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

It’s not often one gets mentioned in The New Yorker as my blog did today, so I’m wearing a small intellectual glow. I used to read the magazine religiously back when I was a literature major in college and grad school. I read it from cover to cover. I can still remember vividly profiles by John McPhee and Pauline Kael’s remarkable film reviews. I’m trippin’.

Jane Kramer writes a long article, The Petition: Israel, Palestine, and a Tenure Battle at Barnard, about Nadia Abu El Haj’s ultimately successful battle for tenure at Barnard College. It profiles her anthropological research and the pro-Israel detractors who made her tenure process a cause celebre for the Israel-First crowd. Many of you know that I devoted considerable time, energy and words to this subject before she earned tenure. I thought a gross injustice was being perpetrated by the Campus Watch-Frontpagemagazine crowd and that the Barnard anthropologist deserved someone monitoring the campaign against her, which was what I did.

Kramer notes that this blog was one of the first to take up the cause, something of which I’m very proud:

Stern’s facts were wrong. Within a few months, she was exposed in the progressive Zionist blog Tikun Olam and in the Jewish press–most notably in the Jewish Week…

She goes on to credit Larry Cohler-Esses’ work there in unmasking Stern’s vilification and falsehoods. I’m also proud of the teamwork between myself and Cohler-Esses which advanced this story, though I want to make clear that Larry did all his own research and drew his own conclusions. Hell, he even spent 10 days wading through Facts on the Ground for which he deserves a medal since it is a VERY DENSE text. Even I didn’t do that.

Kramer doesn’t note the critical role played by Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine. While I was already interested in Abu El Haj’s battle, Jesse first brought to my attention the deliberate misquotations of the academic’s work by her opponents. This in turn opened up the subject in a way it might not have otherwise done. Jesse published his research in his publication.

The New Yorker story is interesting not just for its recap of the tenure battle, but because the author puts that battle in the context of a furious tug of war taking place in higher education over academic freedom and the right of third party advocacy groups to intervene in the tenure process and inject political considerations into scholarly discourse.

I never thought of this analogy until just now, but it appears to me that what Campus Watch and Paula Stern did was akin to the Terry Schiavo circus. In the latter case, a group of religious fanatics with a vested interest attempted to intervene in both a personal family tragedy and a medical process out of which they should’ve kept their noses. Their effort demeaned the family involved and dragged the field of medicine into a political arena in which it had no business being. I’d argue that the Schiavo fiasco contributed significantly to the Republican defeat in the 2006 elections.

The Abu El Haj detractors have paid no such price. In fact, they’ve gone on to new targets of opportunity in their propaganda battle on behalf of Israel. But articles like Kramer’s and efforts like mine help shine a light on such smearmongering so that it may be discredited even more firmly the next time it rears its ugly head.

I thought one particular section of Kramer’s essay was particularly evocative and helpful in understanding the political motivations of Abu El Haj’s opponents. Here she quotes Jonathan Boyarin, an Orthodox Jewish academic and friend of the Barnard professor:

Sometimes, I think the Jews who attack Nadia are really grasping at the idea that Israel is THE standard of Jewish life and faith–so, for them, defending Israel, even against scholarly debate, becomes the way to express Jewishness. I haven’t advanced much in my understanding of this kind of anxiety. But I know that if you’re looking for a reasoned, progressive scholar who’s on the same side as those guys, you’re not going to find him.

This is an important epiphany. The mission of Campus Watch and Paula Stern has everything to do with Jewish identity (and a narrowly defined identity at that) and little or nothing to do with academics. That is why their efforts should be derided and disqualified by the academy.

Pipes reinforces the intolerance and extremism of his approach in this passage:

…I very much dispute the notion that academics cannot function freely and be accountable at the same time. It doesn’t come free, this very special set of privileges they have, and there’s nothing to be said for the abstracted position that they can disdain the public, the students, and only engage with each other. They are financed by the public and are thus accountable in some way to the public. They say, No, only we can judge and evaluate each other’s work. Well, that’s not how things work in this country.

This is a profoundly important distillation of Pipes’ anti-intellectual philosophy. The academy is not to be trusted with decisions affecting itself. The public and its representatives like Pipes are the best judges of what is best for the academy since they take into account not just academic needs, but society at large’s needs. I can’t think of a much more pernicious approach, one that is more inimical to the very foundations of scholarly inquiry and academic freedom, than this.

