How Israel Tried to Equate the Murder of Jews at The Tree
of Life with Opposition to BDS
First a short history lesson. Zionism arose as a reaction to
anti-Semitism in the late 19th Century. It was however a separatist
reaction which accepted the logic of the anti-Semites' hostility to Jews. Zionism perfectly understood and accepted
that the anti-Semites didn't want the Jews in their midst. Just as today the
Zionists want an Israel free of strangers so too did non-Jews in the countries
where the Jews lived. Zionism understood
the hatred of non-Jews for the Jewish stranger, that was why Zionism began from
an abandonment of the fight against anti-Semitism. In Herzl's words it was 'futile'
to fight anti-Semitism. The Jews' real problem was that they were exiled
from their real home - Palestine. That
was what Zionism intended to rectify.
Chaim Weizmann, longstanding President of the Zionist
Organisation and Israel's first President explained this in his autobiography Trial
& Error (pp.90-91). Writing about Sir William Evans Gordon MP for
Stepney and the founder of the
anti-Semitic British Brothers League, the pre-cursor of Oswald
Moseley's British Union of Fascists, he wrote;
I think our people were rather hard on him.... Whenever the
quantity of Jews in a country reaches the saturation point, that country reacts
against them... England had reached the point when she could or would absorb so
many Jews and no more... The reaction against this cannot be looked upon as
anti-Semitism in the ordinary or vulgar sense of that word... Sir William Evans
Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices. He acted, as he thought,
according to his best lights and in the most kindly way, in the interests of
his country... but in his opinion it was physically impossible for England to
make good the wrongs which Russia had inflicted on its Jewish population. ...
Also, he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of Jews almost
anywhere in the British Empire, but he failed to see why the ghettos of London
or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch of ghettos of Warsaw and
Pinsk.
In other words anti-immigrant feeling was natural. It had nothing to do with class or race or
politics. Being a chemist Weizmann used
a scientific metaphor. England had reached saturation point and the solvent
could absorb so much and no more. This had nothing to do with racism or anti-Semitism
'in the ordinary or vulgar sense of that word.' This was the racist
logic that Zionism operated according to.
Zionism was different from all other Jewish reactions to
anti-Semitism. Forget the nonsense about the Jews’ 2,000 year dream for the
Promised Land – when given the choice Jews would go anywhere but Palestine.
Zionism was unique in that it accepted the validity of anti-Semitism. The
anti-Semites said Jews did not belong in non-Jewish society and the Zionists
agreed. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
The Zionists blamed the Jews themselves for anti-Semitism. It
was their ‘homelessness’ that caused anti-Semitism. In the words of A B Yehoshua, the Jewish Diaspora was
a “cancer who use other peoples’ countries like hotels.’ [Jewish
Chronicle 22.5.89]. In other words Jews outside Israel are aliens. Theodor
Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism wrote, in The Jewish State
(1896) that the Jews
‘naturally
move to those places where we are not persecuted and there our presence
produces persecution... The unfortunate Jews are now carrying it into England;
they have already introduced it into America.’ pp. 14-15)
Anti-Semitism was seen as being caused by the presence of
Jews. Following this logic, the Zionists held that it was useless to fight
anti-Semitism. Wherever they went it would reoccur.
The Zionists argued that Jews had only obtained a formal
equality because ‘in the principal countries where Anti-Semitism prevails it
does so as a result of the emancipation of the Jews.’ [p.25] To Max Nordau,
Herzl’s Deputy, Emancipation ‘was solely the result of the geometrical mode
of thought of French nationalism of the 18th Century.’ [Speech
to the First Zionist Congress,(1897) Arthur Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea p.236].
In other words the French
Revolution granted equal rights to Jews not because they believed in it but
because it was the logical consequence of the introduction of greater democracy
and equality. Zionism like the Orthodox opposed Emancipation as opening the
gates to assimilation and assimilation of the Jews has always been Zionism's greatest enemy. It is compared today to the Holocaust in that both reduced the number of Jews.
Herzl understood that both
the Zionists and the anti-Semites had a common interest – both wanted Jews to
leave their countries of birth.
‘The Governments of all countries scourged by Anti-Semitism will
be keenly interested in assisting us to obtain the sovereignty we want.’ [p.28, Jewish State]
It was but a short step
to the conclusion that “the anti-Semites will be our most dependable
friends... our allies.” [Diaries p. 84] Yehoshua, who unusually for
a Zionist is honest admitted that
Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary,
the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help rid them
of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite
must be a Zionist.’ [Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.]
When the Nazis came to power, the Zionist movement was not
unhappy about what was happening. When the Nazis promulgated the 1935 Nuremberg
Laws, ‘the most murderous legislative instrument known to European history’
[Gerald Reitlinger] the Zionists did not protest. As Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a prominent
leader of German Zionism wrote:
‘(The Jews) have been drawn out of the last recesses of
christening and mixed marriages. We are not unhappy about it... The theory of
assimilation has collapsed.... We want to replace assimilation by something
new: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and the Jewish race. A
state, built according to the principles of purity of the nation and race can
only be honoured and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own
kind.’ [Wir Juden, Berlin 1934]
The Zionist Congress, which met in Prague in 1933, didn’t
even condemn or criticise the Nazis for their treatment of German Jews. Indeed
the Labour Zionist majority rejected the criticism of Hitler that the
right-wing Revisionists made. They didn’t protest the situation in Germany
because they were determined to take advantage of it.
