The NY Times made the odd choice of selecting liberal Zionist hawk Jeffrey Goldberg to review Gershom Gorenberg’s new paean to lib Zionism, The Unmaking of Israel.  I’m only surprised that they didn’t assign the review to “Eytan” Bronner, that other Times paragon of lib Zionism, .  Assigning the review to Goldberg is something akin to commissioning Joe Biden to review Barack Obama’s next book.  Though Gorenberg isn’t Goldberg’s boss, they come from the same fairly narrow ideological slice of the Zionist ideological spectrum, with the only difference being that Gorenberg is slightly more critical of Israeli policy and Occupation than Goldberg.  It was to be expected that Goldberg would offer an encomium to someone who’s likely an old pal.  Israel is a very small place.  Gorenberg lives there.  Goldberg lived there for years.  Surely there are webs and networks interconnecting them in this cozy little community of pro-Israel journalists from which they emerged professionally.

There is something slightly off kilter or incestuous about assigning the book to Goldberg, as if one hand washes the other.  We certainly may expect a fullsome blurb from Gorenberg on the cover of Goldberg’s next book or assistance getting Gorenberg’s next article placed in The Atlantic.  I note that Gorenberg’s infamous Why- is-There-No-Palestinian-Gandhi fantasy was supposed to be published by The Atlantic, which passed on it when he submitted it to them.  It was then published in the far more ideologically suitable and pro-Israel Weekly Standard.

Of course, it would’ve been a lot more illuminating, and many more sparks would’ve flown, had they assigned the review to Stephen Walt, Tom Segev (who incisively reviewed Benny Morris’ last book for the Times) or Rashid Khalidi, someone who would’ve truly grappled both with Gorenberg’s ideas, giving credit where it was due and noting their insufficiencies when they arose.  Alas, that didn’t happen.  So we’re left with the ideological clichés that pass for analysis coming from Goldberg’s pen.

So let’s review the review for the little white lies, distortions and intellectual dishonesty for which Goldberg is notorious, starting with this:

Israel is not a fascist state, nor is it a theocracy nor, for that matter, is it a fascist theocracy. It is not an apartheid state, a totalitarian state or, God forbid, a Nazi state.

There is a convenient admixture of the outrageous with the apt, which allows Goldberg to associate off-the-wall descriptors like “fascist,” “totalitarian” or “Nazi” with ones that are quite apt like “theocracy” or ‘apartheid state.”  Israel isn’t a fascist state, but it certainly is rapidly becoming an authoritarian one, as anyone reading the list of Knesset bills up for consideration knows.  Though I wouldn’t have said this till recently, Israel has become a theocracy in everything but name only.  It’s not that rabbi-ayatollahs sweep through the streets stoning immodest women to death as they did and do in Afghanistan.  No, it’s more subtle than that (though there is overt violence against such women) but no less insidious.  Even Gorenberg, an Orthdox Jew, notes the stranglehold the Haredi have over the Israeli political and social system.  No less a figure than former Mossad director Ephraim Halevy said the Haredi threat to Israeli secular democracy was more severe than that from Iran.

Though Israel is not a fascist or totalitarian state, it is a state which honors democracy in the breach, if at all.  Turning to the phrase “apartheid,” since Israel clings insistently to the Occupation, which is a blatant and brutal violation of international law, we have to acknowledge that Israel IS an apartheid state.  If it did not rule West Bank Palestinians and indirectly Gaza as well, then we might argue that the Israeli domestic political system was merely an ethnocracy, but not outright apartheid.  However, the Occupation and the savagery with which it oppresses millions of Palestinians, turns Israel into a state with citizens enjoying full rights (Jews), truncated rights (Israeli Palestinians), and few if any rights (Palestinians in the Territories).  That is, an apartheid state.

Goldberg’s hasbara continues:

It [Israel] is, for its region in particular, a model of Western values, a country in possession of a robustly independent judiciary; a boisterous, appropriately unkempt press; a mature and activist civil society; and an assortment of fearless and effective human rights organizations.

Note he says that Israel is for its region a model of Western values.  Which implies that if Israel was not in this region it wouldn’t be such a sterling example of these values.  But returning to the passage, Goldberg either doesn’t know much about what’s really happening in Israel, or he’s willfully blind to the Israeli reality.  The Israeli judiciary, far from being robust, is catatonic when it comes to national security cases.  It’s taken five years for the IDF to honor several Supreme Court rulings to move the Separation Wall.  When the same Court prohibited targeted killings of unarmed Palestinians and an IDF general carried out one, the Court did nothing to enforce its ruling, even allowing the promotion of said general to become deputy chief of staff.  If that’s robust, then my grandpa was an Olympic decathlete.

As for the press being “boisterous, appropriately unkempt,” the terms are curiously besides the point in portraying the current Israeli media reality in which a TV station is being destroyed because it aired an exposé embarrassing to the prime minister; and that, following the same TV station’s abject on-air apology to Sheldon Adelson for airing an exposé embarrassing to him.  Hundreds of gag orders and military censorship hem in the best of Israeli investigative journalists, preventing them from doing their jobs properly.  Not to mention the silencing of an Israeli-Palestinian radio station, All for Peace, because it held such “subversive” views like embracing a two-state solution and women’s rights.

Goldberg’s descriptions of “activist civil society” and “fearless, effective human rights organizations” also seriously distorts the Israeli reality in which the prime minister has only just now withdrawn laws which would effectively defund all Israeli NGOs receiving foreign funding (which is virtually all).  To any Israeli apologists who claim that the withdrawal of the bill is a victory for democracy, look again.  Haaretz acknowledges the only reason for the withdrawal was the outcry from foreign governments like the EU and U.S., who warned of the opprobrium Israel would suffer on the world stage for such punitive measures against the human rights community.