While I tend to think that Kramer bent over backwards to portray Abu El Haj in the most favorable light possible, in this passage she finds a weakness in the latter’s work which bothered me during my entire time writing about this. Kramer notes:

…a tendency to reduce the complexities of Zionism to colonial terms…

I think this idea deserved amplification because it does deeply inform Facts on the Ground and renders it a less persuasive critique than it might otherwise have been. There is too much dismissive ideological grandstanding and speech that trumpets an academic anti-colonial approach that detracts rather than amplifies.

There were a few moments in reading the New Yorker piece when I thought the author stretched too far in portraying Abu El Haj as a mainstream academic figure:

[Virginia] Dominguez [Abu El Haj's dissertation advisor] says that Facts on the Ground was received by Israeli social scientists “not as a scathing critique but as right in line with what they were doing there.”

In fact, I have read no Israeli social scientists who defended Abu El Haj’s work. I’m not saying there aren’t any since I don’t read Israeli academic publications. I AM saying that there were many Israeli academics, especially archaeologists, who reacted with high moral dudgeon to her attacks on them. Again, I’m not saying their views were correct or justified. But I believe we should call a spade a spade and not ignore the academic uproar her work caused in certain Israeli circles, as both Kramer and Dominguez seem to do. [NOTE: Ms. Kramer informs me that the Columbia Spectator does feature comments by Israeli academics who support Abu El Haj's work, so I stand corrected on that score.]

A tidbit: those of you who follow the Jewish right will enjoy Charles Jacob’s (founder of the David Project) description of himself as a “classic liberal.”

I wish there had been a little more in Kramer’s article about the mysterious “Hugh Fitzgerald” who wrote the Frontpagemagzine-Campus Watch article which helped fuel the tenure battle.  Personally, I don’t believe that Fitzgerald is a real person. I would love for Kramer to have gone back to that original story and researched its origins further, including Fitzgerald’s real identity.  [NOTE: Ms. Kramer informs me that she made a considerable effort to do just that and was ultimately unsuccessful.]

A note about the New Yorker cartoon above: I thought it was an interesting and powerful evocation of the conflict. It portrays the lone academic standing on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library (precisely where the Alma Mater statue normally sits), battling against political forces outside herself and the campus. In that sense it conveys well some of the issues involved. But it also misses something important. While Abu El Haj may see herself as purely an academic and scholar, in her work she does take a political position. She is engaged in the debate though perhaps in a more nuanced way than Pipes or Stern. If she was not engaged, then she would have used a different set of rhetorical tropes to describe Israeli archaeological practice than she did. Again, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with her being engaged in this way. But I think that everyone needs to put all their cards on the table and in this battle none of the parties have fully done so, though Abu El Haj has done so much more transparently than her enemies.

Thanks to Seth Flaxman and Dan Sieradski for almost simulateneously notifying me about my 20 seconds of New Yorker fame.

tags campus-watch, charles jacobs, daniel-pipes, david project, facts-on-the-ground, jane kramer, jewish-week, larry-cohler-esses, nadia-abu-el-haj, new-yorker-magazine, paula-stern, the petition israel palestine and a tenure battle at ba

One of the constant themes repeated ad nauseum by right-wing Islamophobes like Daniel Pipes, Alan Dershowitz and their supporters is that Muslims are uniformly extremists filled with hate. There are no “Muslim moderates.” No imams denounce terror. They all support Al Qaeda, etc. etc.

Walter Ruby in Jewish Week brings yet further evidence of the utter falsity of such claims. He writes about the new interim imam of New York City’s largest and most influential mosque, the Islamic Cultural Center, the Indonesian-born Mohammed Shamsi Ali. The interview with him is wide-ranging, candid and impressive:

[He] declared in a dialogue with Rabbi Schneier at the New York Synagogue earlier this month that it “cannot be accepted to deny the existence of Israel” or to deny the Holocaust. Appearing last week at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Imam Ali delivered a special sermon during Mincha services in which he urged Jews and Muslims to revisit “problematic” passages in the Koran and Torah. Those passages buttress bellicose stances against other religions by understanding them as having been written in earlier times, and not necessarily relevant to today’s world.

Imam Ali also urged his listeners to “look beyond what is presented in the media” about Jewish-Muslim relations in order to create “real connections” based on trust and affection. “Once you get to know Muslims,” he said, “you will ask them, ‘Are you really the people I see portrayed [negatively] on Fox News?’”