Zionism, to use Herzl’s metaphor, was intent on using
anti-Semitism much as an engine used steam power. Zionism has always sought to
use anti-Semitism for its own advantage. When Netanyahu flew to Paris after the
killing of 4 Jews in a kosher supermarket his message was simple; get out: ‘We
say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters, Israel is your home and that of
every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms.” Which is exactly the
message that the anti-Semites sought.
This was also the message that Avi Gabbay, leader of the
Israeli Labour Party, conveyed when, in the wake of Pittsburgh, he called upon American
Jews to emigrate to Israel, their ‘real home’. As Michael Koplow observed
it is a
bizarre historical twist of fate that the overwhelming majority of non-Jewish
Americans recognize that this is our home, while the Jewish head of the largest
opposition party in the Knesset does not.
What is the real Israeli attitude to the massacre
of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh? Undoubtedly
there are many Israelis who are genuinely shocked by what happened, for example
Chemi Shalev’s article attacking Trump’s Complicity and Netanyahu’s
Hypocrisy but it is also clear that there are many Zionists who
welcome what happened. I am reminded of the reaction of Yossi
Eliassi, The Shadow, a neo-Nazi rapper and Likud member, and his
supporters, to the death of a Jewish teacher and peace activist in a bus
bombing. A Glimpse into the Soul of Israel -
the Spirit of Zionism In the words of Shahar Peretz on Facebook,: ‘In
short, another terrorist died.’
Eliassi’s reaction to
Pittsburgh was to welcome it. In a Facebook post. Eliasi, who I have covered recently, portrayed
the massacre as a legitimate response to the Hebrew Immigration Aid Committee’s
support for refugees and migrants in the USA. The murderer Robert Bowers “was
a man fed up with subversive progressive Jewish leftists injecting their sick
agendas” into his country. Eliasi added ‘Jews like you brought the
holocaust and now you’re causing antisemitism. Stop bringing in hate money from
Soros.” [see Parasites circle the Pittsburgh
Massacre, Morning Star, 1.11.18.]
But what The Shadow says openly others say
in muted tones. This was explained by Uri Harari nearly 50 years ago in Yediot
Aharonot of 9.2.69: Our Responsibility Towards the Jews in the Arab
Countries
When we hear of riots, pogroms or hanging [of
Jews] we seethe with anger, and justly so…. We try to do everything within our
capacity to help the persecuted Jews. Then we ask ourselves, "Where
were they all these years?", "Why did they not immigrate into the
country [Israel] in time?"…Still later, and deep in our heart there is
also a tiny flicker of vicious joy, "Serves them right!"; "We
warned them!"; "We told them so!".
It
is, of course, not customary for us to talk about it in public, but many of us
felt a tiny bit of joy at another’s calamity when we read reports in the papers
about the swastika epidemic in Europe in 1960, or about the [pro-Nazi] Takuara
movement in Argentina. And even today, we have very mixed feelings when we read
of de Gaulle’s anti-Semitic hints or about the intensification of anti-Jewish
feelings among black leaders in the United States.
Despite
all the anger and the shock and the insult, these phenomena fit into our world
view, because Zionism said then, as it says today, that this is the state of
affairs, and that such it must be so long as Jews live among Gentile
nations…. we sometimes forget the
negative aspect of Zionism – its cruel world view… [Zionism] assumes the
eternal hatred of the Jew by the Gentile, irrespective of how liberal the
Gentile may be.
Protecting
Trump and a False Equivalence
Israel’s main concern after the Pittsburgh
massacre was not the protection of America’s Jews but a desire to protect those
primarily responsible for the massacre, the Trump Administration. It’s second concern was to draw a false
equivalence between Palestinian resistance to Israel’s racist regime, the
solidarity movement and BDS and the fascist violence that resulted in the worst
massacre of Jews in the history of the United States.
Zionist politicians in the US are using the tragedy of
American Jewry in order to attack the BDS movement. As Josh Nathan-Kazis put it
‘some Jewish leaders are seizing on the moment
to make progress on long-standing policy agendas to pass legislation targeting
the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.’ After
Pittsburgh, Jewish Groups First Fight Is Against BDS — Not White Nationalism
Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East
Peace. described it as ‘opportunistic
and cynical’ to use the Pittsburgh
massacre, ‘to shut down criticism of Israel and activism related to Israel.’
But Zionism is nothing if not cynical.
Naftali Bennett, the far-Right Israeli Education Minister
who was sent to the US set out to portray Pittsburgh as caused by anti-Semitism
of the left and Right (shades of the Zionist narrative in the Labour Party):
“From Sderot, in Israel, to Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, the
hand that fires missiles is the same hand that shoots worshippers. We will
fight against the hatred of Jews and anti-Semitism wherever it raises its head,
and we will prevail.”
As Bernard Avishai noted in The
New Yorker, Bennett
‘personifies one side, the most strident side, of a repressed
debate between American Jews and Israelis that the Pittsburgh murders must
inevitably surface. What
causes anti-Semitism, and can American liberalism—can any liberalism—work
against it?’
Avishai is both right and wrong. Yes Bennett symbolises the growing divide
between Israel and American Jewry but the debate is about far more than what
causes anti-Semitism. The debate revolves around what it means to be Jewish and
whether being Jewish means being a Zionist, a supporter of chauvinism and
racism. Whether Jews should continue to align with a ‘Jewish’ State with which
the enemies of American Jews, the alt-Right and Breitbart, identify. In
Pittsburgh, Naftali Bennett’s Presence Highlights the Debate Between
Netanyahu’s Government and American Jews.
