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Posts Tagged ‘j street’

American Jewish Leaders Rake in Big Bucks Despite Failing Brands

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
abe foxman

Abe Foxman

Just as many CEOs of major corporations manage to increase their compensation despite miserable profits and stock performance, so it is with the leaders of the largest and most influential American Jewish organizations. The Forward, earlier this month, reported the compensation  of many of the most prominent among them. Here are some of them (latest salary information is for 2010 unless otherwise noted and in a few cases I have updated information to include full compensation including benefits, if the Forward didn’t):

Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman
$690,000  (2009)

American Jewish Committee’s David Harris
$736,000

Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Rabbi Marvin Hier
$760,000

Aipac’s Howard Kohr
$581,000

Republican Jewish Coalition’s Matt Brooks
$482,000 (2009)

Conference of Presidents’ Malcolm Hoenlein
$627,000 (2011)

Jewish National Fund
$410,000 (2009)

Zionist Organization of America’s Mort Klein
$363,000

Birthright Israel
$353,000

The Israel Project’s Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
$200,000

Most of the salaries listed above are borderline obscene. They place their recipients squarely among the Jewish 1% and distance themselves from the rest of us. This is yet another reason most of the organizations listed above have long passed their Jewish “sell-by” date.

One measure of this (though not the sole one by any means) is their fundraising. The two of the three highest paid executives on my list, Harris and Foxman, run organizations whose fundraising has dropped dramatically over the past several years. The ADL’s has declined by over 30% between 2006-2010. AJC’s funding levels dropped by a similar amount in the same period. Their executives’ salaries, of course, have not. While we shouldn’t make the mistake of judging a non-profit’s ongoing relevance solely by it’s fundraising prowess, it is one indication of how much excitement there is for the group’s mission among donors and other funders.

I would maintain that these groups have lost their way and their relevance to all but the oldest members of the community. While times have changed, they have not. They continue to attempt to be all things to all Jews, which actually means being nothing to anyone but the alter-kockers.

I also don’t buy the explanation/excuse offered by the groups themselves for the declines registered. They say it’s because donors want more control over their donations and no longer are willing to give unrestricted gifts. The more likely reason is that as Jews become more integrated into American life, with attendant higher income and social status, they are sought after as donors and directors to local, regional and national non-profits outside the Jewish sphere. Jews now give extensively to the colleges and universities they attended, museums, symphonies, operas, political parties, social justice and environmental groups than they ever did in the past. This is money that in previous generations would’ve gone directly to Jewish causes. Now, it’s gone and there is very little money from the younger generation to replace it. All this means that the general interest Jewish groups are in the midst of an inexorable decline. I’d predict that even the single-interest pro-Israel groups mentioned below will be effected by this decline eventually.

All of which means that as these groups lose funding, their missions will also suffer. The good deeds and projects that benefited the Jewish community, plus the positive values they represented (long ago, though less so now) will gradually disappear. I don’t know what, if anything, will take their place. All this could lead to an inexorable decline in the quality of American Jewish life.

The groups that have thrived in this environment have been the single issue, largely pro-Israel ones like Aipac (+30% over past five years), The Israel Project (+30% from 2008-2010), Stand With Us (+40% between 2007-2010), and J Street (its funding increased by 300% from 2007-2008, the J Street Education Fund increased 400% from 2009-2010, and the J Street PAC increased by 200% from 2008 to 2010). These statistics are an expression of the increasing fragmentation of the Jewish community and its realignment largely around a single issue: Israel. There seems little that holds much of the organized community together except the state formally-known as the Homeland of the Jewish People.

Partially, this reflects a certain impoverishment in Jewish identity. Partially, it represents a major error made by American Jews and their leaders of putting all their eggs in Israel’s basket. When Israel crushes these eggs, then what is left for Jews to believe in?