This is the same Israel which summons human rights activists to Shin Bet interrogations and warns them if they continue with their activism, and the Knesset enacts new laws which the spooks expect, that what he is now doing will become criminal and that they will pursue him vigorously.  It’s the same society which routinely assaults human rights activists at places like Sheikh Jarrah, Jalud and Anatot, breaking bones, assaulting women sexually, etc.

Make no mistake, I am a champion of the Israeli human rights community.  But I do not delude myself into believing that it will or can save Israel from itself.  At best, these NGOs are impeding Israel’s gradual decline into moral and political chaos.  They are a stopgap, but not a solution.  They can’t single-handedly prevent the inexorable descent.

Though one should credit both Gorenberg and especially Goldberg for embracing some severe and justified criticism of Israel, neither goes far enough, especially not Goldberg.  Take this statement:

The majority of Israelis say they support a two-state solution…But the majority is powerless in the face of the relentless settler minority.

What does this mean?  How can a majority be “powerless” in the face of a minority?  Has that minority fed the majority a disabling drug that renders them unable to effectively oppose the bad deeds of the minority?  Has the majority lost its will through some catastrophe?  Of course, none of this is true and Goldberg is talking utter nonsense.  The Israeli majority may not have much sympathy for the settlers, but they are not willing to confront them.  The Israeli majority elects Knessets which form governments which actually support the settler movement.  So saying the majority is powerless against settlements is patently false.  The majority tacitly and even directly supports the disaster unfolding in the Territories.  We can argue and psychologize this phenomenon till the cows come home.  But we’ve got to tell it like it is.  This is not Svengali stuff.  Israelis are to blame for the mess into which the settlers have gotten them.

As an example, take this odd locution chosen by Goldberg to describe Israeli conquest of the West Bank during the 1967 War: he calls it “a sudden acquisition of new land.”  That’s one way of putting it.  What Israel did was far from “acquisition” and such language masks the nature of the ongoing crime in the same way that Israelis mask awareness of the Albatross that the Occupation is around their collective necks.

Gorenberg and Goldberg both target the settlements as the poison fruit that has embittered Israeli discourse.  And of course they are both right.  But they don’t go far enough.  Take this passage from the review which portrays the ways in which Israel allowed a patently illegal settlement process to become de jure legal, at least in Israeli terms:

How did it happen that a country of laws — Israel’s Supreme Court justices are renowned around the globe — came to be so lawless in one corner of the territory it ruled?

We can argue later about whether or even when last, Israel’s justices were “renowned” around the globe–but the notion that the lawlessness of settlements is a phenomenon of only “one corner” of Israel is again wishful thinking.  Israel is a country basically without rule of law, especially regarding national security.  There is no accountability for crimes and violations of laws and guidelines either by the police, IDF or intelligence agencies.  Take this hot off the presses from Maariv.  One of only two IDF officers facing charges for murdering civilians during Operation Cast Lead will face no criminal charges according to the military prosecutor.  Corruption is endemic.  Ethnic discrimination, even against Jews and certainly against non-Jews, is rampant.  Israel enjoys the fifth largest gap between rich and poor among OECD countries.  It is one of the most stratified nations in the world with a tiny number of oligarch-like families controlling immense portions of the national commercial and industrial infrastructure.  There is one law for the 99% and another for the 1%.  Lawlessness does not afflict only one corner of the nation.  It afflicts the entirety of it.

Thus Occupation, though it may’ve been the root of the evil that came to bedevil Israel, is now just another symptom among many of the country’s ills.  But unlike both Gorenberg and Goldberg, I believe that Israel’s Original Sin, just as it America’s, is racism.  In Israel, that Sin began with the 1948 Nakba and continues to this day with the oppression and neglect suffered by Israel’s indigenous non-Jewish citizens.  Just as Martin Luther King argued so powerfully about American sin, tying it to racism and slavery, so Israel’s is the primal injustice of expulsion of nearly 1-million residents of the country.  This, as much as or even more than Occupation, is the “unmaking of Israel.”

You won’t find Goldberg touching this with a ten-foot pole and likely Gorenberg would feel the same way.  Nakba is the third-rail of Israeli politics.  You simply can’t go there.  From Nakba flows an analysis of the fundamental, systemic inequities of Israeli life.  The suppression of the rights of Palestinian citizens, tolerance of the virtual abandonment of whole segments of the Israeli population to poverty, illiteracy, poor health, and crime.

If there is one thing among many that separates my views from those of the liberal Zionist pair it is this:

 …It is Jews who created many of the problems the Jewish state faces today, and it is Jews who must fix them.

I used to believe this, even fervently.  But I no longer believe it.  Israel is not capable of fixing the mess into which it has gotten itself.  Like Serbia-Kosovo or Rwanda or any number of horror-show situations, Israel is paralyzed.  It cannot expiate its sins or whatever one wishes to call them.  The benefits Israelis derive from Occupation are too attractive for them to give them up willingly.  There may be those who know what has to be done to resolve its conflict with the Arab states, but there aren’t enough of these citizens and they aren’t powerful enough to impose their vision on the rest of society.