Key Muslim leaders in New York praise the Indonesian-born Ali as a charismatic and compassionate leader whose embrace of interfaith dialogue represents “mainstream” opinion within the Muslim community.

It is sad, but somehow reassuring that those in both the Muslim and Jewish communities who reach out to the other side are rebuffed by their respective extremist right fringes:

A shadowy Queens-based militant group known as the Islamic Thinkers Society has attacked Imam Ali on its Web site as an “FBI mouthpiece” and “moderate Uncle Sam Muslim” who has corrupted young people at his mosque in Jamaica by allowing them to have “access to guitars and drums.”

Imam Ali…makes no apology for his cooperation with the FBI and New York City police. “We understand the job of law enforcement [in the post-9/11 situation),” he said. “I myself have said publicly that if anyone [in the Muslim community] sees something suspicious, he has an obligation to report it to the police. At the same time, law enforcement must be careful not to overreact and create a situation where there is an interruption of basic American values when it applies to Muslims.”

This reminded me of one of my own personal experiences on that score. I was the western director of New Jewish Agenda in the 1980s during a time when Alex Odeh, then director of the Arab American Anti Discrimination Committee, was assassinated by a letter bomb probably orchestrated by members of the Jewish Defense League. I received a voice mail message from the JDL’s Earl Krugel threatening our group and reported this to the FBI and agreed to meet investigators in my office. I was excoriated by some Agenda members for doing so. My view is that when my life is threatened I’m going to have to trust somebody. While I don’t see the FBI as necessarily my friend, they sure know a lot more about the JDL and the threat they pose than I do. It was trust them or trust no one. And when I’m in danger I have to trust someone. That’s why I allowed them into my office.

The Muslim religious leader’s views put him squarely in the mainstream of American religious life. This is a man who Jews should be able to “do business with” to quote Maggie Thatcher’s infamous phrase about Gorbachev:

Imam Ali believes that American Jews and Muslims should build a relationship “that is more influenced by religious commonalities than by political differences. We cannot deny the emotional impact of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, yet we need to ensure that our relationship is not determined only by that.” He added, “We also should remember that there have been bright times in our relationship as well, such as the cooperation between Muslims and Jews in Andalusia during the Middle Ages.”

I’m pleased that Jewish academic institutions like the Jewish Theological Seminary and HUC-JIR have hosted talks with him and are reaching out to him.

Unfortunately, as I’ve documented here the N.Y. Jewish federation has not taken as forward-thinking a role. In fact, it has backslid into fear and mistrust of the local Muslim community. Federation rabbis have been directed to withdraw from interfaith dialogue projects. Rabbi Michael Paley was once a member of Debbie Almontaser’s support committee and listed as a keynote speaker at one of Rabbi Schneier’s conferences. He backed out of both projects mysteriously.

Also, after enthusiastically endorsing the Other Israel Film Festival devoted to Israeli Arab cinema, the Federation executive Jon Ruskay, abruptly told the festival organizers that they must remove the Federation’s logo from publicity brochures. Festival founder Carole Zabar was taken aback by Ruskay’s change of tack. An ill wind apparently blows through the Federation when it comes to Muslim-Jewish relations in New York.

Unfortunately, the Jewish communal group is missing out on an important opportunity to engage local Muslims in dialogue and debate about issues that divide and link us. Events in the Middle East are too bloody and too catastrophic to miss such possibilities when they arise. To the Ruskays of the Jewish world I say (paraphrasing Hillel): if you will not be for peace, who will be for it? If you are only for yourself, what are you? If not now, when?

tags carole zabar, debbie-almontaser, Imam Seeks Real Connections, islami cultural center, jewish-week, jon ruskay, muslim-jewish dialogue, other-israel-film-festival, rabbi-michael-paley, walter ruby

Word is beginning to leak out about the imminent launch of J Street, the new liberal Israel lobby being founded by Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy. I reported on Gershom Gorenberg’s essay in Prospect Magazine yesterday. Today brings James Besser’s story in Jewish Week which provides a few more details:

…The new project kicks off with a hush-hush fundraiser next Monday hosted by former Clinton administration official Jeremy Ben Ami and Daniel Levy, director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative of the Century Foundation. The group will be publicly launched around the middle of April; organizers said they will not speak publicly about the group until then.