We need an identity that includes Israel, but is not limited to it. We need to jettison the single issue Jewish identity hawked by fat cat ideologues like Michael Steinhardt and Sheldon Adelson. Their Jewishness is a dead-end. Those who are fooled into following these Pied Pipers will discover in the long run that they’ve made a fool’s bargain. They may have fat coffers, but they will stand for nothing, or at least nothing that will nurture the next generation and offer it something substantial and value-based as sustenance.

J Street Withdraws Smear

Monday, August 29th, 2011

I’m happy to report that Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s president, has written to apologize for the tweet published in its official Twitter feed which called my criticism of the Aipac Israel junket “crazy, disgusting and racist.”  Jeremy’s heard some strong words from me on this; and it’s been some time in coming, but the result is what’s important.  I’m grateful both to Jeremy for being big enough to admit a mistake (not of his own direct making) and to those supporters who took up my defense.

Here’s what Jeremy wrote:

I do feel strongly that J Street should strive to avoid turning substantive disagreements into personal attacks, and in this case – having taken a quick look at the various posts – we did not live up to that goal, and for that I am personally sorry.

While we as an organization will disagree with you and others over time, we should find other words to express our disagreement. I would say the same is true of your disagreement with Rep. Jackson and Adam Holland.  You too could have benefited from expressing yourself differently.

Let’s say that we’ll all strive to avoid personalizing the issue differences we may have and let’s consider this matter closed.

I want to add something I’ve written on this subject before, my disagreements with J Street have always been substantive and I’ve tried never to stoop to using the terms which Jeremy has finally renounced.  I have never called him or the group racist and certainly would never call them crazy or disgusting.  I hope I don’t ever do so in future.

 

Can J Street Smear and Not Pay a Price?

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

Over the past few days, I’ve been thinking about the lies that J Street published about me in an official tweet which called my criticism of Jesse Jackson Jr’s Jerusalem Post op-ed “crazy, disgusting and racist.”  I thank Max Blumenthal, Phil Weiss, Gabriel Ash, and a number of others who’ve blogged, tweeted and posted to Facebook about this serious dispute.

Personally, as an alum of the Bill Clinton School of Triangulation, I think Jeremy Ben Ami’s strategy is to point out to his centrist donors how crazy those to his right and left are.  That, he thinks, will leave him smelling like a rose with the fat-cats showering J Street with all that now barely regulated campaign cash.  The only problem with this sort of triangulation is that J Street seeks to co-opt a bit of the rhetoric of the right and a bit of the rhetoric of the left and thinks that somehow that makes it the credible center, when instead it makes it a group full of internal contradictions.  Not to mention that when your group apes the views of an administration whose Israeli-Arab policy is a shambles, you’re consigning yourself to political irrelevance (which is what the current Obama policy is).

So I think Jeremy’s staff figured that smearing me was a good deal for them because making me out to be the crazy left would make them look good with all their liberal Zionist donors who run scared from the sort of ideas I espouse.

Again, the only problem with this is I’m not going to take it.  J Street is a mainstream Jewish organization which adopts the tropes, concerns and concepts of the Jewish community in its organizing and fundraising.  I too take my place as a Jew in the American Jewish community.  I will allow no one, especially not an ostensibly mainstream group like J Street. to lie about me and tarnish my good name in the Jewish community.  If Jeremy Ben Ami wants his staff to smear people like me he picked the wrong Jew.

I have written to Jeremy asking him to take down the tweet about me and apologize in J Street’s twitter feed for publishing it.  He has not replied.  I gather he does not intend to.  When two Jews are embroiled in a serious intractable conflict a good Jewish way to resolve it is by convening a beyt din.  Three rabbis come together, hear evidence and either mediate or judge the dispute.

Of course, I would prefer not taking as serious a measure as this.  There are ways to resolve this dispute short of a beyt din.  But I am thinking that this may be the best way to air the issues involved in this matter so that J Street, it’s supporters and the Jewish community can judge for themselves.

