new feature – ‘badges’. You earn badges based on activity – # of comments made, # of comments or stories posted to a social network, etc. etc.

What surprised me was that I was already a Level 1 Huffington Post “Super User”. After all I only check the site once or twice a day and only comment when someone says something that is either factually incorrect or isn’t sourced. Well it turns out that those comments, as of this writing, come to a total of 229.

How the hell did that happen? I have only been commenting on the site for two months, maybe less. Yet there it was staring me in the face. 229 comments. I told myself it had to be a mistake, some kind of bug. But clicking on the Comments tab proved it was true. There they were, 229 comments made by me. Yet the biggest surprise was the comments themselves, 95% of them were in defense of Israel.

“Why is that a surprise?” you might be asking yourself. After all, I am a Jew and a strong believer in Israel. However, if you spoke to just about anyone in AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself America’s Pro-Israel Lobby; more on that later) they would call me ‘self-hating’ or ‘not a real Jew’. Why? Because I and a great deal,probably a majority, of American and European Jews believe, hell as a great deal of Israeli Jews believe, in a two state solution that includes a withdrawal to the Pre-1967 War borders.

In other words, I am capable of differentiating between Israel and and a specific Israeli government, just as I can differentiate the United States from its government (it was the only way to survive the Bush years without tearing my own eyes out). I can love Israel and hate current Israeli government policy which, for the most part, I do.

So there I am, skipping merrily along my way on HuffPo, reading an article about Obama’s hopes for Middle East Peace Talks, when I decide to scroll down to the comments.

Here on a liberal blog, where I found myself in agreement with the comments 95% of the time (the rest being trolls), was diatribe after diatribe attacking… well, honestly, the writers didn’t even seem to know exactly what they were attacking. I had been catapulted into a world where the words “Jew”, “Zionist”, “Israeli”, “Occupiers”, “Settlers”,”so-called Jewish”, “dual citizens” and “neo-cons” were all used interchangeably, as were “Palestinian”, “Jordanian”, “terrorist”, “PLO”, “Fatah”, “Hamas” – sometimes in the same sentence. It was a world where people whom I had read on other threads and seemed perfectly rational to me were practically frothing at the mouth. Maybe 1% of this frothing was coming from supporters of Israel; the other 99% of it was not.

Most of the supporters of Israel on HuffPo appear to be like me, active supporters of J Street, a new Jewish Political Action Committee founded specifically to counter the “Israel’s government is right no matter what” voice that is AIPAC. J Street supports a just Two State Solution and believes that the US Government must do more to work towards that goal, including putting real pressure on the Israeli Government. We believe that as long as the Israeli Government can count on AIPAC to assure U.S. financial aid and a total lack of US condemnation of bad behavior they will have no incentive to make peace. We also believe that given the natural population growth in the area, combined with other realities on the ground, that Israel will eventually destroy itself if it does not make peace with the Palestinians via a two state solution.

Now, try convincing your average HuffPo reader that this is a common feeling among Jews. That we really want peace, want a Palestinian Nation with Arab East Jerusalem as part of it’s territory, want the settlements shut down. Try convincing them that every Jew is not every Zionist is not every Israeli is not every settler. Just try. You will be balder than I am before the sun goes down.

I have learned not to be surprised by the ignorance that comes from the right wing fanatics, the tea baggers, the religious zealots, the birthers, and the truthers. What I have just started to come to grips with is that there is just as much ignorance on the left, and just as much discrimination.

Somehow when a Jew does something that is seen as objectionable by someone on HuffPo, it is “the Jews” that have done it. Lieberman – “the Jews”, Dershowitz – “the Jews”, the Neocons – “the Jews”, the State Department – “the Jews” and on and on. Never mind that most Jews I know consider both Lieberman and Dershowitz to be scumbags, that the majority of US Jews are liberals, or even that Dershowitz speaking on behalf of AIPAC has attacked J Street as being “Anti-Israel”. To these people we are all the same. J-Street, which openly fights with AIPAC, is referred to as “AIPAC-Light”. Some of these people even go as far as to believe that The Protocols Of The Elders of Zion are real, and that while the Holocaust was real the numbers are “exaggerated”. Some go as far as to say that Jews are “doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to them”, which is both shockingly wrong and shockingly ignorant of the fact that there were a lot more than Germans “doing it to us” for a lot longer than they can imagine.