“For too long, the loudest American voices in political and policy debates have been those on the far right — often Republican neoconservatives or extreme Christian Zionists,” according to the invitation. “J Street aims to change that. We are the first and only lobby and PAC (political action committee) dedicated to ensuring Israel’s security, changing the direction of American policy in the Middle East and opening up American political debate about Israel and the Middle East.”

While sources say the structure and initial goals of the new group are still in flux, it is expected to raise money for congressional candidates who advocate a stronger U.S. leadership role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and multilateral solutions to the region’s problems.

The group will be headed by Ben-Ami, who served as deputy domestic policy adviser in the Clinton administration and later as a media consultant. Ben-Ami has worked with several Jewish peace groups, including the Center for Middle East Peace and the Geneva Initiative-North America.

Unlike similar attempts in the past the board of directors of J Street seems to have the Jewish “gravitas” and fundraising clout to make it a success. It includes leaders of the three main liberal Jewish peace groups (APN, Brit Tzedek and IPF), major Democratic fundraisers, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, and perhaps most importantly, Mort Halperin, George Soros’ major domo. I’m hoping that Halperin’s participation implies at least Soros’ tacit support for the group.

Keep your eyes peeled for attacks from the Jewish right which will come as sure as the spring rains in the Pacific Northwest.

tags aipac, daniel levy, george-soros, gershom-gorenberg, j street, james besser, jeremy-ben-ami, jewish-week, liberal israel lobby, morton-halperin

It’s about time. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the Union of Reform Judaism, America’s most populous Jewish denomination delivered a ringing affirmation of solidarity with this nation’s Muslim community at this week’s Islamic Society of North America conference. Not only did he endorse common bonds that tie Jews and Muslim like the fight against discrimination and our quest for spirituality in a secular world; he also directly attacked Jewish extremism that singles out Islam as a global threat. Frankly, I would’ve preferred that he come out swinging and named a few more names. It’s high time we take it to them. As it is, he only mentioned Dennis Prager by name. He left out the groups I’ve been battling here over the past few months like Campus Watch, Frontpagemagazine and the David Project.

I found it instructive in his speech where he discusses a mutual propensity to violence among extremists in both religions. Here is the ‘money quote’ in which he denounced the Jewish rabble-rousers among us:

The overwhelming majority of Jews reject violence by interpreting these texts in a constructive way, but a tiny, extremist [Jewish] minority chooses destructive interpretations instead, finding in the sacred words a vengeful, hateful God. Especially disturbing is the fact that the moderate majority, at least some of the time, decides to cower in the face of the fanatic minority — perhaps because they seem more authentic, or appear to have greater faith and greater commitment. When this happens, my task as a rabbi is to rally that reasonable, often-silent majority and encourage them to assert the moderate principles that define their beliefs and Judaism’s highest ideals. My Christian and Muslim friends tell me that precisely the same dynamic operates in their traditions, and from what I can see, that is manifestly so. Surely, as we know from the headlines, you have what I know must be for you as well as for us an alarming number of extremists of your own — those who kill in the name of God and hijack Islam in the process. It is therefore our collective task to strengthen and inspire one another as we fight the fanatics and work to promote the values of justice and love that are common to both our faiths.

This is a theme that I return to again and again here when pro-Israel nationalists attempt to paint Muslims as bloodthirsty fanatics and paint Israelis as reasonable people who merely want peace. Yoffie is precisely right in declaring that we each have violent elements within our respective traditions. Making peace means not only coming to terms with our enemy, it means overcoming the hatred within our own ranks as well.

Here again Yoffie tells his Muslim audience that Israel is a bedrock principle of American Jews in precisely the same way that Palestine is one for them:

American Jews have a deep, profound, and unshakable commitment to the State of Israel. We see assuring the security of Israel as one of our community’s most important accomplishments, and we see maintaining her security as one of our most important priorities. At the same time, we understand the ties of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans to the Palestinian people. The challenge that we face is this: Will we, Jews and Muslims, import the conflicts of the Middle East into America, or will we join together and send a message of peace to that troubled land? Let us choose peace. Let us work toward the day when a democratic Palestinian state lives side by side, in peace and security, with the democratic State of Israel.