Finally, let me say that I have no problem with those who criticize or disagree with my views as long as they actually read what they’re criticizing and characterize it accurately, something J Street never did.  Also, I have been critical of J Street over the past two years and this is likely why the group piled on after Adam Holland, the pro-Israel blogger attacked me.  But in my criticism of J Street I have always quoted statements or positions with which I disagreed.  I have always characterized positions with which I disagreed as accurately as I could.  I never called J Street or Jeremy crazy, racist or disgusting.  Not even close.

So Jeremy, do we need a beyt din decide this matter?  I await your reply.

To those who support me in this campaign, would you consider loaning your blog, Twitter, Facebook or other social networking account on its behalf and advancing it among your friends?  Jeremy’s Twitter account is here.  Tweet him and ask him why he refuses to defend J Street’s accusations against me.  Why he made them in the first place?  Why he won’t take these lies down?

Israel’s UN Ambassador: No Chance of Stopping Palestinian Statehood, Bibi to Stay Home in September

Saturday, August 27th, 2011

Haaretz reports that Israel’s UN ambassador alerted his colleagues in the foreign ministry that Israel faces no chance of stopping the juggernaut for Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly next month:

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ron Prosor, sent a classified cable to the Foreign Ministry last week, stating that Israel stands no chance of rallying a substantial number of states to oppose a resolution at the UN General Assembly recognizing a Palestinian state in September.

Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office, meanwhile, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is considering not participating in this year’s General Assembly. Instead President Shimon Peres is likely to represent Israel.

…Even though he did not state so explicitly, Prosor implies that Israel will sustain a diplomatic defeat.

“The maximum that we can hope to gain [at the UN vote] is for a group of states who will abstain or be absent during the vote…Only a few countries will vote against the Palestinian initiative…”

Foreign Ministry sources estimate that 130-140 states will vote in favor of the Palestinians…So far only five western countries have promised Israel they would vote against recognition of a Palestinian state – the U.S., Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic.

…It appears that Benjamin Netanyahu has given up on the effort with his decision to avoid the UN General Assembly next month.

This gives you a good picture of the thinking of the radical rightists running Israel’s current foreign policy:

[Avigdor] Lieberman, who will also travel to the UN, recommended to the PM that Peres address the General Assembly, so that the Israeli position which will be heard at the UN will be as conciliatory and moderate as possible.

Who would meet with Lieberman other than saying hello to him in the UN men’s lavatory?  The foreign minister of Togo (sorry, Togo)?  Ah, I forgot, given the current U.S. disaster which passes for a foreign policy, it’s likely the U.S. ambassador, Susan Rice, would be delighted to welcome him.  Also, interesting the cynical uses to which they put the poor octogenarian, Shimon Peres, exploiting him as a fig leaf for Israel’s maximalist rejectionist policy toward the Palestinians.  Israel has to look conciliatory on the world stage in light of a major foreign policy defeat?  Call Shimon.  He’ll make us look good.  Meanwhile back home, we can go about our merry way continuing building settlements and deforming what little democracy we have left.

By the way, just in case you wonder what J Street views are on Palestinian statehood, well they were for it before they were against it:

Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of J Street…said he was “trying to build a momentum” to stall a Palestinian plan to seek United Nations backing for statehood in September.

Interesting that the so-called progressive pro-peace lobby favors the Likudist approach to Palestinian statehood (I wrote about this irony last night regarding the Obama administration).  Are there any supporters of J Street out there who’ve tried to figure out where all this “triangulation” is leading, if not to political oblivion?

Gorenberg Refuses to Correct ‘Anti-Zionist’ Smear

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

This is what Gershom Gorenberg called me and why it's a lie

Gershom Gorenberg refused my request that he correct the record in his American Prospect post about J Street, in which he linked to a critical blog post I wrote about the group’s second national conference.  He called my criticism of J Street typical of “the grim anti-Zionist left.”

Yesterday here, I accused him of payback for critical pieces I’ve written about his work in the past, notably his Palestinian Gandhi essay in The Weekly Standard.  Today, Gorenberg replied that he gives little thought to what people write about him and that he could care less about anything I’d said about him.  The upshot being payback was the farthest thing from his mind.