Finally, Goldberg and Gorenberg, despite the partial clarity of vision they have concerning the mess in which Israel finds itself, are little better than temporizers.  They want to ameliorate the situation rather than engage in the fundamental transformation of Israeli society that is necessary for it to become truly democratic and accepted into the mainstream of nations.  For them Israel can only be a Jewish state.  And by that I mean a state rewarding the majority ethnic group superior rights over the minority.  You call such a state an exclusivist and supremacist Jewish state.  But it is one in which some citizens, by virtue of the religion into which they were born, gain better jobs, education, health care, housing, and social treatment.  That is simply not acceptable.  It wasn’t acceptable to the authors of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, nor is it acceptable today.

As I’ve written many times, there is nothing wrong with Israel being a state in which Jews are a majority.  There is nothing wrong with Israel being a state in which Jews practice their religion, speak their language, learn their heritage, and engage with their Diaspora brethren.  In other words, Israel must be a place in which religious traditions are respected.  But it may not be a place that rewards one religion over another.  That is where I fundamentally part company with Goldberg and Gorenberg.  And it’s why Gorenberg finds me such a dangerous opponent that he was willing to lie about my views and call me an anti-Zionist.  He doesn’t know what to do with those who support Israel, but find his vision imperfect.  To him, he’s a perfect liberal and a conscience of humanity.  Doesn’t he criticize his own nation for the sins it’s committed against Palestinians?  What more, he thinks, do they expect of me?

We expect someone who is a serious intellectual and observer of his nation to plumb the depths of the evil that afflicts it.  Something Gorenberg hasn’t yet done.  He has gotten part way there, but not all the way.

34 Knesset members voted to strip MK Haneen Zoabi of her privileges

Every day seems to bring yet a new outrage against free speech and democratic rights in Israel.  Yesterday, the Israeli police manhandled the director of Women of the Wall, wrested a sacred Torah scroll from her hands, and hauled her off to jail–all for praying.  Today, it only took 34 of the 120 member of the Knesset who actually had the guts to strip Israeli Palestinian MK Haneen Zoabi of her parliamentary privileges–all because she represented her constituents faithfully and joined the Gaza flotilla.  The greatest shame perhaps is that only 16 Knesset members opposed this anti-democratic abortion.

What is interesting about all this is that Zoabi broke no Israeli law in doing so (she might have had the flotilla reached Gaza).  So in effect, the Knesset minority basically said you did something offensive and we will punish you for it.  This usurps the legal process by which the police and attorney general would do their job and ferret out illegality and prosecute it.  It is an entirely arbitrary and capricious act and I hope she will appeal it to the Supreme Court, a body which at times has been known to get off its duff and protect the rights of Israel’s largest ethnic minority.

It should also be noted that MK Zoabi had the honor of a Facebook group created which wished her good health in the form of demanding she be hung from the highest tree for her ‘betrayal’ of the State.  This indicates the robust good health of Israeli democracy.

Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin is on record opposing the measure which passed, which is a tribute to his sense of the dignity of the Knesset.  However, he is wrong when he warns the right wing Knesset members that once they strip Zoabi, that their privileges and immunity too could be stripped.  He’s wrong because no Israeli Knesset would ever strip a right-wing member of immunity.  The right-wing essentially owns the Knesset and they can act with virtual impunity barring an act of Kahane-Goldstein like mass mayhem.

I have often written here that Israel, instead of a democracy, is a national security state which accords Jews superior rights and Palestinian citizens rights at its discretion.  When it is inconvenient to the State, the rights of the Arab minority are curtailed at will.

The last MK whose immunity was stripped was Azmi Bishara, who was driven into forced exile by the Shin Bet.  Who knows what the rightist MKs have in store for Zoabi next?  There is a campaign to strip her of citizenship entirely and leave her stateless like hundreds of thousands of Israeli Palestinian refugees from 1948.  Wouldn’t that be an irony worth noting?  If I were her I would dare them to do so.  It will only harm Israel’s image and burnish Zoabi’s.

I’ve got news for any advocate for Israel as a Jewish supremacist state out there: “they” have as much right to be there as you (or we Jews, if you prefer) do.  They’re not going away.  You can only deprive them of their rights so long.

This is part II in my discussion of the 2009 Global Language Dictionary (pdf), the secret hasbara handbook crafted by veteran Republican image-shaper Frank Luntz on behalf of The Israel Project.  The Dictionary is a propaganda treasure for the pro-Israel right, suggesting ways of spinning issues that might otherwise embarrass Israel in the U.S. media.

One of Luntz’s main themes is to ram home to a U.S. audience that Israel wants peace.  Of course, neither he nor Israel ever offer any concrete proof of what they will do for peace or how to achieve peace.  The empty slogan seems good enough for Luntz:

For Americans to have hope regarding the Middle East conflict, they need to be reminded that:

• Israel has a long-term commitment to peace. When courageous Arab leaders, such as Egypt’s President Sadat and Jordan’s King Hussein, reached out their hands to Israel, peace was achieved.

This passage neglects to mention that these leaders negotiated peace deals with Israel decades ago and that Israel has not achieved any similar agreements with any Arab leaders since.  In fact, Pres. Assad of Syria has been “reaching out his hands to Israel” begging for negotiations for almost a year to no avail.  Why no mention of this inconvenient fact?

Then there’s the tired old Gaza fallacy:

“Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process.”

“Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks…”

Ariel Sharon took no risk whatsoever in his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. Nor did he withdraw “in hopes of renewing the peace process.”  In fact, he hoped that the withdrawal would act as a pressure valve and diminish his need for a future peace process.

Those settlements were an albatross around Israel’s neck and no one except a tiny minority in the extreme settler movement saw them as having any value.  Further, since Sharon withdrew without consulting or negotiating with the Palestinians, he gained nothing as he might have.  So to say that Israel has the right to expect anything in return for withdrawal is foolish.  If it wanted anything in return, the time to negotiate for it would’ve been BEFORE withdrawing.