Here I would’ve preferred more specificity from the Reform leader about what precisely American Jews must come to accept in order to fully recognize Palestinian rights. You’ll note there is no mention of a state, the issue of return or Jerusalem–all of which must be part of the solution for both sides:

The basic outline of such a peace has been clear for a long time. For peace to be achieved, territorial compromise will be required of Israel. Unconditional acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state will be required of the Palestinians. Jews will need to accept the reality of Palestinian suffering, and understand that without dignity for the Palestinians, there can be no dignity for Israel.

Here Yoffie again makes a significant point about maintaining the conflict as a political, rather than religious one. But again he only notes the danger of Arab anti-Israelism but not the equal danger of Jewish Islamophobia which is no less potent an enemy of peace:

Second, if the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is seen in religious rather than political terms, resolving it becomes impossible. If Israel is portrayed as “a dagger pushed into the heart of Islam,” rather than a nation-state disputing matters of land and water with the Palestinians, we are lost. As religious Jews and religious Muslims, let us do everything in our power to prevent a political battle from being transformed into a holy war.

As he concludes, Yoffie saves his most important admonition for last, telling us that in each of our traditions we must renounce holy war and terror as a means to protect religion or advance our interests:

And finally, to all those who desecrate God’s name by using religion to justify killing and terror, let us say together: enough. No cause in the world, and surely no religious cause, can ever justify murdering the innocent or targeting the uninvolved. You cannot honor a religion of peace through violence; you cannot honor God if you do not honor the image of God in every human being; and you cannot get to heaven by creating hell on earth. If we can agree on nothing else, let us agree on this, and let us remain united on this point, come what may.

My only criticism is Yoffie’s lack of specificity. He holds back from denouncing sufficiently strongly those in our community who preach hatred and violence. Why shouldn’t it be time to name the Daniel Pipes, David Horowitzes and Mort Kleins of the world as the obstacles to peace that they are?

For that reason, I’m glad to read that Jewish Week, in an article which otherwise stokes the fires of mistrust, did provoke a more particular debate between Yoffie and Pipes. Here Pipes does his usual ranting about Muslim hatred of Jews. You’ll note that Stewart Ain gives Pipes the dubious distinction of being a “counter-terrorism expert” when the only thing he is “expert” in is fomenting mistrust of Muslims and Jews insufficiently supportive of Israel:

Daniel Pipes, founder and director of the Middle East Forum and a counter-terrorism expert, called Rabbi Yoffie’s outreach to ISNA “well-intentioned but very misguided.”

“There needs to be an acknowledgment that ISNA is an Islamic organization, Wahhabi in outlook, which is deeply problematic,” he said.

Wahhabi Islam is said to be the primary religious movement behind extremist Islam.

“Beyond ISNA’s own character is the question of Jewish-Muslim relations and whether this can be fixed through ‘Kumbaya’-like sessions such as Rabbi Yoffie’s,” Pipes said, “or whether there needs to be a frank acknowledgment that there is a deep current of anti-Semitism among Muslims in the United States that needs to be addressed.

“It is not a mutual situation,” he continued. “You don’t see mosques and Muslim schools being surrounded by security as you do synagogues and Jewish schools. There is no parallel. And what Rabbi Yoffie did was to build his base on a parallel — saying that there are problematic texts in the Jewish Old Testament as there are in the Koran, and saying that each side has its extremists. I think that is a flawed analysis and one that will have mischievous consequences if it is widely accepted.”

Yoffie, for his part, finally engages Pipes and refutes his partisan animus against Islam:

“The perspective that [Pipes] represents begins from the premise that the Muslim-American community is a dangerous community filled with anti-Semites,” the rabbi said. “There is a big difference between saying there are elements of anti-Semitism in a community that is basically moderate and well educated and middle class, and suggesting that the entire community is somehow dangerous. If you see the community in that sense, it does not make sense to engage in dialogue.”

Rabbi Yoffie insisted that the Muslim community is “conceivably the best educated minority in America” and that there “are significant elements of that community who are untouched by extremism and who are anxious to cooperate with us and with others.”

He said that at the ISNA convention he heard ISNA’s American vice president, Ingrid Mattson, speak three times and she repeatedly called for Israeli-Palestinian peace and to “stop the tie between Muslims and extremism.”

“She gave a speech Jewish leaders would give,” Rabbi Yoffie insisted.

I’m afraid that Yoffie will have to do much more to combat the hatred promoted by the Pipes’ of our community. We cannot assume that peace will just happen between Israel and the Arabs, nor that Jews and Muslims will somehow learn to get along. Besides reaching out to the other side, we must set our own house in order as well. The Plauts, Neuwirths, Pipes, Kleins and even Hoenleins and Foxmans of our community must be firmly rebutted in order for tolerance to grow.