But in the blog post I wrote about the J Street conference, I said this about the roster of speakers for the gathering:

I’ve reviewed the speakers and generally (with a few exceptions) I find the American speakers are standard issue liberal Zionist fare including figures like Dennis Ross, Peter Beinart, Gershom Gorenberg, Bernard Avishai, Ken Bob, Daniel Sokatch, Daniel Levy, and David Saperstein.  [UPDATE: a characteristically thin-skinned Gershom Gorenberg  writes to complain that he is Israeli, though interestingly doesn't reject the "liberal Zionist" label. The fact that Gorenberg was born in the U.S., retains U.S. citizenship and earns a considerable portion of his living in and from the U.S. seems to have been lost on him.  But I promise I'll call him an Israeli-American liberal Zionist next time.]

Now, you tell me: payback or no payback?

Gorenberg adds that the “implications” of the views I expressed in my recent essay at Israel Reconsidered about the Right of Return and Nakba were “anti-Zionist.”  This is the desperate act of someone who can’t actually find any real evidence to support his claim, since I’ve never called myself anti-Zionist or even supported any overtly anti-Zionist position.  Thus he calls the “implications” of what I wrote anti-Zionist.

So why is it important whether or not I’m anti-Zionist?  And why does Gorenberg relish throwing me out of the Zionist camp?  Most American and Israeli Jews are Zionist.  They may have differing definition of what this means, but most feel comfortable under this rubric.  If you define yourself as anti-Zionist or allow someone else to define you in such a way you almost automatically become “damaged goods” in the eyes of 90% of the world’s Jews.  That is why Gershom Gorenberg needs to label me anti-Zionist.  If I weren’t, then he’d have to actually deal with my views.  By dismissing them so cavalierly he uses shorthand that allows his audience to automtically discount them as being beneath contempt (and beneath analysis).

Speaking of analysis, Gorenberg in his reply to me offered none.  You’d think that when someone takes you to task in the way I did, that you’d at least attempt to support your claim with some evidence.  I’ve challenged him to offer any.

I’ve also asked the web editor at TAP to correct the record.  I await word from him though I’m not holding my breath since a regular contributor would almost always trump an aggrieved victim.

Gershom Gorenberg is a Liar

Monday, June 20th, 2011

I was shocked today when I saw in my site stats, a visit to this blog from The American Prospect and, following the link, read that Gershom Gorenberg has written an essay in which he’s blatantly lied about my political views, saying they represent “the grim anti-Zionist left.”  His essay is a bit of puffery written on behalf of J Street in which he sets up a false dichotomy between those who attack J Street from the far right (Daniel Gordis) and the far left (me).  Of course, Gorenberg neglects to mention that at one time I supported J Street, donated personal funds, and even organized a blogger panel at its first national conference.  Issac Luria even organized an online debate between Jeremy and I during which I’d looked forward to challenging him with my views of where J Street was going.  They debate never happened because they chose not to do it.  It was after this and a bit of lazy staff work on Luria’s part in response to a request for help in writing a post that defended J Street, that I decided that I was done with the group.  But all this reality would spoil the nice (false) juxtaposition he had going.

Any half-way decent human being whose spent five minutes reading this blog knows what I am, what I call myself, and what other reporters and publications (including Yediot, Walla and Maariv in Israel) have called me when they’ve written about my views. Progressive Zionist?  Yes.  Criticial Zionist?  Yes.  Some have called me a leftist and others liberal.  But the only people who call me anti-Zionist are settlers and their supporters.  Oh and how can I forget cretins like David Abitbol and Aussie Dave whose Zionist credentials are tarnished by their own proclivity for lying.  These hasbarists are going to love Gorenberg too.  I am NOT an anti-Zionist and calling me that is a low blow of the type I didn’t think Gorenberg had in him.