Yes, hasbara can be fun and unintentionally humorous:

Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel.

Once you have established that you care about both Israelis and Palestinians and that Israel wants peace, you can begin the process of establishing a strong connection between Americans and Israel based on shared values and interests, including:

– Israel’s cooperative efforts with Jewish and Muslim citizens working together to create jobs, cutting edge technology, science and research;
– Israel’s remarkable advances in alternative energy;
– The work Israel has done in Arab neighborhoods and communities to raise health and living standards, including access, as full Israeli citizens, to Israel’s world-class national health care system.

Information about the cooperation of Israeli doctors and scientists – Jews, Muslims, Christians and others alike – in solving important health and technological challenges can be helpful. So can demonstrating that Israel and America share a commitment to freedom of religion, press, speech as well as human rights, women’s issues, and the environment.

Notice Luntz provides absolutely no proof of such “cooperative efforts” between Jews and Muslims.  The idea that Israel is doing anything to “create jobs” for its Muslim citizens is laughable.  And the number of Israeli Arabs working in the sectors of “technology, science and research” is infinitesimal.

Also, the notion that Israel is “raising health and living standards” for its Arab population is also grotesque when the latter has the highest poverty rate, lowest life expectancy, highest rate of children living in poverty, lowest level of education, etc. of any ethnic group in the nation.

As for freedom of religion in Israel–not so fast.  Religious leaders of the Muslim community are approved by the State, which can and does reject the choice of the community itself for whatever reason it chooses.  Jewish rabbinic leaders are never rejected in the same way.

As for freedom of the press–except for the times when military censorship is invoked on the flimsiest of excuses.  And the Israeli media NEVER challenges such censorship.

Freedom of speech?  Perhaps, except for Arab Knesset members who are regularly excoriated, threatened with death, and investigated by the Israeli police again on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Human Rights?  Except for those Israeli citizens who protested the Gaza war and were imprisoned for their non-violent protest.  And except for those who are investigated by the police and charged with crimes for doing nothing more than exposing torture and abuse committed by the IDF.

Draw direct parallels between Israel and America—including the need to defend against terrorism.

…The more you focus on the similarities between Israel and America, the more likely you are to win…support…Indeed, Israel is an important American ally in the war against terrorism, and faces many of the same challenges as America in protecting their citizens…Imagine what we would do if more than 250 times terrorists had crossed into our land and killed our children while they were riding buses or eating pizza? What would America do? What would America do if America’s neighbors in Canada or Mexico were firing rockets into America?

Now, that’s a slightly embarrassing line of argument since the U.S. actually did wage two wars of aggression against our Canadian and Mexican neighbors.  In the first (the War of 1812), our asses were whipped and we slunk home in defeat.  Relations have been pretty good with Canada ever since.

In the second (the Mexican War of 1848), we whupped Mexico’s ass and stole a huge chunk of their territory to make America safe for California freeways and Texas BBQ.  Relations have been a little touchy ever since.

Further, whenever dealing with the argument that asks Americans to put themselves in Israel’s shoes and imagine how they would act if New York was under attack–you have to turn the tables.  Imagine today that the U.S. conquers Baja California in a war and occupies it for 42 years and shows no willingness to return it anytime soon.  Would we Americans have any right to complain if Mexicans didn’t take too kindly to such unfriendly behavior?

If you don’t laugh at this passage you’ll cry it’s so ludicrous:

The language of Israel is the language of America: “democracy,” “freedom,” “security,”
and “peace.”

These four words are at the core of the American political, economic, social, and cultural systems, and they should be repeated as often as possible because they resonate with virtually every American. This is not rhetoric. It is fact. Despite the non-stop coverage of Israel in the press, the positive news about Israel remains untold.

No, it’s not rhetoric.  Just because Frank tells us so.  But wait.  Here are the “facts” he marshals to prove his argument:

It’s our job to “wear white hats in public”—to remind Americans that Israel is a team for whom they can feel good about cheering. After all:

• Israel, America’s ally, is a democracy in the Middle East. In Israel, Christians, Muslims, and Jews all have freedom of speech, religion, and a right to vote. Indeed, more than a million Arabs are citizens of Israel, representing almost 20% of the population.

Furthermore, 12 Arabs and 21 women serve in Israel’s 120-member Parliament, and an Arab judge sits on the Israeli Supreme Court. On a cultural level, a recent Miss Israel was an Israeli Arab and Israel is sending an Arab-Israeli and a Jewish-Israel to sing together in the upcoming Eurovision contest. As the following chart shows, female membership in the Knesset is even on the rise.

Again, not so fast.  Israel is not a full-fledged democracy.  It is an ethnocracy with unequal rights for majority and minority ethnic groups.

12 Arabs may sit in the Knesset but none are ministers and no Jewish party has the guts to include any Arab party in a governing coalition.  In essence, this renders Arabs MKs powerless.

And as for the supposedly increasing female membership in the Knesset, what that chart indicates is that the numbers of female Knesset members has risen from 12 in the first Knesset (60 years ago) to 21 today.  A 90% increase over 60 years is nothing to brag about (you do the math).  And the fact that 15% of the Knesset’s members are women in a society in which at least half the citizens are female is also nothing special, I’m sorry to say.

to be continued…

One of Bibi Netanyahu’s non-starter demands is that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a Jewish state.  Forget the fact that it is more than just a Jewish state since it is also a state for its Muslim, Christian and Druze citizens.  Think about how ridiculous it would be for Mahmoud Abbas–or even Ismail Haniye for that matter–to demand that Israel recognize Palestine as a Muslim state, before Palestine would negotiate a peace agreement.