As Rachel Maddow has said many times about many things “You are entitled to your own opinion. What you are not entitled to is your own set of facts.” Yet these same people whom have quoted Maddow on other threads argue from their own set of facts.

What I suspect, though of course can not know, is that I am getting a feeling for what it must be like for the Doves in Israel. After all, that is the real battle. It is not Jew Vs. Palestinian or even Right Vs. Left. It is Hawk Vs. Dove. Jewish doves we will always be ‘the Jews” to the rest of the world and “self-hating Jews” or “Israel-bashers” to the Hawks among us .

How does a Jew advocate for real peace when non-Jews can’t tell us apart from those who do not, and Jews who do not advocate for real peace can not tell us apart from non-Jews? Will the Israeli Government and American Liberals, so desperately at odds with each other, allow us to save the Jewish State or will their hatred for each other crowd out the voices that most need to be heard – the Jew who is willing to compromise for peace? I also wonder, how much is the situation alike for Palestinian doves – whom AIPAC nd the current Israeli government would tell you do not exist and the HuffPo liberals will tell you are what all Palestinians are? Yet another in a long list of things that your average Jew and your average Palestinian probably has in common. All I know for sure is that it is exhausting to try.

American, International, Musings, Politics and Society, The Media AIPAC, Doves, Hawks, Israel, Isreali, J Street, Liberals, Palestine, Palestinian, Peace

#1 | Written by Lee Diamond about 13 years ago. Reply

Dave, Thanks for your sensible comments & efforts to engage everyone. You are saying a lot of things I’ve said. I hope we can all come together and build a strong mass movement.

Gordon provided a link to the film, “Budrus Has A Hammer.” It is a film about Palestinian nonviolence, out now. I think we should promote it. Hopefully, a lot of people will see it. Hopefully, the showings of the film can be a place where more activists can be recruited.
#2 | Written by califlefty about 13 years ago. Reply

Thanks for your blog posting. I too seem to spend most of my HufPo time defending Israel against the anti-Semitic echo machine that, through the strategy of repeating the same tropes over and over, is build the de-legitimize Israel campaign brick by brick. Unfortunately, my read on J-Street is rather negative simply because it’s like an iceberg, there is much hidden beneath the surface of it’s “pro-Israel” public posture specifically, who helped start and finance it, starting with Nancy Dutton, the widow of Fred Dutton who was a long-time Saudi foreign agent and served as the Saudi Embassy’s attorney in Washington. As late as August 2008, news accounts identified her as the Saudis’ lawyer. Odd that she donated to J Street’s political action committee? Then there is Judith Barnett who serves on J Street’s Advisory Council and donates to the J Street PAC. After leaving the Clinton administration, Barnett worked for several Arab countries. She wrote an incredibly stupid puff piece in the Washington Post claiming that things weren’t so bad for women in..wait for it..Saudi Arabia! She then registered with the Justice Department as foreign agent of the Saudis in order to polish their image. Does this mean that J-Street is totally de-legit? No, but these things matter.

I’m not an AIPAC’er myself but I find they are the only game in town simply because the game as it is now being played is being dictated by the Arab world as a “zero-sum” game. Until the Palestinians and their Iranian overlords are willing and able to envision an end goal that addresses the legitimate needs of Israeli Security as opposed to it’s piecemeal destruction I can’t buy into the J-Street vision that the mere acceptance of the “Saudi Plan”, with it’s “Auschwitz borders” and evacuation of the settlements will somehow overturn a mindset that has existed for nearly 100 years that has no place for a Jewish State with all that entails.