Nowhere is this dichotomy better illustrated than by Richard
Spencer, the neo-Nazi and self-declared White
Zionist founder of the alt-Right. In a series of tweets, Spencer wrote of
his admiration for the Jewish Nation State law, which confers the right to
national self-determination in Israel to Jewish citizens only and says Israel
is 'showing a path forward for Europeans'. White
Nationalist Richard Spencer Backs Israel's Contentious Nation-state Law Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer was even cruder:
‘One of the big forces in college campuses today is
anti-Semitism. And those anti-Semites are usually not neo-Nazis on college
campuses. They’re coming from the radical left.”
Only in the minds of Dermer and Bennett can an equal’s sign
be drawn between fascist anti-Semitism and support for the Palestinians. But
for the Zionists Pittsburgh was too good an opportunity to miss. Senator Cory
Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, took the opportunity of Pittsburgh to announce
that he would co-sponsor the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.
Likewise Malcolm Hoenlein, Vice Chair of the Conference of
Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations used Pittsburgh to push for
support for a federal law which would adopt a “standardized” definition of
anti-Semitism, laws to oppose BDS (shades of the IHRA).
Nathan-Kazis quotes
some
leaders within Hoenlein’s own organization as questioning this linkage between
fascist violence and BDS: “I personally wouldn’t use the Pittsburgh massacre
to justify the passage of anti-boycott legislation, I don’t think connecting
the dots is wise or effective.” After
Pittsburgh, Jewish Groups’ First Fight Is Against BDS — Not White Nationalism
Unlike in Britain where Zionist organisations like the CST
and CAA play up every whisper or anti-Semitic tweet, in the United States
Bennett did his best to pour cold water on the idea that anti-Semitism was
increasing. At a lunch-time discussion he expressed
his doubts about whether antisemitism is a problem.
Bennett came to the United States with one purpose above all,
to defend the man who, more than any other, had created the hate atmosphere
against refugees which led to the Pittsburgh massacre. To Bennett Trump was “a
true friend of the State of Israel and to the Jewish people,” and
criticized those “using the horrific anti-Semitic massacre to attack
President Trump” as “unfair and wrong.”
For Bennett it may be wrong and unfair to criticise the bigot
that goes by the name of Trump but it was open season on the Palestinians for
whom no criticism is unfair or wrong.
Naftali Bennett of course had difficulty attacking Trump’s
war on refugees. Bennett has been foremost amongst those who have been
attacking Israel’s Black African refugees.
Black African refugees in Israel that Naftali Bennett wants to deport
The Israeli government has been trying
to deport 40,000 refugees for the crime of not being Jewish and even worse,
being Black. As Netanyahu explained
these refugees
threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state...
This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our
national security and our national identity
When Netanyahu negotiated an agreement with the UNHCR which
would have meant Israel allowing half the refugees to stay in return for Europe
taking the other half, Bennett vetoed it warning
that it would “turn Israel into a paradise for infiltrators”. Thus
comparing the refugees to Palestine’s expelled Arab refugees (who used to be
called 'infiltrators' when trying to return to their lands. In other words the
refugees were no better than Palestinians.
However Bennett didn’t go unopposed. At a lunchtime meeting
Bennett was confronted by 89-year-old Edward Bleier, a former Warner Bros.
President and Jewish philanthropist, who
as Ha’aretz noted ‘gave him the schooling he badly needed.’
“Some of us are
older than you are and we recall the pre-war period in America when the Nazis
convened in Madison Square Garden and paraded on 96th Street with brown shirts
and swastikas. And the rallying cry of the anti-Semites was ‘America First.’
So my hair stands on end when I hear an American president invoke that line,”
Bleier told him. American Jews May Never Forgive Israel for Its
Reaction to the Pittsburgh Massacre
Ha’aretz
commented that
‘It was a rare
moment: An American Jew confronting one of the pack of Israeli officials who
saw it as their role to act as Trump’s political armor, shielding him from any
responsibility for Pittsburgh.’
See America
First, for Charles Lindbergh and Donald Trump
As Allison Kaplan
Sommer noted in Ha’aretz
and Forward
Never before has the
State of Israel so blatantly demonstrated that it will protect its own
political interests at the expense of American Jews.
Not only did Israel’s
leaders choose Trump over American Jews, but they did so easily, naturally,
without hesitation, leaping to the defense of a political leader who is
actively and openly fanning the flames of hatred that now has an unprecedented
death toll.
That they did this,
and did so before the bodies of 11 American Jews – brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers,
grandmothers and grandfathers – were even buried, was experienced as a stab in
the back that, even if it does heal one day, will leave a scar.
The image of the
president touching down in Pittsburgh against the wishes of the mourners, no
national congressional leaders or local politicians agreeing to be seen
greeting him, accompanied only by Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer as a political
flak jacket will remain an indelible image.
Like Bleier’s memories
of the Brownshirts in Madison Square Garden, it may fade but will never be forgotten.
Jonathan Offir noted
how Bennett exploited the massacre to demonize Palestinians.