I take strong exception to this passage from Ain’s article in which he attempts to question Yoffie’s tolerance project by noting INSA’s involvement in the Holy Land Foundation federal case:

what makes the effort problematic is that the Muslim group Rabbi Yoffie has chosen to dialogue with is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Dallas trial now taking place against the Holy Land Foundation. The foundation is accused of raising funds for Hamas, the terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel.

What especially distresses me is that the Jewish press seems to accept lock, stock and barrel that the Holy Land Foundation is a supporter of terror and that the unindicted co-conspirators have somehow done something illegal in abetting the Foundation’s terror agenda. First, the government has by no means proven its case. In fact, many legal observers feel it has an especially weak one. Second, the categorization of INSA as “unindicted co-conspirator” has no substantive meaning in terms of associating the group with any tangible nefarious activity. And if it has, let Pipes and his crew tell us what INSA has actually done that is against the law or even remotely tainted. He can’t because they haven’t. It’s as simple as that.

tags anti-Muslim, eric-yoffie, islamic-society-of-north-america, islamophobia, jewish-extremism, jewish-week, Reform-Draws-Fire-For-Muslim-Outreach, religious-violence, tolerance, union-of-reform-judaism

Something remarkable is happening within elements of the American Jewish media regarding the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Except for The Forward, and rarely Jewish Week, I don’t usually find much value in coverage of Israeli politics and the country’s relations with its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians. I do review these publications in hopes that I’ll find something provocative and penetrating on the subject. Usually I’m disappointed. But not today.

Jewish Week’s current issue has not one but two articles which express doubt about the path Israel has chosen in Lebanon. And one of them is an editorial. I find the fact that the editor is willing to express doubts to be refreshing and heartening. It is unusual for the American Jewish community to express any doubts about Israeli policy at any time, but especially during a wartime situation.

Yes, there are the obligatory partisan pieces in this issue whose titles reveal their prejudices:

Fighting Hezbollah Time: Israel struggling to deal knockout blow before international pressure forces ceasefire

For Israelis, How Far to Go? As civilian casualties rise, country balances goal of destroying Hezbollah with fear of overkill [that one is a real laugher]

Samson the Nebbish Turns Tough

Marshalling the Pro-Israel Forces

This is the unquestioning, timid Jewish press I’ve always known. But something else is also afoot there.

The editorial begins with an eye-opening quotation from Thomas Jefferson which applies a lesson that should be learned both about Lebanon and Iraq:

In 1815, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to a friend, noting that though the union over which he had presided was still struggling, he envisioned an era in which America’s might would rise unchallenged.

“Not in our day, but at no distant one,” he wrote, “we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble.

“But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power,” he added, “and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.”

Jefferson’s words come to mind as Israel once again finds itself entangled in a conflict it did not start and which has no clear outcome…

Beyond the need to show its power, Israel’s leaders must think clearly about how best to achieve three primary goals: bring back the kidnapped soldiers; defeat or marginalize Hezbollah beyond a brief cease-fire; and stabilize the Lebanese government, which can be an ally for Israel.

Bombing the Lebanese infrastructure will not bring back the kidnapped soldiers. It may prevent Hezbollah from operating openly and receiving supplies and more rockets, but it also inflicts civilian casualties, however unintended, and turns the Lebanese people’s fear of and resentment toward Hezbollah into rage against Israel…

Our concern is that Israel not repeat the mistakes of the last war it fought in Lebanon, which began in 1982 with what seemed to be a quick, forceful and popular effort to push back the terrorists attacking Israel’s northern border, but lasted for 18 years…

Whatever actions Israel takes today must be weighed in the context of the past, and future, as well as the present. Even as it uses its military power, Israel should be pursuing a diplomatic option, one that will secure its well being by giving the struggling Lebanese government the resources and the guidance it needs to resist the pressures of Hezbollah and any other state that might be supporting it. Such an effort, backed by the might of the international community, could stabilize Lebanon and ensure a vital Lebanese-Israeli alliance.

Israel has long ago proven that it can, to paraphrase Jefferson, shake its rod and make even the stoutest of its enemies tremble. But now is the time for wisdom as well as power, an opportunity to validate Jefferson’s sentiments, proving that strength is at its peak when it is used most discriminately.

