Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Hosea said: “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” This captures the nature of the Israeli Occupation precisely. Bernard Avishai uncovered a damning piece of evidence about the Dimona suicide attack thanks to the researchers’ friend, Mr. Google:

Fifteen year-old Mohammed Salem Al-Harbawi from Hebron is a case in point. According to the Defense for Children International, he was arrested in the beginning of July of 2003 and taken to Atzion detention centre. Like many other prisoners, the report continues, Al-Harbawi was visited by a lawyer, but was unable to see or communicate with his family:

The unhygienic conditions in this centre mean that most inmates, including Mohammad, have contracted skin diseases, including boils. By July 28, 2003, Mohammed was affected so badly that he was taken for hospital treatment. After the doctor had examined him, Israeli border guards took him back to the prison. On the way, the guards stopped the jeep and started to attack him inside the vehicle. The five guards beat him to such an extent that he lost consciousness.

I stumbled over this report of his stay in prison when I Googled Al-Harbawi’s name. Last Monday, now a child of 20, he blew himself up, along with Lyubov Razdolskaya, 73, in the streets of Dimona…

In his post, Avishai notes the ever louder pounding of the drums of war by the Israeli political and military echelon. Supposed moderates like Haim Ramon and Meir Sheetrit are baying for Gazan blood in the aftermath of the incessant assault that Sderot is suffering from Qassam rockets.

Avishai’s point is that all an Israeli attack on Gaza will do is increase manifold the number of future Al-Harbawis eager to take their revenge against their Israeli abusers. It isn’t that often that the brutal reciprocity and cylicality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be seen so clearly as in the case of the 15 year-old Al-Harbawi.

A young boy beset by five brutal Israel prison guards beating him unconscious merely for the fact that he has contracted boils in prison. While none of us would justify taking the life of another because of such treatment, can any of us say for certain what we would do were we in this boy’s shoes? Faced with an unending Occupation and the ongoing insult of the Gaza siege, might the thought of personal revenge so overcome our minds that we might resort to such a terrible act? And can any of us who are reasonable doubt that an Israeli invasion of Gaza will not only fail miserably just as the Lebanon invasion did–but that it will make the problem of suicide bombing and future terror that much worse?

The Israeli Occupation sows the wind and Israeli (and Palestinain) civilians reap the whirlwind.

There are different kinds of great blog posts. There are those that are polished diamonds. There are those that show immense erudition, elegance, or cleverness. And then there are those that are rough-hewn (and I mean this not at all in a disparaging way), more discursive, a little unsure of where they’re headed. But you know the place they’re headed is one helluva interesting one and you’re dying to go along for the ride regardless of–or perhaps BECAUSE OF–the side trips. Such posts take an idea from here and an idea from there, they range back and forth over historical eras, mix it all together and come up with something wild and wonderful.

Bernard Avishai’s My Jewish Problem–and Ours is one such post. He begins with Podhoretz’s seminal Commentary essay, My Negro Problem–and Ours (pdf), and polishes it off nicely by both placing it in its proper historical and intellectual context, and then dismissing its hopelessly outdated and wrongheaded approach to the issue of race and Black-Jewish relations. Podhoretz becomes a central figure of this essay because he bookends two important periods: the 1960s and today. His ideas in the 60s were a bellweather for liberal Jews grappling with questions of race, equity and justice. His ideas today are no longer relevant and plumbing the reason why is the heart of Avishai’s mission here.

I’d have to call myself an intellectual enthusiast. I love ideas, especially those connected with politics. And I love the history of ideas, especially the ideas of progressive movements. This is what Avishai’s essay serves up in heaping helpings. He ranges from Podhoretz, Heschel, and Koufax in the 60s to Obama in the 00s (can we properly call this decade that?). It’s quite a fun ride which is another reason I like the post. The most important and exciting element of the essay is its attempt to parse the excitement that Barack Obama’s candidacy holds for so many of us liberal Jews.

Now to the esssay itself…I especially appreciate this characterization of the historical American Jewish embrace of Israel in a liberal context:

As my late friend (and Podhoretz’s eventual foil), Dissent’s editor Irving Howe put it, American Jews lived on “the questions.” Israel, for its part, was providing something more like answers, something more resilient and demanding, rooted in Hebrew, there for the long haul if it could survive its siege. But for American Jews before 1967—whose Major Organizations had not yet turned Jerusalem into their Epcot Center—it was American liberalism that was the triumph. Israel’s victories were admired all the more because, after the European horrors, the country was seen as something that remained distantly valiant and progressive. The Weavers sang the songs of Jezreel Valley pioneers in a medley with anthems of Republican Spain. This made Israel a really Jewish state.