There is far too much emphasis on the settlements as the primary stumbling bloc to peace. I believe the settlements don’t necessarily enhance Israeli security when it comes to conflicts with neighboring states but that’s irrelevant, what is important is security vis a vis a potential future Palestinian State. J-Street has never effectively acknowledged that those waters were tested during the Oslo experiment, when Israel surrendered control over Palestinian populated areas and it cost nearly 900 lives, mostly civilians. The Oslo experience taught that the lack of Israeli control in the occupied territories also provided the Palestinians with an opportunity to enhance their own military capabilities and that led directly to the post-Camp David war. Without the settlements and control, Israel is deprived of the ability to combat terror actively and gives the Palestinians the opportunity to regroup and maintain safe haven any time they wish to “flip the switch” as Arafat did in 2000. J-Street has never learned, or minimizes, this seminal lesson of the Oslo experience. If there is to be a future agreement that returns sovereignty back to the PA it must be only if Israel doesn’t have to suffer heavy casualties again in order to stop attacks should they chooses to go to war again.

One possibility I think worth exploring is a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation that transfers sovereignty back to Jordan with the PA disarmed. Until J-Street can bring itself to putting other reasonable options on the table the hard-liners both with and without Israel will continue to be in the drivers seat.
- #3 | Written by David Norman about 13 years ago. Reply
  
  I certainly understand your concerns about some of the originators of J Street, but I would look at the current board and the current positions it takes to judge it by. I think they are doing good work and proving that AIPAC is no longer “the only game in town”
  
  I also understand your concerns about security, but the reality is that since the PA/Hamas split the PA has been doing an excellent job of both cooperating with Israeli security and policing it’s own. The autonomous regions of the West Bank are actually developing nicely, with violence more likely to be directed at Palestinians by settlers than vice-versa. The Post-Gaza-Civil-War PA is a very different animal than it was and has earned some concessions, or at least that Israel meet the conditions it has already agreed to. Also, the Oslo Experiment is a bit of a misnomer. It was an agreement, and Israel violated it just as much as the Palestinians did. That had as much, if not more, to do with the loss of life than Palestinian Autonomy.
  
  A Palestinian-Jordanian confederation will never happen for the same reason that the right of return can never happen. The Jordanian government does not want to be dominated by Palestinians. This is why they never granted them citizenship and kept them in refugee camps when they did control the West Bank.
  
  I believe that the current proposal by J Street is very close to the Geneva Peace Groups Accord of 2005, which was negotiated over 2 1/2 years by peace groups from both sides and which I believe is a workable solution. ANY peace in the region is going to require a large international presence that both sides can trust. J Street may be able to produce that. AIPAC certainly cannot.
#4 | Written by Gordon about 13 years ago. Reply

Dave,1st of all: GREAT article! I’m really glad you’re blogging now,your voice is much-needed on many topics. And we’re all too lazy to do it,so PLEASE keep speaking Truth to Power! YOur differentiation between governments & the people of that country is so crucial in today’s world. No matter who is “in office”,there is always another viewpoint(or multiple) with many followers that is often unrepresented.
The replies that ‘Ofer’ has made to your article are EXACTly the Blame Game that you are speaking of trying to avoid! Now I know why your arms are so tired! The back-and-forth between you & Ofer just highlights why I generally don’t like to talk about Israel in public settings. People tend to get very emotional & judgmental,losing all rationality or empathy for any other viewpoint. I think Ofer makes a good point that the “bigger picture” of a wider regional conflict between Arabs/Jews is often overlooked by Western diplomats. But that doesn’t justify all the Israeli settlements being built in East Jerusalem. And the rogue Palestinian vigilantes shooting little rockets from Gaza into Jewish settlements are not justified by Israel’s land-grabs,either. 2 wrongs don’t make it right,people!
Like you said,either both sides leave all the previous wrongdoings behind & try to go forward,or it’s Game Over.
For the record:
There ARE Palestinian & Israeli peace groups trying to follow Gandhi’s model of non-violent protests. “http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/budrus_shooting_the_palestinian_gandhi”,but the MSM doesn’t really promote these groups or their protests. They are marginalized,just like JStreet,& lumped wrongly into the same category as the very thing they are opposed to.
David,I also think you’re on-point when you allude to the potential of Israel destroying itself(literally),& probably many of its neighboring countries, over this intractable problem.
Which brings me back to my favorite “FAIL” of all-time in Human history: Religion.
Another fun topic that provokes screaming & murderous intent…Yayyyy! 🙂
(say no more,wink-wink,know what i mean?)
#5 | Written by Ofer Maimon about 13 years ago. Reply