He did not
connect the dots between the massacre, anti-Semitism and white nationalism
(which is the obvious nature of the attack), but rather between the attacker
and Palestinians: Israeli
politicians’ responses to Pittsburgh terror expose Zionism’s reactionary core
‘The Israeli
government is exploiting the Pittsburgh murders to try to demonize Palestine
solidarity’
“The murderous rampage at the Tree of Life
synagogue had absolutely nothing to do with the struggle for Palestinian
rights. And anyone who is telling you there is is shamelessly trying to use the
murder of 11 innocent people to further their own racist agenda to dehumanize
Palestinians and justify their ongoing oppression by the state of Israel.”
 |
| Rachel Shabi |
In Britain it was left to the Guardian, ever eager to
plough the furrow of fake ‘left’ anti-Semitism to echo Bennett and Trump’s
message that ‘both sides’ – fascists and anti-fascists are to blame. Rachel
Shabi, the ‘progressive’ face of Zionism lectured that After
Pittsburgh, the left must face down all forms of racism. ‘Words can be
deadly.’
Shabi wrote with all the sincerity of a fox trying to gain
entrance to a chicken coop. ‘With 11 Jewish people killed at a synagogue,
leftists had better ensure theirs don’t ring hollow’ which is, in itself,
an example of how hollow and shallow the Guardian has become. Presumably
it was all those leftists railing against the refugee caravan that first
inspired Robert Bowers? Shabi lost no time revealing her real agenda:
‘right now, on social media, some of the response to Jewish
people discussing the horrors of Pittsburgh is: what about Palestine? Even when
Jews are killed for being Jews, they are, for some leftists, taking up too much
attention, and deflecting from a greater cause for which they are collectively
responsible.
It is as if idiot @rachshabi was oblivious to that which was
underneath her nose, the visit of Naftali Bennett and his efforts to defend
Trump in the name of Israel. It is a good example of how in its campaign
against the left, the Guardian fails to grasp the most elementary facts that
writers in Ha'aretz and Forward had no difficulty understanding.
Shabi is a testament to the decline in the Guardian’s neo-liberal standards of
journalism.
Compare Shabi’s hackneyed rhetoric to that of Rabbi Brant
Rosen:
if we are to truly respond to this resurgence [of
Anti-Semitism and White Nationalism], we must take pains to analyze
anti-Semitism for what it is and what it is not. This is particularly important
in the face of Israeli politicians and Israel advocacy organizations that are
currently muddling the definition of anti-Semitism for cynical political gain. After Pittsburgh, We Can No Longer
Cry Wolf on “Campus Anti-Semitism”
It is a sad commentary on British journalism that Shabi is
taken seriously as a journalist and the Guardian is taken seriously as a
newspaper. Instead of her reflex defence of Israel and Netanyahu, Shabi should
read Dana Millbank’s Anti-Semitism is no longer an
undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody and Trump’s America is not a safe place
for Jews in the Washington Post explaining Trump’s anti-Semitism. It
means:
Ø Ø Tweeting an image from an anti-Semitic message board
with a Star of David atop a pile of cash.
Ø Ø Saying “I don’t have a message” for supporters
who threatened anti-Semitic violence against a Jewish journalist, and Melania
Trump saying the writer “provoked” the threats.
Ø Ø Branding his campaign with the “America First” slogan of the
anti-Semitic pre-war movement.
Ø Ø Alleging that “blood suckers” and “a
global power structure” including “international banks” are secretly plotting
against ordinary Americans.
Ø Ø And, when urged by the Anti-Defamation League to stop
using traditionally anti-Semitic tropes, repeats the tropes in an ad with
images of prominent Jews, including George Soros.
Ø Ø Once in office, in addition to making common cause with the
Nazis of Charlottesville, Trump stocked his administration with Stephen K.
Bannon and other figures of the nationalist “alt-right;” hesitated to condemn
the rise of anti-Semitic threats and vandalism; issued a Holocaust remembrance
statement without mention of Jews; lamented the attempts to silence Alex Jones, who
peddles anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; and, declaring himself a
“nationalist,” increased verbal attacks on “globalists,” particularly Soros.
But expecting anything substantive or serious on
anti-Semitism and Israel in the Guardian these days would be like asking the
Sun for an article on the malevolent influence of Murdoch.
Below are a series of articles on the reaction of American
Jewry to Israel's attempt to exploit the massacre at Pittsburgh. Also included
is an article in the New York Times, of all papers, on the growing cleavage
between American Jewry and Israel. It is
dawning on increasing numbers of American Jews that the interests of the
diaspora and the 'Jewish' state diverge.
To Israel the diaspora is a source of ready funds and political support.
To Jews outside Israel, the Israeli state is a source of much of the
anti-semitism they experience since Israel carries out its massacres and
atrocities in the name of all Jews.
Tony Greenstein
Over the past week, American Jews expected comfort and support. Instead,
Israeli government officials offered carefully honed political talking points,
choosing Trump over them
 |
Naftali Bennett speaks during a vigil, to remember the victims of the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, Pittsburgh, October 28, 2018. Brendan Smialowski / AFP
One stunning encounter that took place during Diaspora Affairs Minister
Naftali Bennett’s visit to the United States last week encapsulated the
distance between Israeli officialdom and American Jews reeling after the worst
attack on their community in the country’s history.
That moment came for Bennett during an appearance at the Council on
Foreign Relations, after he winged his way to the United States to attend the funerals of the victims of the
synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.
After paying his respects, Bennett was quickly off to New York to make
the rounds of the studios and conference rooms of major Jewish organizations to
take full advantage of his unexpected trip to North America to raise his
profile – after all, he makes no secret of his aspirations to the prime
ministership.