The parallel between Jerusalem and the Epcot Center made my heart skip a beat as I read it. He really captures something critical about the Jewish community’s transformation of Jerusalem into a sacred version of Masada, a city worth dying for.

Here, Avishai brings his essay up to date by marrying Podhoretz’s mistaken notions of race and how Jews should relate to the race issue–to the Obama campaign and its impact on Jews today:

I AM RECALLING Podhoretz’s article now because there is something about the current presidential election that is teasing out a moment of truth for American Jews much like the one that article once punctuated. Specifically, there is Barack Obama, whose personification of integration in this old liberal sense can’t help but make Jews question not only what they want, but who they are.

It did not take long for the young Podhoretz to conclude that, instead of marrying African-Americans out of existence [ed. Podhoretz advocated miscegenation as the best solution for the race problem], it was simpler to push them around in ways that, as a child, he could not imagine doing. By the 1970s, his magazine was, among other things, challenging affirmative action and publishing tendentious articles about race and IQ, turning Stokely Carmichael and Ocean Hill-Brownsville into a new assault by Negro gangs. (I wrote about all of this at length in “Breaking Faith: Commentary and the American Jews,” Dissent, Spring 1981, from which some of these ruminations are borrowed.)

Still, Podhoretz’s real breakthrough came, not when he reimagined blacks as more or less permanent adversaries, but when he reimagined Jews as a more or less permanent interest group—when he reimagined the old liberalism as a trendy behaviorism and argued that “Jewish interests” (protection of wealth, “support for Israel,” etc.) required nothing more than a common sense use of power.

The author carries this discussion of Jewish “interests” vs. values into the presidential campaign:

What’s the Jewish interest? I’ll leave that to Podhoretz and (the latest tough he’s attached himself to) Rudy Giuliani to tell Florida today. But what if this was always the wrong question? What if American Jews are not an interest group but restless, loosely connected citizens—curiously proud of (what Aharon Appelfeld calls) their “fate,” not Christian but not unChristian, no longer immigrants, educated and well-off to be sure, but still not quite comfortable, looking to make sense of themselves in an evolving America? What if, by choosing, they show themselves who they are?

THIS IS, PERHAPS, a very roundabout way of saying that Barack Obama got me with hello. Pretty much everything he’s said and done since he started his campaign makes me proud to have voted for him (by absentee ballot, from Jerusalem). But I would be less than honest if I did not explain why voting for him makes me feel like a Jew in America, and in Israel for that matter, in a way I haven’t felt for a very long time. I think of Obama’s candidacy a little like the way I think of my first vote for Pierre Trudeau in 1967, or the emergence of the European Union in my lifetime. It is a kind of show-me-don’t-tell-me proof that the essential premises of liberalism, which Jews have championed since 1848—by which they have defined themselves since Heine—are, well, true.

Yes, Avishai understands that Obama is not perfect. He alludes to the criticism of Jewish mavens like Richard Cohen and Leon Wieseltier. But he seem to say: all that is important, but not as important as an overarching idea of liberalism and hope that Obama has come to embody for his Jewish supporters.

This bit of deft historical analogy shows off the author’s command of the history of the left and brings the essay to a satisfying and hopeful conclusion:

But none of this gets at the big opportunity here. Imagine, by analogy, what it felt like for Frenchmen, a couple of generations after the Dreyfus Affair, to vote for Leon Blum in 1936. Don’t tell me that the only thing at stake was who was the most experienced Social Democrat to govern “on day one.” (And please, New Republic editors, if you are reading this, don’t respond that Blum had failed by 1938; Obama will have the first Congressional majority without Southern Democrats ever, not a tragic alliance with Communists following Stalin’s zig-zag line.)

Anyway, to those of us who’ve been heartsick since the assassinations, the debasement of commercial television, the political triangulations, the vaguely reciprocal threats of creationism and hip-hop, Obama’s voice sounds just prophetic enough. Der mensch tracht und Gott lacht, my father used to say, “Men strive, God laughs.” Fair enough. But I have, I’m afraid, a dream.

For those of us contemplating the enormous excitement we’ve been feeling for the past year at the prospect of an Obama candidacy, Avishai’s essay plumbs this territory beautifully.

