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

Apparently, some right-wing Jewish individual or group (this smacks of Mort Klein and ZOA or someone of that ilk) has fed yet a new Obama smear story to JTA with which to regale American Jews and plant new doubts in their mind. The latest example of Jewish Obamaphobia involves, you guessed it, Pastor Jeremiah Wright. Apparently his Church’s newsletter reprinted an L.A. Times op-ed column written by a Hamas representative arguing that Hamas should not be expected to recognize Israel before negotiating with it.

Let’s get real here. Many Israeli and American Jewish analysts (including a former Mossad director) agree with the Hamas position here. So what’s the problem? If the L.A. Times didn’t find it was fomenting terrorism and Israel hatred by publishing the original column why can’t the Pastor’s church republish it?

People, this is going too far. As a result of this lunacy, Obama feels compelled to get down on his knees and beg the Jewish community’s forgiveness for something that wasn’t his doing in the first place; and in the second, wasn’t even something that Wright should have to apologize for (unless that is the L.A. Times should also apologize for publishing it in the first place). Here’s Obama’s craven response:

“I have already condemned my former pastor’s views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn’t in church when that outrageously wrong Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin,” Obama said in a statement emailed to JTA late Thursday, and referring to critics who noted that Obama had been in church when Wright had made controversial statements. “Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel’s destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. I support requiring Hamas to meet the international community’s conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by past agreements before they are treated as a legitimate actor.”

This is a sorry statement which takes us back quite a ways in figuring a way to get Israel and the Palestinians (including Hamas) together to negotiate a way out of their impasse. The Jewish community is forcing Barack Obama to go through ever smaller hoops in order to get, or not to lose its support. Pretty soon the hoop will be as wide as the eye of a needle and neither Obama nor a camel can thread that.

It speaks volumes that JTA thought this story was newsworthy. They’re carrying water for Hillary, McCain or the Republican Jewish Coalition whether they know it or not.

Hat tip to Sam Smith for featuring this story at his blog.

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

Here is how their column begins:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those aren’t my words, they’re the words of Amira Haas, Haaretz’s Ramallah correspondent (and the only Israeli reporter who actually lives in the Palestinian Territories) in her Los Angeles Times article, Palestinians Are Being Robbed by Israel. In the article, she describes why Israel has come to collect $50-million a month in Palestinian excise duties. It’s quite arcane:

According to the Oslo accords (and by any standards of common sense and basic justice), the revenues should serve the people who ultimately buy the goods. These tax receipts are not donations of goodwill from Israel; they are not charity…These are tax revenues that are due to the people in the territories where the goods are headed, and the Israelis have no right to hold them up.

Since 1994, these revenues, transferred each month from the Israeli Ministry of Finance, have made up a critical portion of the Palestinian Authority budget. When Israel briefly stopped transferring the revenues in 2001, pressure from the EU and other countries — including the U.S. — forced Israel to reverse its decision. Unfortunately, after the Hamas victory, such pressure seems unlikely.

Since Palestine has no ports of its own, all imported goods must come through Israeli ones. Israel charges VAT on all imported goods including those meant for Palestinians. But under an international agreement, Israel has agreed to remit these funds to the PA each month. The money is clearly the Palestinians. Israel’s withholding of it is a blatant violation of this agreement and common decency (but certainly not something which disturbs the consciences of Israeli cabinet officials who approved the withholding).

And lest you think that these funds are not significant, Haas points out that “last year, the $711 million constituted almost two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority’s revenues.” So in effect, Israel has already begun its effort to topple the new Hamas government. While there are mixed signals coming from various politicians and some analysts say Israel is playing a wait and see game, I think this act of withholding tax payments is a covert but nonetheless highly prejudicial act against the Palestinian people.

I am pleased to read in the NY Times that Condi Rice (many of whose Israeli-Palestinian moves I’ve been applauding here for the past few months) was rebuffed by the Egyptians and Saudis in her effort to further isolate Hamas and turn off the financial spigot. This policy of bringing Hamas to its knees is absolutely wrong-headed and deserves to fail.

Palestinian baby suffering from malnutrition (photo: Telegraph.co.uk)

Here is a 2002 Telegraph article which lays out the whole depressing story of Palestinian poverty. I’m sure it has only become worse in the ensuing 4 years.

When I denounced Dov Weisglass’ despicable comments about what Israeli policy toward Hamas should be:

“It’s like a meeting with a dietitian. We need to make the Palestinians lose weight, but not to starve to death.”

I was thinking of this type of information which Haas uses to conclude her column:

In the Palestinian territories, 35% of residents between the ages of 20 and 24 were unemployed during the third quarter of 2005. About 43% live below the World Bank’s poverty line, and 15% live in deep poverty — which means, according to the World Bank, that they are unable to meet subsistence needs.