While it is true that JStreet places alibi sentences of the kind “it’s time to stop playing the blame game” and “both sides must be prepared to make hard decisions”, it’s main thust is that it is ISRAEL who must make concessions, end the “occupation”, stop using “disproportional” force, etc. Basically all tachles criticism that is produced is against Israel and NO demands to enforce “tough love” (another typical euphemism for for one-sided criticism of Israel) on the Palestinians are ever formulated. At the moment Abbas is refusing to negotiate, something which is a direct result of (among other factors) US policy to help him imagine up absurd pre-conditions for negotiations that were never on the table before. JStreet is cheering on and supporting this or even more radical policy on while completely ignoring Palestinian breaches of “Oslo” or “Roadmap”, etc, understandings.

The Israelis are in a technical aspect “the ones in a position of strength in this conflict” which is the conflict between the state of Israel and the newly imagined Palestinian people. However, this position of strength only reflects military and economic factors, but it in no way reflects the capacity to influence the dynamics of the conflict, nor the capacity to influence the peace readiness of the peoples on both sides of the divide. And – important – it completely ignores the other ongoing conflict which is a conflict between the Arab world and the Jews in which the Arabs grossly outnumbers the Jews, the conflict in which – according to our dear cousins – we are “Dar-al-Harb” and they are “Dar-al-salaam”. This conflict, although much older than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, simply doesn’t exist in the world view of JStreet or it’s European offspring JCall. The blame game they purport to be critical of is exactly what they are dabbling in, and helping to exacerbate.

The fact that the “right-wing” Pro-Israel groups are similarly flawed is not making anyone happy. Nor the fact that there are Jewish organizations marching in the same demonstrations as Hezballah.
- #6 | Written by David Norman about 13 years ago. Reply
  
  I am sorry Ofer, but it IS time to stop playing the blame game. Maybe it is all one sides fault or the other that hings are deadlocked, but you know what? Unless we just throw that all to the side it will remain deadlocked for infinity. Palestinians will keep on killing Jews and Jews will keep on killing Palestinians. Yes, Israel is being asked to make tough concessions, no one is denying that – but there is no reason for them NOT to. You are making the timeless mistake of judging peoples on both sides by their Governments, as if governments truly represent the best interests of the people. In fact it is the failure of BOTH governments to truly represent their people that has led to the absurdities of Hamas winning elections and Jews marching with Hezbollah.
  
  The Israelis and the Palestinians have been playing the same moves on each other since the first Intifadah. It is practically a skipping record. You know what doing the exact same thing over and over again and expecting different results is? Insanity. IS there really anyone left who believes that any solution other than a return to the ’67 borders and Arab East Jerusalem as part of a Palestinian State in exchange for the Palestinians giving up on the “right of return” is workable. Anyone? Then let us be the generation that sees that it gets done.
  - #7 | Written by Ofer Maimon about 13 years ago. Reply
    
    David, did you actually read my post before answering it? JStreet is simply all about the blame game. As for Israel, sooner or later there will be a rightwing peace plan, and if at the time the US president is not under the influence of JStreet thinking, there might actually be peace, assuming that also the Palesinians have a lefership worth a damn. Abbas is not and never was. The kind of one-sided Israeli concessions that JCall and Jstreet are pushing for is *exactly* what has been tried over and over again with absolutely disastrous results. The Israeli right suffers from pesimism, the Israeli left suffers from no reality contact as do does Jstreet. The Palestinian peace camp suffers from not existing and as long as they continue on the path chosen there will be no peace.
    - #8 | Written by David Norman about 13 years ago. Reply
      
      I read your post completely from beginning to end, and I simply disagree. J Street’s point is to counter AIPAC, which takes the stance that everything is the Palestinian’s fault. If you consider saying there is plenty of blame to go around, that Israel’s hands are not 100% clean, as “playing the blame game” then yes, I suppose that is how you would perceive J Street. You have to look at J Street from the American perspective, which is that the only Pro-Israel lobbying group until J Street has taken a “no concessions at all under any circumstances” approach and thrown a lot of money around to make that the US position. The only way to respond to that is the waythat J Street is responding.
      