Though this is quite tame and moderate stuff by the standards of my own blog, it really is quite remarkable in the context of how much dissent and doubt the American Jewish media usually allow themselves concerning Israel.

Larry Cohler-Esses, one of Jewish Week’s editors, also wrote Experts: Force Alone Won’t Stop Hezbollah, which analyzes Israeli strategy against Hezbollah with a sharply critical eye:

…Some prominent military experts and diplomatic analysts are raising serious doubts about the ability of the campaign to achieve the goals Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert initially set for it. These include the return of the kidnapped Israeli soldiers; an end to the rain of rockets on Israel; the disarming of Hezbollah; and a pullback of the terror group’s militia from its positions on the border with Israel and the deployment of Lebanese soldiers there to exercise state control over the area.

“There’s no way you can achieve those war aims with the present pattern of use of force by Israel,” said Lt. Gen. William Odom, who directed the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration. “If they’re bombing infrastructure and doing these punishing raids into Beirut, they’re essentially going to turn Lebanon into a failed state. And if they do that, the state is certainly not going to put an army down on the border.”

Aaron David Miller, who served as a senior State Department Middle East negotiator from the administration of George H.W. Bush through that of his son, recalled earlier, similar military campaigns in South Lebanon that failed to achieve their objectives.

“Israel is now faced with a strategic reality that will be very hard to address with military means alone,” said Miller, now a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “Unless Israel is prepared to occupy the entire country, there is no way it can destroy Hezbollah’s capability. They know it. And the longer the crisis continues, the more apparent this will be.”

William Lind, a leading theorist on non-conventional warfare and a consultant on the Marines’ bible on the topic, the Small Wars Manual, said, “The way Israel has described its war aims—destroying Hezbollah and Hamas—has guaranteed it won’t attain its objectives. They’re almost certain to come out the loser, with Hezbollah showing it can stand up to a state across a border.”

…These critics…question the fundamental efficacy of Israel’s military strategy for achieving its goals. With more than 400 Lebanese, mostly civilians, killed as a result of Israel’s bombings, and at least 29 dead on the Israeli side, the importance of effectiveness also has a moral dimension…

Critics raised multiple concerns about the ability of Israel’s bombing campaign to meet its goals. Among other things, they doubted the ability of the campaign to deeply dent Hezbollah’s supply of rockets, or its ability to obtain resupplies from Syria and Iran—its patrons—once the bombing stops.

Hezbollah does not store its rockets and weapons in armories, they noted. Instead, they are hidden in hundreds, perhaps thousands, of small homes, garages, sheds and farms over widely dispersed areas. Without Israeli soldiers on the ground able to go from door-to-door, this poses an almost insurmountable intelligence and logistical challenge that bombings are unlikely to overcome, said these critics.

Many of these critics also voiced concern that Israel’s bombing campaign—affecting millions, Shiite and non-Shiite—and the ability of Hezbollah to withstand it after the success of its cross-border raid, would only rally the Lebanese to its side, rather than isolate it.

“It shows other Muslims Hezbollah has a unique ability to stand against Israel, and Lebanese Christians that it’s a force you don’t want to cross,” said Lind. If, after this, Hezbollah simply survives, he said, “it will be a great victory.”

These articles prove that there are cracks in the foundation of the Jewish community’s normally ironclad support for Israeli policy. And all I can say is: “Thank God.” Someone is thinking for themselves rather than publishing Aipac’s cheerleading talking points. Now, if only someone at the Defense or Foreign Ministries in Israel were reading and understanding what’s being said by Diapora communities about this costly misadventure.

tags american-jewish-press-doubts-about-israeli-lebanon-inva, jewish-week, larry-cohler-esses, the-forward

Juan Cole to Jewish neocons: 'J'Accuse!' (photo: Harvard University Gazette) M.J. Rosenberg just gave me a head's up about Yale's withdrawal of a faculty appointment to Juan Cole after a concerted campaign against him from Yale Jewish donors and other Jewish neocons. Both Jewish Week and The Nation report that Cole had been approved by several faculty committees before pro-Israel forces managed to muster a a concerted effort to stop him. Philip Weiss writing in The Nation says: The controversy erupted this spring after two campus periodicals reported that Cole was under consideration by Yale for a joint appointment in sociology and history. In an article in the ...