From the moment he landed on U.S. soil, Bennett in his discussion with
council members insistently defended President Donald Trump against accusations
that the poisonous xenophobic tone and outlandish conspiracy theories he
peddles bore any connection to the massacre in Pittsburgh. Bennett paired this
with an equally problematic message that the threat of anti-Semitism in America
was overblown.
“This is not in any sense Germany of the ’30s, it doesn’t resemble that
in any possible way,” Bennett declared confidently, according to a report in the Jewish Insider.
He was confronted by 89-year-old Edward Bleier, a former Warner Bros.
president, media pioneer and Jewish philanthropist who, disgusted by Bennett's
obversation, gave him the schooling he badly needed. He noted that the Israeli
minister is poorly educated when it comes to the Jews of the Diaspora, their
history and sensitivities.
“Some of us are older than you
are and we recall the pre-war period in America when the Nazis convened in
Madison Square Garden and paraded on 96th Street with brown shirts and
swastikas. And the rallying cry of the anti-Semites was ‘America First.’ So my
hair stands on end when I hear an American president invoke that line,” Bleier told him.
Naftali Bennett’s Fox interview, October 31, 2018. Fox News
It was a rare moment: An American Jew confronting one of the pack of
Israeli officials who saw it as their role to act as Trump’s political armor,
shielding him from any responsibility for Pittsburgh.
Most grieving American Jews were polite and deferential to Bennett and
the parade of other Israeli officials whose remarks inspired headlines like “Israel Defends Trump Amid
Synagogue Shooting Criticism,”
The fury, resentment and disgust of American Jews toward Israel’s
representatives only came pouring out afterward, in private conversations and
across social media.
In the opinion pages and comment sections of Jewish outlets, commentators
like former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro opined that Israelis had one
job while America was “sitting shivah”
– to listen, not lecture them on how they should feel or who they should blame,
and certainly not on the eve of critical U.S. elections.
Shapiro recalled how, as ambassador, he was always careful not to bring
politics into houses of mourning. And yet, long before this Shabbat, when we
marked seven days since the murderous Pittsburgh attack – a symbolic shivah – American
Jews got an earful from their Israeli brethren as to which political leaders
they should or shouldn’t blame.
It is something they have always made an effort not to do when the shoe
is on the other foot. In their countless “solidarity
missions” over the years when Israel was feeling attacked, broken and
vulnerable, American-Jewish leaders always held back from telling Israel what
to do as it mourned and buried its dead, after the all-too-frequent wars and
terror attacks.
Whenever Diaspora Jews have dared step out of line, speak out, disagree
or point out missteps by their Israeli counterparts, they are always scolded
and shut down.
The typical reaction to such chutzpah is: “How can anyone who hasn’t
lived in Israel, hasn’t served in the IDF or sent their children to serve, who
hasn’t huddled in a shelter as missiles have fallen, seen friends and neighbors
die in terror attacks, possibly understand what Israelis are going through?”
Daring to voice a partisan opinion on what is happening while
parachuting in for a photo opportunity is seen as unacceptably audacious by
people who, while they may be fellow Jews, have no skin – or blood – in the
game.
Over the past week, when American Jews expected comfort and support,
Israeli government officials instead offered carefully honed political talking
points: It is “unfair” to assign
responsibility to the president, they lectured. Trump is the best friend Israel
has ever had in the White House. He has Jewish family members, therefore any
implication that he is either anti-Semitic himself or encourages anti-Semitism
with his populist “America First” rhetoric is outrageous.
Special U.S. midterms coverage with Allison Kaplan Sommer // Part 1:
What we can expectHaaretz
These arguments were inevitabley followed up by the “both sides”
defense: That Farrakhan-style anti-Semitism is equally as bad and dangerous as
white supremacist Soros-bashing xenophobia.
The relationship between Israel and the overwhelmingly liberal
non-Orthodox American-Jewish population has been no picnic in recent years.
Memorable low points in the relationship: The crisis over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing Congress in order to
lobby against the Iran deal, over the objections of the Obama White House; and
the furious reaction by liberal non-Orthodox streams after what they viewed as
betrayal over the Western Wall deal.
But until this moment, nothing has left American Jews feeling that they
are being physically abandoned by their Israeli brothers. Never before has the
State of Israel so blatantly demonstrated that it will protect its own
political interests at the expense of American Jews.
Not only did Israel’s leaders choose Trump over American Jews, but they
did so easily, naturally, without hesitation, leaping to the defense of a
political leader who is actively and openly fanning the flames of hatred that
now has an unprecedented death toll.
That they did this, and did so before the bodies of 11 American Jews – brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers,
grandmothers and grandfathers – were even buried, was experienced as a stab in
the back that, even if it does heal one day, will leave a scar.
The image of the president touching down in Pittsburgh against the
wishes of the mourners, no national congressional leaders or local politicians
agreeing to be seen greeting him, accompanied only by Israeli ambassador Ron
Dermer as a political flak jacket will remain an indelible image.
Like Bleier’s memories of the Brownshirts in Madison Square Garden, it
may fade but will never be forgotten.
Israeli politicians’
responses to Pittsburgh terror expose Zionism’s reactionary core
Jonathan Offir
In the wake
of the Pittsburgh white-supremacist’s terror attack on a synagogue, Israeli
labor leader Avi Gabbay called “upon the Jews of the United States to
immigrate more and more to Israel, because this is their home.”
This was an
echo of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who in the wake of the 2015 Paris terror
shootings, messaged “all the Jews of France”, indeed “all the Jews of Europe”: “the state of Israel is your home”.