I’ve been at this since 2003 and one of my biggest complaints, heard much more when I started but still relevant now, is that not enough articulate, knowledgeable people are blogging about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For every Phil Weiss or Muzzlewatch there are ten (or more) Charles Johsnons. Until very recently, almost no academics or policy wonks were blogging on this subject. Now, thankfully we have Mark LeVine and Jerry Haber among others. But there is still a huge skew to the right in the online blog discussion about the conflict. For every Little Green Footballs or Pajamas Media there is a—well, nothing to be frank.

Which leads me to welcome Bernard Avishai to the blog world: baruch ha-ba. It’s probably no accident that he has a new book, The Hebrew Republic, coming out in April and perhaps his publisher advised him to consider blogging. Or maybe he’s been reading Daniel Levy’s excellent, Prospects for Peace and been inspired. Whatever the reason, it’s always great news when someone of Avishai’s stature and commanding intellect enters the blogging ring. We’ll all be the richer for it.

I recently blogged about his incisive column in the Los Angeles Times written with Sami Bahour calling for “tough love” from George Bush toward the Israelis.

Thanks to Alex Stein for alerting me to Avishai’s new blog.

Thanks to Israel Palestine Forum member, Bridgebuilder who pointed me to one of the clearest and most persuasive analyses of what needs to happen at Annapolis for it to succeed. Making the Inevitable Happen is written by Bernard Avishai, a noted Israeli historian of Zionism and Sami Bahour, a Palestinian-American entrepreneur.

Here is how their column begins:

Anybody who knows anything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict knows that the leaders expected at a summit meeting in Annapolis, Md., later this month, won’t devise a deal. That’s because the outlines of the deal have already been devised, in bits and pieces, through the Clinton parameters; the Taba summit; the Arab League proposal; international law, including myriad U.N. resolutions; and semiformal understandings, such as the Geneva Initiative.

So couples therapy is not what’s needed at this stage; it’s tough love. World powers, mainly the United States, should publicly endorse the deal, which is the only way to secure a place in the global economy that both Israel and Palestine need. What’s largely been settled is this: The foundation will be the boundaries from before the 1967 war, and Israel will compensate Palestine with land for agreed-upon border modifications; Jerusalem will be capital to both states, and its Old City will be open, free of checkpoints and restricted areas; international forces will help keep the peace, especially where jurisdictions are shared; the bulk of Palestinian refugees will exercise their right of return by settling in the new state of Palestine and accepting financial compensation, though a certain number will be allowed to return to Israel proper; and, finally, all Arab states simultaneously will recognize Israel. To be sure, there are contentious details to be hammered out, including how and when to remove Israeli settlers and repatriate Palestinian refugees. But generally speaking, that’s the deal, and who hasn’t heard it?

Talk about tough love: Avishai and Bahour offer it to Condi in spades:

Which brings us to the most plausible argument against success at Annapolis. Olmert and Abbas will fail, pundits say, because they face radically aggressive domestic opposition — Scripture-hawk settlers on one side, Hamas on the other. Each leader cannot put his fragile “national unity” at risk for the sake of a peace deal that depends on the other weak leader. But this is precisely where the U.S. comes in. To trump the hard- liners, each has to show that he is moved by bigger forces, economic and geopolitical. The most immediate force is American interests and policy.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice apparently grasps the regional dynamic. She has stated repeatedly that failure will yield unprecedented new threats. But by not publicly adopting the inevitable deal, she has not added the one threat that Olmert and Abbas actually can use. She has not emphasized to their supporters — and their opponents — that U.S. security interests are in play, which they are; that Washington’s full weight is behind Annapolis; and that Americans know the logic of an agreement by now.

If Rice takes a firm public stand in demanding a final settlement, she strengthens Olmert and Abbas, who can point to the danger of defying the U.S. But if she merely offers mediation services, the summit may well fail. And failure means the United States’ standing in the region — so diminished after its debacle in Iraq — just got worse.

Tough love is one quality few American presidents seem able or willing to display towards the parties in this conflict. But it is perhaps the most critical element that they could bring to bear. Why? AIPAC is one good reason. It doesn’t want any Administration to muss a single hair on the head of any Israeli prime minister. Condi has been willing to buck AIPAC before. Let’s see if she’s willing to do so now.

I doubt anyone in the Bush Administration will pay much attention to Avishai and Bahour’s column, but they should.