But writers harbor grudges and Gorenberg has one against me because he wrote an essay asking the fraudulent question: why are there no Palestinian Gandhis?  Even The Atlantic which was supposed to publish it, turned it down (wonder whether he peddled it to TAP as well and they turned it down?).  Gorenberg then had to go to The Weekly Standard, where Bill Kristol was happy to publish material by a liberal Zionist attacking the Palestinian movement.  I don’t think Gorenberg forgave me for that, even though I tried to couch my criticism as constructively as I could and confirmed my (then) respect for him.  He was waiting for an opportunity to repay me and now he’s taken it.

I’ve written to the TAP editor demanding a correction of this error and also demanded from Gorenberg that he do so.  Now I await a reply.  If they are willing to correct it then they will show themselves to be honorable people.  If not, then they will further tarnish the term “liberal Zionism,” which has taken an awful pounding over the past decade or so.  As things stand now, Gershom Gorenberg is a liar.  I hope he’s willing to correct himself so that I can acknowledge that when he makes a mistake he’s honorable about fixing it.

The fact that a liberal Zionist like Gorenberg needs to write me out of the Zionist tribe tells you a lot about the bankruptcy of liberal Zionism and almost nothing about my real views.  To some of you this may appear rather academic.  To those of you who may be to my political left it may be even slightly irritating.  But I assure you that when you write about the conflict as an American Jew what you call yourself and what others call you matters.  When someone lies about your views it damages your reputation.  When someone publishing in as respectable a publication as The American Prospect lies about your views it’s even more troubling.

The occasion of Gorenberg’s essay was in part to flack for Jeremy Ben Ami’s shining new opus on the beauty of liberal Zionism to be called: A New Voice for Israel.  Jeremy Ben Ami is not a new voice for Israel.  There is little that is new about liberal Zionism.  And besides, does Israel as currently constituted need so-called progressive voices speaking up on its behalf?  I find it interesting that his new book doesn’t contain the word “peace.”  It’s just “for Israel.”  That says it all, doesn’t it?  How many times do you want to bet you’ll see the word “Palestinian” in that new book of his?

In the weakness of his grasp of my views, Gorenberg doesn’t understand that I actually represent the views of those, if they remain involved, were/are on the left end of J Street’s politics.  At the first conference, which I attended, there were many more participants reflecting my politics than Jeremy’s as evidenced by the boos meted out to J.J. Goldberg and similar liberal Zionist speakers who embarrassed themselves with their Neanderthal reading of American Jewish Zionist thought.

J Street and the Death of Liberal Zionism

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

At first glance, it may appear downright curmudgeonly to speak ill of J Street as it triumphantly open its second annual conference.  I attended its first conference in 2009 and hosted an unofficial progressive blogger panel there.  Since then I’ve had a testy relationship with the group which has eventually led me to sever ties with it.  One of my initial disagreements involved its decision to exclude Jewish Voice for Peace from the first conference.  It also excluded Michael Lerner of Tikkun Magazine.

The second time around they’ve embraced some of the previously excluded in ways tentative or hearty depending on how closely they embody the liberal Zionist ethic the group represents.  New Israel Fund, Peace Now and Tikkun Magazine have each received their own panels to showcase their work.  Jewish Voice for Peace, however, hasn’t quite come in from the cold.  Its director, Rebecca Vilkomerson, will participate in a BDS panel with three opponents of the concept.  Jeremy Ben-Ami made some typically condescending comments to Washington Jewish Week in which he reassured mainstream Jews not to worry about Vilkomerson’s views infecting the J Street body politic because merely hearing them at the conference would prove to listeners the error of JVP’s ways:

Ben-Ami…said he is not concerned that the appearance of Vilkomerson might legitimize BDS. Rather, she was invited to air her views, he explained, so that conference attendees who might be “tempted” to embrace BDS will think otherwise after they see its moral and tactical failings exposed in debate.

This is the condescending, dismissive, litmus-test-driven J Street which drives me up a wall.  The Israeli-Arab conflict should be beyond ideology.  It should be beyond deciding for the parties how many states there should be.