      There will never be a right-wing peace plan that is acceptable to the Palestinians, since every right wing overture comes while building settlements. There IS a left wing peace plan, put together by Israeli and Palestinian Peace groups (yes, they do exist) that was signed and released by them in late 2005 in Geneva. It is, IMHO, a perfectly workable plan.
      
      Either way, this entire back and forth just proves a point – that people would rather talk about the obstacles to peace then talk about peace. If you look at your response, it to is the blame game – in your case blaming the left for having nothing and Abbas for wanting nothing.
#9 | Written by Tanya about 13 years ago. Reply

Well, apparently even in Israel too this can such a polarized issue that no one is safe from distortion.

I really valued the NYTimes article this week on this subject. Among the reasons it is a subject around which American Jews “cannot engage in conversation” is that positions like those of J Street are immediately caricatured and. unsurprisingly, we’re off to the races.

Every group that has ever been in a minority or oppressed finds out, I think, that no matter that their oppression (past, present, future) is real and terrible, it is a dead end as far as planning or thinking realistically about the future goes. (And if planning and thinking about the future isn’t what you want to do, you don’t have to if you just loudly slam that door closed with accusations.)
#10 | Written by 'rent about 13 years ago. Reply

Well put, as usual. May I suggest you read a book review by Harold Bloom on
English anti-Semitism in the NY Times..it’s deep roots (our beloved Shakespeare & Dickens-e.g.Shylock & Fagin) and how it has echoed ever since in the literary canon of English letters {T.S.Eliot etc.) and academic circles. No longer “proper”
to attack Jews directly, Israel has become the major villian in world affairs,
out- performing all the other myriad brutal regimes in the world. A balanced
and rational approach such as J streets is needed and finally gaining resonance
in the American Jewish community.Thank G-D (a moment of reverence.)
#11 | Written by Rob about 13 years ago. Reply

Hi Dave,

Great article. As a recovering Cathlo-holic I don’t have a direct analog to your situation but I really resonate with your US vs US Government comment. I feel very much the same way.
#12 | Written by Ofer Maimon about 13 years ago. Reply

To be clear – JStreet and the latest European upshot suffers from the same European flu: It’s all Israel’s fault.In their rosy little world view Palestinians are mere irresponsible children whose actions and lack of actions don’t count – they are victims, period. As for the conflict between Jewish and Arabs in general, it simply doesn’t exist. Unfortunately Obama has bought into this flawed world view and it will get him the same place as it has gotten all European leader who have been unwise enough to meddle in the ME bazaar since WWII – nowhere.

By helping the Palestinians so set pre-conditions for negotiations he has given Abu Mazen an excuse to climb up in his tree and work on his legacy and refuse to negotiate.
- #13 | Written by David Norman about 13 years ago. Reply
  
  With all due respect Ofer, you are wrong. As an active member of J Street I can tell you that it is in NO WAY J Street’s position that it is all Israel’s fault. Our position, put way too simply, is that it is time to stop laying blame and hold both sides EQUALLY accountable for their actions. The “flawed world view” is that of those whom believe that ANY criticism of or call for pressure on the Israeli government, the ones in a position of strength in this conflict, is the same as saying the Palestinians are “victims, period”. It is not.
  
  What i and many like me are saying is that the “blame game” gets us nowhere, yet neither side will EVER stop playing it – they have both made that abundantly clear. The result is that there will never be a lasting peace without the West playing a role in imposing it. We also acknowledge that current Israeli policy is self-destructive, in that simple realities of population growth guarantee that if Israel refuses to make a fair peace with its Palestinian neighbors it will eventually be facing an enemy that will overwhelm them in numbers.

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UPDATE: I just got back from a Huffington Post discussion on Israel, and boy are my arms tired

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UPDATE: I just got back from a Huffington Post discussion on Israel, and boy are my arms tired

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