My more ‘pro-Israel’ readers will object that it is less critical that there be yet another Muslim state in the world while there is only ONE Jewish one.    So let’s turn the tables and say hypothetically there is no other Muslim state in the world besides Palestine.  Still, and I repeat the question, why in heaven’s name does it make any difference whether Bibi Netanyahu concedes that Palestine is Muslim? I’d say it’s none of Bibi’s damn business whether Palestine is Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Shinto for that matter.

Similarly, it’s none of Abbas’ business what Israel is.  That’s for Israelis to decide.

Does Mexico demand that we recognize it as a Catholic state before we negotiate cross-border agreements?  Should we insist that Canada recognize that the U.S. as a Christian nation before we negotiate the next thorny issue confronting our two nations?

Now to return to one of the more problematic aspects of the issue of Israel as a Jewish state.  If Israel is a Jewish state, then it is not a democratic state.  It is an ethnocratic state.  That is, a state with a hierarchy of rights with Jews at the top and Muslims at the bottom.

This is not to say that Israel, in an ideal articulation, could not be a state in which its Jewish citizens see it as a Jewish homeland while its Arab or Muslim citizens see it as their respective ethnic homeland as well.  To concede this is not to concede that Jews will lose recognition of any of their Jewishness within this reframed state.  Instead, what will happen is the re-envisioned state will expand its conception to embrace all its citizens and their respective religions and ethnicities.

Make no mistake, my rightward pro-Israel readers call this “the death of Israel as a Jewish state” or “the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.”  It is nothing of the sort.  If Israel continues to embrace its Jewish citizens while reaching out additionally to its Arab citizens, this is the death of nothing.  It is different from the current system.  But nothing need die if Israel adopts a truly multi-ethnic egalitarian model.

And another point which Tony Karon raises, if Israel is to claim it is a Jewish state this implies a continuity of values or interests with the rest of the world’s Jews.  But who has asked Diaspora Jews whether Israel is their state?  Who has given Israel the right to speak for them as Jews?  Yes, there are many older generation Jews and the Israel lobby which accept this deal.  But increasingly, a younger generation of Jews doesn’t.

If Israel is to become a state of all its citizens it would be far healthier for there to be more of a distinction between Diaspora and Israeli Jewish interests.  I do not say that they should never overlap, but there certainly should be nothing wrong when they don’t.  Israel must earn the support of the world’s Jews, that support should not be automatic or assumed.  If Israel realizes the Jewish values of Diaspora Jews then it should gain our support.  If it violates our conception of such values it should not assume we will fall into line like good soldiers.

The N.Y. Times has a new Israel correspondent, Ethan Bronner. He replaced Steven Erlanger, who I thought was a generally good reporter with a few serious blind spots when it came to dispassionate reporting on the conflict. Bronner has begun writing his first in depth reports based around Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Before I talk about them, I wanted to put this in some context. I read a lot of journalism about the conflict. My major source is probably the Times, since it’s the newspaper I grew up on. Because I am passionate about both Israel and good journalism, and because, for better or worse the Times is our nation’s newspaper of record–especially on foreign affairs, I’m finely attuned to how the Times reports this issue.

I was seriously disappointed by Bronner’s piece on Israeli Arabs and the Nakba, . Why? Good journalism about the conflict takes you inside the hearts and minds of those who live on both sides of the divide. I think that after reading a profile of someone on either side, the partisans from the opposite side should feel deeply discomfited. Because a great journalist forces you to walk a mile in the moccasins of “the other.” Many Arabs and Israelis distinctly do not want to do this.

Instead of writing deeply personal, intimate journalism, Bronner has written a very much outsider’s perspective on Israeli Arab society. He hasn’t gotten anything egregiously wrong. He hasn’t shown any explicit pro-Israel bias. But nor has he attempted to plumb the heart of his subjects. If you look at the journalism of James Bennet, one of Bronner’s predecessors as bureau chief, you’ll see what this means. In this profile, Bennet presents the paradox and double life of a former IDF soldier married to a Palestinian with heartbreaking detail. You emerge from reading this type of journalism with a profound sense of the tragedy of this conflict for both sides. As opposed to when you finish reading Bronner, you feel you’ve read a dutifully reported piece with little of the empathy evidenced in Bennet’s writing.

Good writing on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is all about nuance and emphasis. Reporters like Bronner will rarely get a fact wrong. But it’s all in how you put the facts together; where you place emphasis, and how heavily you emphasize one particular fact over another. And in this sense, the new correspondent’s work is disappointing.

Here are a few of the things that made me uncomfortable about Bronner’s piece:

On Thursday, which is Independence Day, thousands will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the “nakba,” or catastrophe, meaning Israel’s birth.

While I am not an Arabic expert, I have never seen the word Nakba without a capital letter. Since this refers to a specific event, and a seminal and catastrophic one at that, removing the capital letter seems to diminish unintentionally the importance of the event. Again, perhaps not an egregious mistake, but a sign that the writer isn’t at one with his subject, but rather looking from the outside. Even more important, I take serious exception to Bronner’s interpretation of the reference of Nakba to “Israel’s birth.” There are some Israeli Arabs who may see Israel’s birth as a catastrophe. But the reference in almost any Israeli Arab’s mind refers to the disaster visited upon their uprooted society and villages by the War of Independence. 700,000 were sent into exile in this tragic event–one that rivals the Spanish exile of its Jewish community in 1492 or the Roman conquest of Palestine in 135 CE during which many inhabitants were exiled. It is this displacement that is their tragedy.