I’ve reviewed the speakers and generally (with a few exceptions) I find the American speakers are standard issue liberal Zionist fare including figures like Dennis Ross, Peter Beinart, Gershom Gorenberg, Bernard Avishai, Ken Bob, Daniel Sokatch, Daniel Levy, and David Saperstein.  [UPDATE: a characteristically thin-skinned Gershom Gorenberg  writes to complain that he is Israeli, though interestingly doesn't reject the "liberal Zionist" label.  The fact that Gorenberg was born in the U.S., retains U.S. citizenship and earns a considerable portion of his living in and from the U.S. seems to have been lost on him.  But I promise I'll call him an Israeli-American liberal Zionist next time.]  But the Israelis are a different story.  There are of course the typical Israeli pols, Knesset members who bring little to the table except the ability to flatter J Street that it is hobnobbing with the Israeli power structure.

But there are several young Israeli leaders of the Sheikh Jarrah movement who will speak, notably Assaf Sharon and Sara Benninga.  Also, there is Daniel Seidemann of Ir Amim, Michael Sfard of Yesh Din, Jessica Montell of B’Tselem, Oded Naaman of Breaking the Silence.  This shows that J Street has at least recognized that they represent something vital is Israeli dissident politics.  However, the group’s leaders have over-romanticized the Israeli movement and freighted it with far too much significance.  There is a tendency among the liberal Zionists to view Sheikh Jarrah as the Great White Hope for revival of an Israeli left.  J Street is no exception.  Note that it’s titled the panel on which the Israelis will appear: The Revival of the Israeli Left. Sheikh Jarrah isn’t the revival of the Israeli left.  It is a successful political concept which most likely cannot be grown into a national movement because of its inherent limitations, which make it good at what it IS doing.

An added problem for J Street is that while the Sheikh Jarrah movement is just about the only bright spot on the Israeli left, it is decidedly not liberal Zionist.  So what is left of the Israeli left may appear at this conference, but J Street will find that the Israelis are much closer in spirit and independence to Jewish Voice for Peace than J Street.  What is exciting about Sheikh Jarrah is that it doesn’t toe a party line.  It doesn’t call for an any state solution, one or two.  It is a single issue group and that is it’s power.

J Street has included precisely three Palestinians in its conference program (and two Palestinian-Americans).  One of the former is Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, who tonight delivered his powerful words of faith and hope.  But a Jewish peace group has to do better than including a smattering of Palestinian voices in its deliberations.

A number of people I like and respect like Matt Duss, Didi Remez and Mitchell Plitnick are either participating in the conference or blogging hopefully about it.  While I continue to admire them I think ultimately they’re wasting their breath. J Street is an empty shell. Yes, they run a good conference.  But what are they when they’re not running a conference?  Where are they on the issues?  All over the place.  They were for Cast Lead till they were against it.  They were for and against the Goldstone Report, a pretty neat trick.  They were against Iran sanctions till they were for them.  Jeremy Ben Ami wasn’t taking George Soros’ money till he was.  They have an identity crisis.

Jeremy Ben Ami specializes in the old Clinton triangulation strategy.  You tack straight down the middle between right and left.  By doing so you gain the respect of the broad middle that eschews tags of extreme ideology or partisanship.  But there’s one big problem with this approach.  There is no “broad middle” that remains in either the American Jewish community or Israel.  There is the far right, which is dominant and the left which is largely quiescent.  So by hewing to a middle road you essentially satisfy very few.

J Street is also a lobbying group that supports liberal Democrats who support Israel and peace.  They contribute substantial funds to Congressional candidates.  But frankly, I don’t see this as being where the action in regarding either the Israeli-Arab conflict or even U.S. policy toward Israel, just as I see the Knesset as an irrelevant institution to political decision-making within Israel.

J Street is largely a cheering section for Obama administration policy in the Middle East.  It is true that it lobbied against a veto of the latest UN Security Council resolution against settlements.  But it lost that round.  And one could argue that the abject failure of Obama’s strategy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations has left J Street with no horse on which to bet.  The group would have to stake out some independent ground since Obama has been shown to have nothing to offer.