By taking their meager — but undoubtedly their own — revenues, Israel does not punish Hamas or persuade it to change its positions. It simply gives the Palestinians another reason to regard Israel as an aggressive and repressive occupying power.

You joke about a man who’s starving by saying he needs to go on a diet, but not to starve to death–now that’s utterly charming. If only big fat Dov could ever know what it’s like to not be able to feed himself or his children. Then I’d feel there was divine justice.

When you are a Jew who represents a dovish position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you will read and hear a lot of hateful speech from your fellow Jews. You’re called a traitor, self-hating Jew, anti-Zionist, Arab lover, etc. And what they say about the Arabs is even less flattering and much more racist and hateful. Among the most tiresome of the many leading questions you are asked by opponents of peace is: “It’s all well and good for you bleeding hearts peaceniks, but where are the peaceniks on the other side?” After a particularly fruitless “dialogue” at the Middle East Information Center discussion board on this subject, I’ve decided to compile “profiles” of Arab moderates who favor Israeli-Palestinian peace and Jewish-Arab dialogue. You may read my previous profiles of Tariq Ramadan and Irshad Manji on this blog.

Khaled Abou El Fadl is a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he teaches Islamic law, Immigration, Human Rights, International and National Security Law. El Fadl is a rare breed: a Muslim intellectual and legal scholar who embraces a moderate form of Islam. He is also opposed to all forms of terrorism, including Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks, and sees it as a corruption and distortion of the authentic message of Islam. El Fadl’s moderate views bring him into conflict with the strict fundamentalist version of Islam represented by the Wahabism practiced by the House of Saud. He remains implacably opposed to Saudi Arabia’s approach to Islam and to its royal family and their religious representatives. Furthermore, El Fadl expresses strong opposition to other Islamic institutions like Egypt’s Al Azhar Mosque and seminary which has been appropriated by the Wahabists. This in turn has brought him into conflict with the Egyptian authorities. He is persona non grata in many countries in the Middle East.

Teresa Watanabe, the Los Angeles Times’ Religion Editor wrote, Battling Islamic ‘Puritans’ (January 2, 2002), a profile of Professor El Fadl. He spoke to her of his own intolerant practice of Islam as a child:

I found it remarkably empowering to spew my hatred with the banner of God in my hand,” he says. But challenged by his father to take up true religious scholarship, Abou El Fadl began a journey of Islamic learning that would transform him into a nemesis of the extremists he once endorsed. Today, at 38, he is a leading warrior in the intellectual struggle that exploded into America’s consciousness Sept. 11: Who speaks for Islam? Who defines it?

With breathtaking bluntness, Abou El Fadl attacks Muslims who promote a strict, literalist trend in Islam, most prominently the creed of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia. In his writings and through the electronic media, he accuses them of an “intolerant puritanism” that values ritual over morality. He blames them for oppressing millions of women, creating hostility toward non-Muslims and giving the likes of Osama bin Laden their theological justification for terrorism.

It is easy to imagine, when you take on the religious establishment, that you will not earn many friends and indeed this is true in El Fadl’s case:

For tackling the puritans in high-profile forums, Abou El Fadl has received death threats. His books are banned in Saudi Arabia and his visa applications denied in Egypt.

[His battles against Islamic fundamentalists provide] critical insights into the fierce ideological tensions raging within Islam between the forces of puritanism and moderation. They shed light on how Islam can produce such chilling extremists as Bin Laden, who exults in the carnage of Sept. 11 as “blessed strikes.”

By devoting himself to a modern interpretation of the Koran, Abou El Fadl is perhaps the most articulate enemy of the Wahhabi creed that shaped Bin Laden’s brand of Islam. To many muftis, ayatollahs, sheiks and their followers throughout the world, Abou El Fadl has become “America’s most dangerous corrupter of Islam,” as one foe put it. One international network of students claims credit for successfully working to blacklist him from most Islamic conferences and publications under the banner of protecting “the one and only true Islam.”

Many Muslims see an even more pervasive impact of puritanism–robbing Islam of its richness and flexibility. Howard University professor Sulayman Nyang calls it “the mummification, ossification and fossilization of Islam.”

“Most of these groups we call fundamentalists have a rigid idea that everything is sealed in concrete and there is no elasticity in reinterpretation,” says Nyang, an African-born professor of African and Islamic studies. “We need to inject life back into Islam and open it up in light of new realities.”

In that pursuit, Nyang says, Abou El Fadl “is blazing a new trail.”

While other Muslim intellectuals like Abdulaziz Sachedina at the University of Virginia and Ebrahim Moosa, an associate professor of Islamic studies at Duke University suffered fatwas against their views and writings or even violence and intimidation

it is Abou El Fadl who appears to pose the greatest threat to the puritanical view of Islam because he promotes his competing vision with an erudition and persuasive prose that even his foes grudgingly acknowledge.