One may argue that the displacement and creation of the new state go hand in hand so that the two are interchangeable. Benny Morris and perhaps even David Ben Gurion may’ve believed this to be the case. But not even every Zionist of the era agreed. And I do not accept this and strongly believe Bronner should’ve been more precise in his discussion of the issue.

Polls show that most Israeli Arabs are neither revoluntaries nor anti-Zionist in their outlook. But they are a deeply aggrieved minority. The crime for them is not Israel’s creation, but the displacement and injustice done to them in the process.

That is why I believe that Bronner’s emphasis on the irreconcilable divide between Jew and Arab in Israel is misplaced. Yes, the divide is there and it is great. But by portraying Israeli Arab atttiudes as more fundamental and radical than they perhaps are, Bronner has set up the conflict to be intractable & unresolvable, which I don’t believe is the case.

Most [Israeli Jews] say that…an end to its Jewish identify means an end to Israel…

Again, there is imprecision here that should be amplified. What this attitude really connotes is that an end to Jewish domination of the state would mean an end to Israel as a Jewish state. Certainly there is no reason why having A (as opposed to “the”) Jewish identity in Israel means the end of the state. There might also be a recognition of An Arab identity in the state as well. So that two ethnic, religious identities could be enshrined in the nation’s fabric. This would certainly NOT entail “an end to Israel.”

What Bronner does in the above passage is accept a certain nationalist Israeli Jewish assumption without examining what underlies it to determine whether there is ground for compromise sometime in the future.

…A majority of Jews, polls show, favor a transfer of Arabs out of Israel as part of a two-state solution…Arabs here reject that idea partly because they prefer the certainty of an imperfect Israeli democracy to whatever system may evolve in a shaky Palestinian state.

I am glad Bronner added the word “partly” to this passage, but even here I think he has missed the key point for Arabs. Certainly in a practical sense transfer would be economically disastrous for them. But more importantly, they are citizens of the state and their presence and that of their ancestors predates that of most of the current Jewish inhabitants. So most Arabs say: “Why should I be forced to leave this place? It is just as much mine as the Jews’. They have no greater claim to it than I.” Pride and rootedness in the land are far more important motivators for them in opposing transfer than any concern about standard of living should they be forced to leave.

In a 10-minute interview accompanying this piece, Bronner also made a statement that lacks sufficient nuance:

For the vast majority of Israeli Jews it [a multi-ethnic state of "all its citizens"] is a non-starter and a very threatening thought because they’re here to be part of the Jewish state. They say: “Look, there are twenty-some Arab states and with any luck there will be a Palestinian state. And if you need to be in an Arab state to express your Arab national identity choose another one, not this one.

Here Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954. There was an equivalent deep divide in society. But over time and thanks to the leadership of African-Americans like Martin Luther King and politicians like Lyndon Johnson, many of the barriers have fallen. Admittedly, Israeli relations between Jews and Arabs have potentially even more complexity than those between whites and blacks. But the key consideration is that racial hostility gradually diminished. Integration gradually decreased. With good will, leadership and compromise, this can happen in Israel too.

Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.

It will not happen overnight. It will not happen easily. But for Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. This redefined Israeli state does not mean that the country will become Arab or that Jews or Judaism will no longer be fundamental to the identity of this state. There must be a way to also acknowledge that Arabs deserve parity in this process. That means that Judaism will no longer dominate; will no longer be considered superior. But the difference between being respected and being dominant is significant. Perhaps most Israeli Jews now do not accept the possibility that this will happen. But over time, I am convinced they will.

Hat tip to Ali Eteraz for this story…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. The first Israeli-Arab woman joined the Israeli Air Force. That’s good, right? Right. Except that she got in through an error.

It seems that Israeli Arabs are not allowed to serve in the air force because of the service’s elite status and because of the fear of their dual loyalty. So I’m guessing the woman didn’t reveal she was Muslim and no one asked. By the time the IAF found out it had a potential nightmare on its hands. Eject her from her unit and you have tons of bad PR, not only in the Israeli Arab community but throughout Israel and abroad. Retain her in the unit and you’ve created a potentially dangerous precedent in case another Israeli Arab seeks to serve. So they retained her.

To tell the truth, the story claims that her commander actually stood by her and enthusiastically endorsed her remaining in his IAF unit. So give credit to an individual officer and tons of demerits to an IAF which so mistrusts certain Israeli citizens that it refuses to allow them to serve in units in which any qualifying Jew can serve.

Contrast this Arab woman’s zeal to perform her duty as a citizen with an ever-expanding number of Israeli Jews seeking to avoid their compulsory army service; not to mention those Orthodox Jews studying in yeshivas who also avoid service.

Now for the crying I alluded to above:

Another Israeli-Arab’s dream of being a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, however, remains a pipe dream. “Soldier C” as he is officially known, and also from a village in the north of Israel, finished high school with top honors and received a certified pilot license before enlisting with the Israeli Defense Forces.

“My dream and ultimate ambition is to become a fighter pilot. I know I have the potential and ability to fulfill my dream and serve as a combat pilot with the IAF,” he wrote. “If deemed physically and mentally fit, I ask that I be able to serve in all of the elite units of the IDF, which are open to all other enlisted personnel.”

The aspiring pilot’s plea was unheeded by the Israeli Defense Forces, however, in spite of a letter of recommendation given to him by his flight instructor, a former major and combat pilot in the IAF, so he was forced to serve with another unit of the IDF where he currently remains.

It appears unlikely that the Israeli military’s ruling against Muslim and Arab Israelis will change anytime soon, especially in light of the deteriorating political situation.