Liberal Zionism is dead and J Street is liberal Zionism personified. It’s like the Sean Penn character in Dead Man Walking.  While it isn’t precisely dead, it is close to being irrelevant.  And in politics that’s as good as dead.  J Street abandoned us.  It is too timid to represent real change or a hopeful message for the future.  It waffles.  It fudges.  It performs ideological litmus tests to determine who’s welcomed inside the tent.  And anyone who believes it represents something vital or hopeful in the long-term is deluding him or herself.

While some may think I’m being overly harsh with J Street if they feel about it as I once did–that it represents a potential for something new in the American Jewish community.  But the truth is that J Street will either eventually embrace ideas it currently labels anathema, or it will rapidly become irrelevant.  Given what I’ve seen, I don’t see it taking the kind of bold positions that are vital to encourage real change on the Israeli political scene.  Israel needs tough love and Jeremy Ben Ami offers parve.

Brad Burston: Jews of the Gate (JVP) vs. Jews of the Wall (Stand With Us)

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Recently, I wrote a post about a talk Brad Burston, the Haaretz columnist, gave in Seattle that was hosted by J Street.  I said some tough things about Brad’s remarks that night and he was open-handed and gracious enough not to take personal offense, as so many large-egoed journalists tend to do.  He actually responded to my criticism and while I think we still have differences it was clear that he retained respect for my views.  That doesn’t often happen.

Brad’s been writing a series for Haaretz about his U.S. visit and the latest column is a good one.  In it, he posits a bifurcation in the U.S. between what he calls Jews of the Wall and Jews of the Gate:

The Jews of the Wall are that minority of Israeli and American Jews who sincerely and unshakably believe in permanent settlement in all of the West Bank. Over time, they have become the vanguard both of Orthodox Judaism and the secular neo-conservative Jewish right, whose power and influence, much of it monetary, has American Jewish institutions terrified of their own shadows.

The Jews of the Gate, meanwhile, comprise the majority of Jews in both America and Israel. They want to see a future partition of the Holy Land into two independent states, a democratic and internationally recognized state of Israel next to a sovereign and independent state of Palestine.

Nothing terribly earth-shattering in this.  But what follows is, at least for a liberal Zionist publication like Haaretz.  Burston talks about attacks against J Street, like the cancellation of a talk by the group’s Jeremy Ben Ami at a Newton, MA synagogue after members went on the warpath about J Street’s alleged ‘original’ anti-Israel ‘sins.’

But then Burston did something really interesting.  He wrote this:

This month, when Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Jewish Federations of North America in what amounts to its annual State of the Jewish Community speech, a group of young Jews issued a remarkable, stunningly poetic counter-declaration to the general message of Everyone But Israel’s At Fault. While Netanyahu, the conference organizers and many of its speakers focused ire on foreign critics of Israel and – in an especially unfortunate McCarthyite phrase, “fellow travelers,” apparently a reference to Jews who question Israeli policy – for de-legitimizing the Jewish state, the message of the counter-declaration was that Israel’s Jewish critics see themselves and should be seen as part and parcel of the Jewish community.

Concurrently, Emily Schaeffer, a Boston-born American-Israeli human rights lawyer and activist, published an essay which clearly signaled to the wider Jewish community that the Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment movement – singled out by a senior Federation official as an existential danger to Israel – had a much more nuanced and complex side than the cartoon villains portrayed by invited experts to the New Orleans gathering.

…The Tel Aviv-based Schaeffer wrote than “just because a person supports BDS and aspires for major change in Israel does not mean that said person cannot love a million and a half aspects about the life, culture, landscape and even politics of Israel today and historically. Nor does it mean that Israelis need to boycott themselves (something that is neither possible nor part of the Palestinian call). The only thing that is black and white in the BDS movement is that the call will remain in effect until Israel — with a lot of help from its friends — ceases to violate international humanitarian and human rights law.”