Fajrul Din, a student in Saudi Arabia who belongs to the international student group that opposes Abou El Fadl, ticks off the scholar’s sins: defending infidels against Muslims in court; befriending Shiite, Jews and Bahais; embracing music; owning devilish black dogs; and sheltering wives fleeing from the “discipline” of husbands.

What makes Abou El Fadl such a master of pandering to Western liberal sensitivities, Din wrote in an e-mail, is that “with each of these heretical views, he weaves sweet words like a serpent, and misleads the naive and simple. His sin is greater than any other. He studied and saw the light, but chose to turn away from it. We will not dirty our hands by touching him, but let him perish like a dog among the heathens he loves so much.”

El Fadl is also a leading Muslim feminist, challenging puritanical positions that women must be fully veiled and obey their husbands without question or submit to beatings for disobedience. He even urges his wife, Grace, to lead him in prayer, challenging prevailing Muslim practice of all-male religious leadership.

Most troubling to his ideological enemies, Abou El Fadl cannot be written off as a Westernized Uncle Tom. His work is painstakingly grounded in classical Islamic sources, they acknowledge, giving him the ability to defend his modern interpretations with a dizzying command of ancient traditions.

El Fadl and the Jewish Community

In El Fadl’s relations with the Jewish community, he has embraced interfaith dialogue and shows sensitivity and receptivity to Jewish concerns. Gary Rosenblatt, editor of New York’s Jewish Week, explored El Fadl’s relationship with the Jewish community in In Search Of Moderate Muslims (January 17, 2003). Needless to say, depending on where you stand on the Jewish community’s political spectrum affects your views of El Fadl:

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, Hillel director at UCLA, met El Fadl when he started coming regularly to the rabbi’s Torah study group held for faculty, and they have appeared numerous times together in public discussing Jewish-Muslim issues. The rabbi says El Fadl is “heroic” because he is willing to criticize Islam from within.

“My belief is that our community needs to hear from Muslims,” Rabbi Seidler-Feller said. “I’m not a Pollyanna, but there are not too many of these people [Muslims willing to appear with Jews and speak out] and they should be treated as gems. We have to be very careful, think strategically, and realize the precariousness of their positions among their people.

“What’s important is not so much what they are saying to us but what they are saying in their own community. We don’t need them to be Zionists.”

Daniel Pipes, the neoconservative editor of the Middle East Forum, on the other hand maintains a profound distrust of El Fadl:

[he] has succeeded in fooling influential individuals that he is a moderate American Muslim intellectual” when he is, according to Pipes, “just another Muslim extremist.”

Other Jewish leaders appreciate the courage and bravery that El Fadl has shown in reaching outside his own faith to search for common ground with the Other:

Rabbi Seidler-Feller disagrees with critics like Pipes, and says that by insisting Muslim leaders “meet all our criteria before we can speak to them, the net result is that we can’t talk to anyone.”

Another communal leader who sounds a note of caution regarding El Fadl is

Yehudit Barsky, director of the division of Middle East and international terrorism for the American Jewish Committee, said she is troubled that El Fadl wrote for a publication funded by a Muslim organization hostile to Israel. She said it is difficult to assess relations with Muslims who may say one thing to a Jewish audience and something else to a Muslim audience.

One defender of El Fadl in the Jewish community is Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, who said it is unfair for some in the Jewish community to indulge in the equivalent of “tzitzis checking,” or “interpreting every expression of solidarity with Islam as an expression of Islamic extremism, so as to elide the difference between moderate and militant Muslims.

“We insist that Jews never break rank with Israel,” Wieseltier observed, “but we are quick to applaud members of certain other minorities when they break rank with their own groups.”

He called El Fadl “a brave man” and said it was “chutzpah for Jews to criticize him.”

To my mind, Pipes and Barsky represent a viewpoint that is unfortunately very common in our community. To their mind, Arabs are by and large the enemy. They are never to be trusted. The only trustworthy Arab is probably someone who is so sycophantic or craven towards the Jewish community and its interests that he or she would have been long dismissed by their own Muslim community as a traitor or worse, an intellectual has been. Unfortunately, with such paranoid and hypersensitive responses to serious Muslim intellectuals, the mainstream Jewish community is exhibiting the same prejudiced attitudes that we ourselves witnessed at the hands of the Christian world for many centuries.

Rosenblatt closes his article with this powerful statement which sides with those who find El Fadl a positive force for dialogue and moderation:

in a world where there are 2 billion Muslims, it may be wise for the Jewish community to cultivate those few influential Muslims who advocate tolerance and to engage them in a conversation that could help lead us back from the ruinous path of eternal demonization.

tags Khaled-Abou-El-Fadl, los-angeles-times, muslim-reformer, muslim-tolerance, ucla