The next time AIPAC (“Israel–the only democracy in the Middle East”) or any other Israel-booster tries to tell you how things are in Glockamora for Israel’s Arabs remember this story and ask them to explain it. Here you have a nation claiming it is a democracy; but which cannot manage to treat 20% of its citizens with anything remotely close to equality or full democratic rights. It won’t even allow them to fully discharge their obligations as citizens: to serve in the army unit of their choice (depending on satisfying qualifications).  Such treatment is not just and it makes a travesty of the Israeli Declaration of Independence which boasts that it will accord fully citizenship rights to all ethnic groups within Israel.

This is what is known as an ethnocracy, not a democracy. Ethnocracies are nations which provide vestiges of rights to minority groups within their midst; but full citizenship is only available to the ethnic majority.

cartoon: Ben Heine

The reactions from Israeli journalists and politicians to Azmi Bishara’s Knesset resignation provides a sort of Rorschach test for Israeli attitudes toward democracy. The first lesson you must learn about the attitudes of the majority of the 75-80% of Israelis who are Jews is that both the State and its democracy exists primarily for them and only secondarily for anyone else (that is, the Arab minority which comprises 20-25% of the population). And since the State has accorded citizenship to its Arab minority while according them second (or third) class status, one cannot really call Israel a democracy. Israeli political scientists like Yoav Peled have adopted the term ethnocracy to describe Israel’s peculiar political system. That is, a system that awards superior rights to a majority ethnic group while according vastly diminished status to the ethnic minority.

For most Israeli Jews, Arabs are a royal pain in the ass. The center of the political spectrum tolerates them while the right longs for the day when they can be transferred out of Israel. Most Israelis would vastly prefer a homogeneous state composed only of Jews. A former progressive like Benny Morris is characteristic of this attitude in wishing that Ben Gurion had actually forcibly expelled a much larger proportion of Israel’s 1948 population than he did. Even some on the left adopt a profound mistrust of the Arab minority.

Let’s take a look at a JTA article about Bishara’s resignation and an interview with Yossi Alpher, viewed by some as a center-left analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The latter is published at no less progressive a source than the Americans for Peace Now website:

Israeli tolerance for Bishara’s views has been remarkable.

This is quite a remarkable statement considering that the Knesset has twice stripped Bishara of his parliamentary immunity in order to compel him to face criminal investigations, NONE of which resulted in a court case being filed. Remarkable too in light of the fact that the government attempted to prevent his party from running in one election for its refusal to accept the primacy of the Jewish state.

Two elections ago, the High Court of Justice reversed Electoral Commission determinations that Balad’s political platform violated the constitutional demand that all parties recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, thereby allowing him to run. His frequent visits to Syria and Lebanon, including during war-time–where he met publicly with Bashar Asad and Hassan Nasrallah, praised their policies and condemned those of Israel–were also tolerated by the security community, to the extent that some Israeli Arabs concluded that Bishara must be a collaborator.

Notice that a supposedly progressive analyst has the temerity to slip in this imputed charge of “collaboration” without any proof whatsoever of the charges. And to say that Bishara was “tolerated” by a security establishment which has investigated him multiple times seems far-fetched to say the least.

In fact, all this took place in the name of Israeli pluralism and based on the assumption that it was better to have internal critics of Israel’s existence, however extreme, out in the open than to drive them underground. But there can be no mistake that Bishara has become clearly identified by the Jewish public as an enemy of the state. His association with the most reactionary and oppressive of Arab leaders in Syria and Lebanon and his readiness to level outlandish accusations against Israel–e.g., “in the entire history of mankind there have never been acts of plunder like those carried out by Israel”–clearly belie his rhetoric about democracy and equal rights.

Here Alpher has run off the rails. Bishara has identified himself with the two closest Arab neighbors to Israel’s northern Arab communities: Syria and Lebanon. But who is to say that Hezbollah and Syrian leaders are “the most reactionary and oppressive Arab leaders?” Worse than the Saudi dynasty or Egypt’s Mubarak or Iran’s mullahs or Iraq’s Hussein? This is an entirely specious argument. Bishara’s alliance with Hezbollah and Syrian is mostly geographic. And who would Alpher have him make an alliance with who would have him? Doubtless, Jordan’s King Abdullah would not be interested since he values good relations with Israel and wants to wash his hands of continuing intra-Arab strife. So who’s left for Bishara to turn to for support outside Israel?

One useful aspect of Alpher’s interview is that he further confirms information I published here from the Palestinian news agency Maan about the specific nature of the charges against Bishara:

A former associate at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, where he taught for several years before going into politics, told me that Bishara had received large sums of money from Syria and Hezbollah for use by his political party and had apparently kept them for himself: this could explain both the criminal and the security components in suspicions against him.

But I would strongly caution that this is terribly vaguely and inauthoritatively sourced. And even if it is true that Bishara accepted funds from Syria, it is quite another thing to prove in a court of law that he acted corruptly in retaining funds for personal use. That’s the Shin Bet’s job and they’ve by no means proven their case. In fact, in keeping it secret they’ve done precisely the opposite: allowed people to believe that the secrecy conceals a weak case.

Bishara’s legacy in Israeli politics is a negative one: greater polarization between Arabs and Jews and closer ideological proximity between Israel’s Arab community and the most extreme elements in the Palestinian national movement.