This is
hardly the first time that the opposition leader Gabbay echoes Netanyahu so
precisely and in such similar contexts. Last year, he approvingly cited Netanyahu’s words: “The left has
forgotten what it means to be Jewish”. Gabbay was aware of the historical
and racist context of Netanyahu’s original statement, which was caught on hot
mic in 1997 (Netanyahu also said that the left “think that our security can be placed in the hands of Arabs”) – and
Gabbay explicitly credited Netanayhu.
Gabbay’s
statements on Pittsburgh were regarded as “tone-deaf”
by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), and even
centrist lawmaker (and former Israeli Ambassador to US) Michael Oren felt a
need to damage-control Gabbay’s words for being too nationalist:
“Avi Gabbay said things that should not be said
because he simply does not understand. Through his words he adds insult to
injury. The call to U.S. Jewry, especially after last night [massacre in
Pittsburgh], deeply hurts their feelings and reduces their desire for Aliyah
[emigration to Israel]. Gabbay does not understand anything about Israel’s
relationship with the Diaspora.”
Michael
Oren is an expert on saying things that should not be said. Earlier this year,
he found ultimate proof that Ahed Tamimi’s family was not a “real family”, posting as evidence two photos of the
family that he said were different when they were actually the same photo in a
mirrored pairing:
‘A boy of 12 takes a photo with a cast on the right
arm, the next day with a cast on left arm. You tell me if it’s not funded and
directed? The Tamimi family is part of the “Pallywood” industry, which sends
children to confront IDF soldiers in order to cause PR damage to Israel, for
money’.
So if
Michael Oren tells you you’ve gone too far, then you may really be in too deep.
Offensive
statements “correcting” American Jews for their supposed naiveté and liberalism
seem to regularly come from the Israeli Zionist left, as for example when
former left leader Isaac Herzog (now head of Jewish Agency) called
intermarriage, especially amongst US Jews, a “plague” this summer.
The calls to
emigrate to Israel in the wake of anti-Semitic violence abroad appear to be
intrinsic to Zionist thinking, and the whole notion of ‘assimilation’, be it
through inter-marriage or otherwise, is regularly frowned upon (if not worse)
by Zionists, who see this as weakness, since their solution is an exclusivist,
isolationist one.
“The American Jewish minority still faces the question
that has preoccupied the Diaspora since the French Revolution and the departure
from the ghetto: Is it better for Jews to maintain a separate identity or to
assimilate into local society? Recognizing that on the broader level (although
perhaps not on an individual level) assimilation as a solution is an illusion
that would sooner or later come to a violent end was what motivated Theodor
Herzl to offer the Zionist solution – Jewish self-sovereignty. But the large
American Jewish minority did not choose Herzl’s proposal, and today most of it
chooses to assimilate into society at large and assume everything will be
fine”.
Greenfield
extolls the Zionist solution:
“In Israel, the country itself, with its difficult
dilemmas and great successes, is the grand vision of the new Judaism. It
provides the answer to the question of why it’s worth remaining Jews, and what
it means to be a Jew in the post-halakhic era. Those who reject this answer
remain with a question that has no resolution other than assimilation”.
That’s an
Israeli leftist talking! Greenfield has recently also written in
Haaretz on why Israel should treat Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Bin Salman with “kids gloves”, even if he dissolved Jamal
Kashoggi’s body in acid, because “Mohammed”,
as she calls him, will bring peace.
This type
of Israeli-Zionist condescending attitude appears to be a growing menace for
many American Jews. Writing in The New Yorker, Bernard Avishai surveys other Israeli responses to the massacre, in his piece titled “In Pittsburgh, Naftali Bennett’s Presence
Highlights the Debate Between Netanyahu’s Government and American Jews”.
Covering the message by Education and Diaspora Minister Bennett, including his
cryptic statement that “Jewish blood is
not free,” Avishai writes:
“Bennett was no doubt sincere in his empathy and his
outrage. But Bennett—the public figure, not the designated mourner—personifies
one side, the most strident side, of a repressed debate between American Jews
and Israelis that the Pittsburgh murders must inevitably surface. What causes
anti-Semitism, and can American liberalism—can any liberalism—work against it?”
Bennett
also exploited the massacre to demonize Palestinians. He did not connect the
dots between the massacre, anti-Semitism and white nationalism (which is the
obvious nature of the attack), but rather between the attacker and
Palestinians:
“From Sderot, in Israel, to Pittsburgh, in
Pennsylvania, the hand that fires missiles is the same hand that shoots
worshippers. We will fight against the hatred of Jews and anti-Semitism
wherever it raises its head, and we will prevail.”
As Adam
Horowitz wrote on this site, the “Israeli
government is exploiting the Pittsburgh murders to try to demonize Palestine
solidarity”:
“The murderous rampage at the Tree of Life synagogue
had absolutely nothing to do with the struggle for Palestinian rights. And
anyone who is telling you there is is shamelessly trying to use the murder of
11 innocent people to further their own racist agenda to dehumanize
Palestinians and justify their ongoing oppression by the state of Israel.”
Bennett had
predictably brought up the Holocaust, in his ‘educating’ message to the
American Jewish community:
“Nearly eighty years since Kristallnacht, when the
Jews of Europe perished in the flames of their houses of worship, one thing is
clear: anti-Semitism, Jew-hating, is not a distant memory”.