…In New Orleans, when members of the Young Leadership Institute of Jewish Voice for Peace heckled Netanyahu and held up signs reading that occupation, loyalty oaths and settlements were delegitimizing Israel, they were manhandled, placed in headlocks, and their signs literally chewed to pieces.

A few days later in the Bay Area, an Israeli flag-draped member of a rightist advocacy group, San Francisco Voice for Israel/StandWithUs, disrupting a Jewish Voice of Peace meeting, pepper-sprayed two JVP members in the face and eyes.

The attack followed the May vandalism of the Berkeley home of Rabbi Michael Lerner, whose Tikkun Magazine had awarded its annual human rights prize to Judge Richard Goldstone. Among the vandals’ messages was one reading “Leftists and Islamofascists are Terrorists.”

To my knowledge, Haaretz has until never published a favorable account of the work of Jewish Voice for Peace with the exception of a surprisingly positive article last week reporting on the group’s Bibi protest at the GA.  Nor have I ever seen anything remotely favorable written about the BDS movement.

Unlike Brad, who is an inveterate optimist (when it comes to Israel and other matters too, I presume), I’m hesitant to read a precedent into these editorial decisions.  But it could be, it just could be that something is driving Haaretz to expand its Israel narrative.  It’s embracing voices hitherto unheard or very rarely heard.  And Brad is one who is helping break these barriers.

Of course, the irony is that J Street itself wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room with JVP and here Brad has put them into the same column!  But that’s J Street’s problem, not Brad’s or ours.  Another example, J Street demonstrated at the Hebron Fund dinner in New York last week and wouldn’t even join a group of fellow protestors that included JVP members and (God forbid) Palestinians!  They had to have a mechitzah so none of J Street’s haters would be able to lump them together as they’re creamin’ to do.

Here is more of Brad’s column worth reading:

The Jews of the Gate drive them [Jews of the Wall] bats. Because the Jews of the Gate face the world. The Jews of the Gate face one another. The Jews of the Gate believe in the possibility of a future. They have broken the Israel Barrier. They are being true to what they believe. They are being true to their Judaism and their love of Israel. They are using the tools God gave human beings to repair the world. Their voices and their hands.

The Jews of the Wall, in their drive for uniformity, rabbinical authority, spiritual and genetic cohesion, stand for exclusion. They face the Wall.

They live the past. They translate compromise as surrender. They believe that God’s Arabic vocabulary consists of the word No. They will tell you that they believe in negotiations, but ceding any of the homeland would rend Israeli society to the point of the destruction of the Jewish state. They will tell you that the Arabs hate us, Iranians, the Turks, Barack Obama, that they will always hate us. Therefore we cannot withdraw. If God Himself tells us to, we cannot withdraw.

The Jews of the Wall believe that the entire outside world is hostile to them. The truth, one suspects, is the exact opposite.

They can’t bring themselves to say what they really mean: The Occupation must persist in order that the settlements grow, and the settlements must grow in order that the Occupation become permanent.

They cannot accept that the Jews of the Gate care about Israel no less than they. And that Israel belongs to the Jews of the Gate every bit as much as it belongs to them. The Jews of the Gate want to see a different Israel, a better Israel. There are many more of them than there are of the Jews of the Wall. And their answers to Israel’s problems, to the cliff up ahead [ed., a reference to the closing scene of Thelma and Louise] , are a great deal more reasonable and a great deal more realistic than ‘Shut Up and Gun It.’

Brad seems to believe that America’s Jewish federations are more Jews of the Gate than Jews of the Wall.  I think it’s more of his optimistic side coming out.  Personally, I think this is a bit too much Pollyanna for my taste.  He even thinks there might be hope for the next GA to invite anti-Occupation groups like JVP to come sit under the big tent.  It ain’t gonna happen.  At least not next year or even any year in the near future.  It may eventually happen.  And if and when it does it will be because of courageous Israeli journalists like Brad.  So like Orwell said about democracy: two and half cheers (well, maybe even two and three-quarters) for Brad Burston!

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