Now, that would depend entirely on whose viewpoint you represented. Do you think that Israel’s Arab minority agrees? It is preposterous to blame Azmi Bishara for the polarization between Arabs and Jews in Israeli society. What about the 2000 massacre of defenseless protesting Nazareth Arabs by Israeli Border Police who were never even charged for their criminal behavior? Alpher doesn’t even come close to acknowledging that the radicalization represented by Bishara might stem just as much from Israeli intransigence in the face of Israeli Arab demands for their rights and Palestinian demands for theirs. Yossi Alpher may not be a flaming leftist but he’s no fool as an analyst of Mideast politics. That’s why the blinders he wears in this exchange are very instructive regarding the utter lack of awareness even intelligent Israeli Jews have of the democratic contradictions represented by the Arab minority in their midst.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has a mixed record of Jewish journalism. On domestic issues it publishes solid, reliable reporting. But when it comes to Israel, often it might as well have come from the AIPAC press office. That’s a wee exaggeration perhaps for effect, but not much. Let’s take Dan Baron’s article on Bishara. I tried earnestly to get JTA to write a story about Bishara’s secret Shin Bet investigation speaking with their DC correspondent for some time. Unfortunately, Baron’s article is JTA’s feeble coverage of the story. I’d call the following journalism by sloganeering:

Israeli Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara has abruptly ended a parliamentary career built on denouncing the Jewish state from enemy capitals and then dodging charges of sedition at home.

That is the extent of Bishara’s career? Not the penetrating slogan: “A state for all its citizens,” which has resonated far beyond the Israeli Arab minority as a reasonable democratic demand.

For many mainstream Israelis, it was goodbye and good riddance.

You’ll notice the lazy man’s ‘many’ used by many to propound a questionable argument. Who are the “many?” What would’ve been far more accurate would be to say that “goodbye and good riddance” was the response of Israel’s far right politicians, one of whom even called for the Shin Bet to kidnap Bishara and return him to Israel for trial on charges of treason! How’s that for democracy??

Bishara stood out for his especially provocative antics.

To how many Jewish politicians would Baron attribute the dismissive label “antics?” And I’d like to remind you that southern Whites labeled Martin Luther King’s Montgomery bus boycott or Malcolm X’s speechifying in precisely the same terms. You dismiss what you fear and do not understand. But you do so at your peril because dismissing it will not make the issue or person go away.

Bishara overcame repeated attempts to have him tried for fraternizing with Israel’s enemies, invoking his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

This is misleading if not downright inaccurate. Bishara’s immunity was stripped twice by the Knesset thus enabling the legal system to charge and try him. But it never did. Why not? Because they could not build a case. Why blame Bishara for shielding himself from prosecution when the state and its organs have done everything in their power to dismantle his political power?

Some moderate Israeli Arabs also sought to distance themselves from Bishara, so astounded by his temerity as to suggest it was all an elaborate cover for a role as an Israeli spy or covert diplomat.

Isn’t it interesting that we see the “Israeli spy” charge once again. But who gains from circulating such an unfounded charge? The Israeli right and Shin Bet of course. So we have to ask whose bidding are Alpher and Baron doing even if unintentionally? The forces who seek to diminish Bishara and Israeli Arab nationalism. I believe it is shameful journalism to disseminate a charge without having any credible source to back it up.

Baron leaves the most interesting and useful portion of his article for the very end of course. You wouldn’t want to include material favorable to Bishara in any other portion of the article now, would you?

Yaron London, saw in Bishara a sort of latter-day version of the Diaspora’s old political mavericks — the revolutionaries and utopianists.

“I once said to Azmi Bishara that he is more Jewish than I,” London said. “The heart of a Jew, even one who lives among Jews in their state, is the heart of a minority figure, but a Christian Arab who is a citizen of the Jewish state is an island within an island, a minority within a minority.”

“Bishara, a brilliant and arrogant intellectual, bossy and stormy, charming and easily offended, has no time to waste. He realized that the Jews would not accept his vision unless they were greatly weakened — and therefore they must be weakened.”

This is one of the truest and most incisive characterizations I have read in all my research on Bishara over the past two weeks. It is a statement that should be taken to heart by Israelis especially Bishara’s enemies in the Shin Bet and government. Think of all the political insurgents who were hated in their day only to return to glory leading their country or at the least playing a significant role in its political future.

I do not make a judgment on Bishara’s political views one way or the other except to say that they must be grappled with. And to those who falsely believe they have seen the end of Azmi Bishara, I say to you: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Think of DeGaulle in exile, Washington sulking in the snow at Valley Forge, Martin Luther King in the Birmingham jail, Mandela on Robben Island. The list goes on. Their causes eventually triumphed.

Finally, let’s explore the responses of the Israeli right to Bishara’s resignation. Predictably, they are overjoyed. I wrote that Yuval Steinitz wants the Shin Bet to forcibly return Bishara to Israel to face proper justice. What we should learn from all these responses is that the right cares not a whit for democracy. All that matters for them is that Israel is a Jewish State. Israel could be a Jewish version of Putin’s Russia, the People’s Republic of China or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe for all they care. When they talk of rights they are talking of Jewish rights. No other rights matter. Is this the model of a Jewish state which we wish to embrace? Many would say no. But if you take the logic of the Baron’s and Alpher’s to their end point they take you perilously close to the Israeli right. For our two journalists, the only acceptable Israeli minority is one that is quiescent, that accepts its subordinate role, that doesn’t grasp too insistently or aggressively for its rights. But is this a reasonable expectation? No, of course not. And once we accept that Israeli Arabs will no longer be quiescent isn’t the logical end point a Lieberman-Kahane like forced transfer, thus ridding Israel of its “fifth column” and creating a homogeneous Jewish state?

I hope and believe this will not happen. But the only thing to prevent it will be for well-meaning Israelis to realize that the Israeli Arab minority and its rights cannot be dismissed or swept under the rug.