Bernard
Avishai, considering it a statement lacking tact, noted the inherent
condescension:
‘Bennett’s supposition that members of his audience
thought of anti-Semitism as a “piece of history”—that they were in need of his
corrective—suggests only how he’s underestimated them’…
Avishai notes how Nancy Bernstein, co-chair of the
liberal-Zionist J Street Pittsburgh, said that Bennett’s appearance was a “blight” on otherwise moving proceedings.
So there’s
even a dismay, also from Zionists themselves, about the way other Zionists
exploit anti-Semitism in order to bolster their Zionist anti-Palestinian
message. And about how other Zionists, particularly Israeli ones, use
anti-Semitism to unfurl their better-knowing arrogance and obnoxious chauvinism
of “we told you so.” Yet these critics (such as Avishai and Bernstein) still
remain Zionists.
Although
this arrogance comes from both right and left, many are still in the impression
that there is an inclusivist Zionism, one that is truly liberal. But the very
essence of Zionism is an isolationist one. Its very core is driving out of the
“others” to make way for “us”, as Israeli historian Benny Morris notes:
“Transfer was inevitable and inbuilt in
Zionism – because it sought to transform a land which was ‘Arab’ into a Jewish
state and a Jewish state could not have arisen without a major displacement of
Arab population”.
Adherents
of this ideology are hardly the ones to provide an answer to violence resulting
from racist-exclusivist extremists.
When
Israeli leaders and pundits, from right and left, are supposedly “tactless” in
their statements on anti-Semitism, it is not because they are making aberrant
mistakes. They are simply making Freudian slips which result from the
exclusivist-nationalist vein of Zionism, which relies upon
anti-Semitism to bolster its message of “we told you so”. When that happens,
there is often attempt to damage-control by other Zionists, who do not want
these comments to damage the liberal image of Israel too much. After all, those
naïve and erring diaspora Jews should be treated with some respect…
But in the
end, this is what Zionism is about. It is a reaction to real liberalism,
suggesting nationalist isolation as the only solution. And nationalist
isolation is exactly what the Pittsburgh shooter was about.
Is the world ready for another Great Schism?
Credit Melinda
Beck
Jan. 4, 2019
The events of the past year brought American and Israeli Jews ever
closer to a breaking point. President Trump, beloved in Israel and decidedly
unloved by a majority of American Jews, moved the United States Embassy from
Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May, with the fiery evangelical pastors John Hagee and
Robert Jeffress consecrating the ceremony.
In October, after the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in
Pittsburgh, President Trump went to that city to pay his respects. Members of
the Jewish community there, in near silent mourning, came out to protest Mr.
Trump’s arrival, declaring that he was not welcome until he gave a national
address to renounce the rise of white nationalism and its attendant bigotry.
The only public official to greet the president at the Tree of Life was
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.
At a Hanukkah celebration at the White House last month, the president
raised eyebrows and age-old insinuations of dual loyalties when he told
American Jews at the gathering that his vice president had great affection for
“your country,” Israel.
Yossi Klein Halevi, the American-born Israeli author, has framed this moment starkly: Israeli
Jews believe deeply that President Trump recognizes their existential threats.
In scuttling the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, which many Israelis saw as
imperiling their security, in moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem, in basically doing whatever the government of Benjamin Netanyahu
asks, they see a president of the United States acting to save their lives.
American Jews, in contrast, see President Trump as their existential
threat, a leader who they believe has stoked nationalist bigotry, stirred
anti-Semitism and, time and time again, failed to renounce the violent hatred
swirling around his political movement. The F.B.I. reports that hate crimes in
the United States jumped 17 percent in 2017, with a 37 percent spike in crimes
against Jews and Jewish institutions.
When neither side sees the other as caring for its basic well-being,
“that is a gulf that cannot be bridged,” Michael Siegel, the head rabbi at
Chicago’s Conservative Anshe Emet Synagogue, told me recently. He is an ardent
Zionist.
To be sure, a vocal minority of Jews in Israel remain queasy about the
American president, just as a vocal minority of Jews in the United States
strongly support him. But more than 75 percent of American Jews voted for the
Democrats in the midterm elections; 69 percent of Israelis voiced confidence in
Mr. Trump, up from 49 percent who had confidence in Barack Obama in 2015,
according to the Pew Research Center. Israel is also one of the few developed
countries where opinion about the United States has improved since Mr. Trump
took office.
Part of the distance between Jews in the United States and Israeli Jews
may come from the stance that Israel’s leader is taking on the world stage. Mr.
Netanyahu has embraced the increasingly authoritarian Hungarian leader Victor
Orban, who ran a blatantly anti-Semitic re-election campaign. He has aligned
himself with ultranationalists like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Jair
Bolsonaro in Brazil and a Polish government that passed a law making it a crime
to suggest the Poles had any responsibility for the Holocaust.
The Israeli prime minister was one of the very few world leaders who
reportedly ran interference for the Trump administration after the murder of
the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and urged President Trump to maintain his
alliance with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Mr. Netanyahu’s son
Yair was temporarily kicked off Facebook for writing that he would “prefer”
that “all the Muslims leave the land of Israel.”
Last month, with multiple corruption investigations closing in on him
and his conservative coalition fracturing, Mr. Netanyahu called for a snap
election in April, hoping to fortify his political standing.
If past is prologue, his election campaign will again challenge American
Jewry’s values. As his 2015 campaign came to a close, Mr. Netanyahu darkly
warned his supporters that “the right-wing government is in danger — Arab
voters are heading to the polling stations in droves,” adding with a Trumpian
flourish that left-wing organizations “are bringing them in buses.”
Israeli politicians — and citizens — are increasingly dismissive of the
views of American Jews anyway. Evangelical Christians, ardently pro-Israel,
give Jerusalem a power base in Washington that is larger and stronger than the
American Jewish population. And with Orthodox American Jews aligned with
evangelicals, that coalition has at least an interfaith veneer — even without
Conservative and Reform Jews, the bulk of American Jewry.
The divide between American Jews and Israeli Jews goes beyond politics.
A recent law tried to reinstate the Chief Rabbinate as the only authority that
can legally convert non-Orthodox Jews in Israel. Israel’s chief Ashkenazi
rabbi, after the slaughter in Pittsburgh, refused to refer to the Conservative
Tree of Life as a synagogue at all, calling it “a place with a profound Jewish
flavor.”
Already only Orthodox Jewish weddings are legal in Israel. Reform Jews
have been roughed up when praying at the Western Wall. Promises to Jewish women
that the Israeli rabbinate would become more inclusive have largely led to
disappointment. Last summer, the group Women of the Wall was warned that if it
did not remain confined to the small, barricaded area within the “women’s
section,” its members would be barred from praying there altogether.
And the stalemate over Palestinian rights and autonomy has become nearly
impossible to dismiss as some temporary roadblock, awaiting perhaps a new
government in Jerusalem or a new leadership of the Palestinian Authority.
The two-state solution is increasingly feeling like a cruel joke.
American Jews’ rabbis and lay leaders counsel them to be vigilant against any
other solution, such as granting Palestinians full rights in a greater Israel,
because those solutions would dilute or destroy Israel’s identity as a Jewish
state. Be patient, American Jews are told. Peace talks are coming. The
Palestinians will have their state.
In the meantime, the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction
Israel grows stronger on American campuses, and new voices are emerging in the
Democratic Party, such as Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida
Tlaib of Michigan, who are willing to speak openly about Palestinian rights and
autonomy where other lawmakers have declined to do so.
Of course, American Jews, like Israeli Jews, are not a monolith. Within
the American Jewish population, there is a significant generational split on
Israel that goes beyond ideology. Older American Jews, more viscerally aware of
the Holocaust and connected to the living history of the Jewish state, are
generally willing to look past Israeli government actions that challenge their
values. Or they embrace those actions. Younger American Jews do not typically
remember Israel as the David against regional Goliaths. They see a bully, armed
and indifferent, 45 years past the Yom Kippur War, the last conflict that
threatened Israel’s existence.
American Jewry has been going its own way for 150 years, a drift that
has created something of a new religion, or at least a new branch of one of the
world’s most ancient faiths.
In a historical stroke with resonance today, American Jewish leaders
gathered in Pittsburgh in 1885 to produce what is known as the Pittsburgh
Platform, a new theology for an American Judaism, less focused on a Messianic
return to the land of Israel and more on fixing a broken world, the concept of
Tikkun Olam. Jews, the rabbi behind the platform urged, must achieve God’s
purpose by “living and working in and with the world.”
For a faith that for thousands of years was insular and self-contained,
its people often in mandated ghettos, praying for the Messiah to return them to
the Promised Land, this was a radical notion. But for most American Jews, it is
now accepted as a tenet of their religion: building a better, more equal, more
tolerant world now, where they live.
Last summer, when a Conservative rabbi in Haifa was hauled in for
questioning by the Israeli police after he officiated at a non-Orthodox
wedding, it was too much for Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive of the
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the umbrella organization of the
Conservative movement in North America.
“I do not believe we can talk about a ‘gap’ between Israel and the
Diaspora,” Rabbi Wernick wrote in a letter to the Israeli government. “It is now a ‘canyon.’”
My rabbi in Washington, Daniel Zemel, quoted the Israeli Yaniv Sagee
during Kol Nidre, the Yom Kippur evening service, this fall: “For the first
time in my life, I feel a genuine threat to my life in Israel. This is not an
external threat. It is an internal threat from nationalists and racists.”
Rabbi Zemel implored his congregation to act before it is too late, to
save Israel from itself.
But Israelis want nothing of the sort. American Jews don’t serve in the
Israeli military, don’t pay Israeli taxes and don’t live under the threat of
Hamas rocket bombardments. And many American Jews would not heed Rabbi Zemel’s
call.
Zionism divided American Jewry for much of the latter 19th century and
the first half of the 20th century. Those divisions remained in the early
decades of the Jewish state, fading only with the triumph of the Arab-Israeli
War of 1967 and the peril of the Yom Kippur War.
Now many American Jews, especially young American Jews, would say,
Israel is Israel’s problem. We have our own.
There are roughly 6.5 million Jews in Israel. There are roughly 5.7
million Jews in America. Increasingly, they see the world in starkly different
ways.
The Great Schism is upon us.
Correction: January 4, 2019
An earlier version of this article misattributed a quotation. It was the
Israeli Yaniv Sagee, not Rabbi Daniel Zemel, who said: “For the first time in
my life, I feel a genuine threat to my life in Israel. This is not an external
threat. It is an internal threat from nationalists and racists.”
Correction: January 14, 2019
An earlier version of this article imprecisely described a finding of a
recent Pew Research Center survey. It is the percentage of Israelis who
expressed confidence in the American president that rose to 69 percent, not the
percentage of Israelis with a favorable view of the United States under
President Trump.
Jonathan Weisman is a veteran Washington journalist, deputy Washington
editor at The Times and author of the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and the
nonfiction book “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.”
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