Several weeks ago, a local progressive Jewish congregation, Kadima, hosted a Shabbat talk by Canon Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian anti-Occupation cleric. Two days before the event, the Seattle Jewish federation mailed a letter to Kadima telling it that it was making a big mistake in hosting an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, Jew-hating Palestinian speaker. Needless, to say Ateek is none of those things. Thankfully, Kadima did not cancel his talk.
Unfortunately for the community, very few people knew what the letter actually said since those who wrote it and those who received it refused to divulge it. A brave soul did provide the letter to me, which is the only way that you know what it said. I have already critiqued the inadequacies of the letter and criticized those who signed it. I have also praised those who were asked and refused to sign it.
I singled out for condemnation David Brumer, a signatory of the letter and a board member of the hardline Israel advocacy group, StandWithUs. Unlike some of the others who signed, Brumer proudly used his employer and job title along with his signature. He is a social worker at the Kline Galland Home, where he presumably attempts to ease the burdens of elderly Jews in our community. Apparently, Kline Galland, a federation funded agency, has no problem with Brumer confusing his partisan political activities with his job. I have written to the Home’s two senior executives to clarify the agency’s policy on this matter. They haven’t replied.
Brumer took my attack personally, VERY personally. In fact, in an e-mail to me he called me “deranged,” a “fraud,” and “fascinated” with gay porn. A word about the latter charge: in a recent blog post I noted that StandWithUs has recruited American gays to take Israel junkets in order to co-opt their support for Israel. Alongside this, the Israeli foreign ministry has targeted Iran’s intolerance for gays as a point of leverage in its efforts to set the stage for an attack on Iran. I have little doubt that StandWithUs’ journey into the gay world is directly connected to the efforts against Iran.
I wrote a critical blog post about a gay porno movie filmed in Israel with an all-Israeli cast. That was how Brumer managed to dredge up the homophobic smear that I had a “subconscious fascination” with gay porn. Here is the text of his message to me:
Solipsist that you are, it occurred to me that you may remain unaware of the fact that I’ve helped expose you to the world for the fraud, hypocrite, and paranoid narcissist that you are, in my very own blog, BRUMSPEAK. Check it out. It circulates widely.
Btw, the gay porn hasbara shtick is very creative. Only a deranged mind like yours could come up with that one. Perhaps some subconscious fascination with the subject?
Keep in mind, this is a Jewish leader who the federation asked to sign the Kadima letter because it found him to be a credible figure in the community. Also, keep in mind that Brumer signed a 2004 Derech Eretz statement calling for all signatories to:
…Exhibit…respect and communication, trusting in each other’s good intentions, and rejecting personal or malicious attacks, as we debate issues pertaining to Israel, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, peace in the Mideast, and the wider Jewish community.
This is a community leader who also called for me to be “spanked” for holding the views I do. Since he sat on the board of Congregation Beth Sholom at the time (where I am a member), I had to ask the synagogue president to intercede and end the slanders. Thankfully, she did so. Now that Brumer is no longer bound by such strictures (he’s off the board), he’s unburdened himself and unbuttoned his mouth.
I freely acknowledge that I have used strong language in my criticism of both Brumer and the attacks on Naim Ateek and Kadima in the federation letter. I have called some statements by both lies and distortions. But unlike Brumer, I have documented my claims here in this blog.
In an e-mail, the president of the federation, Richard Fruchter, sensibly tried to distance himself from Brumer saying he is not a member of the Israel committee which created the letter and not affiliated with federation. The problem is that the federation asked Brumer to sign the letter thereby affiliating itself with him and his extremist views. Fruchter sees Brumer’s smears against me as a dispute between two individuals in which the agency has no interest.
But the problem once again is that Brumer and federation are locked into a tight embrace. They invited him to sign. He co-opted his employer, a federation agency, in signing. It seems to me that they’re up to their eyeballs in this and somebody should have some explaining to do.
I was tickled by Brumer’s claim that his blog “circulates widely.” Alexa ranks it 14-million which does not constitute “circulating widely.” Unless he really meant “circulates widely within my own family and among StandWithUs militants.” I was also tickled by his references to psychological-therapeutic jargon in attempting to [mis]diagnose me. It’s as if he needs to dust off all the theories he learned in social work school to prove he can apply them to his clients and wield them as a cugdel against his enemies. If he keeps this up he might just give the vocation of social work a bad name.
Returning to the federation letter, it was signed by only 12 community leaders (two of whom work for federation). Yet the letter was circulated to every rabbi and community leader in the city, scores, if not hundreds of individuals. The fact that only 12 signed is a good sign. It means that many leaders of our community thought the letter was a bad idea. I’m hoping there are some federation board members who are asking some pointed questions of Richard Fruchter as I write this. One question I’d like asked is why the Israel committee is such a monolith. Why doesn’t it have a mandate that compels it to approach the Israel issue in a diverse way that encourages debate? Why do the local Israel lobby groups, via this committee, have a stranglehold on the communal agenda on this subject?
One of my major criticisms of the mainstream community is that it exists in an echo chamber. Jewish leaders largely don’t want to hear diverse voices in their community. The problem with doing this is that by narrowing the scope of what is considered kosher, you end up with blunders like this letter.
Let’s have a dialogue about this within the community. Let’s learn a lesson. Let’s figure out how we can encourage a broad debate about such a critical issue and not smear our fellow Jews just because they don’t see things the same as us. Instead of seeking ways to exclude Brit Tzedek and Kadima from the community, as the Israel committee was seeking to do, let’s embrace them. Let’s end the grandstanding and wagging fingers represented by the Ateek-Kadima letter.
I’m looking forward to the next major community program the Israel committee plans providing a balanced, diverse perspective on whatever issue it addresses. And I don’t mean “diverse” by David Brumer’s standards. I mean “diverse” by Kadima’s standards or any number of other local Jewish peace organizations who are largely omitted from the organized community’s discussions. Federation leaders–do you think you can do this?
The federation recently announced it has had a down campaign. Allocations to agencies are being cut. Of course, there are lots of reasons for this, many of them economic. But Jews in this town are sophisticated, articulate, progressive and concerned with social justice. Many don’t like what they see going on in Israel. Many don’t agree with the perspective offered by the Israel committee or StandWithUs. In fact, a number of polls indicate that Jewish young people are more turned off than ever from Israel in the aftermath of the bloody conflicts in Lebanon and Gaza.
If the federation continues preaching to this relatively small choir, it can’t help its Campaign. It can’t help it’s outreach efforts to the next generation of donors.
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Friends of Sabeel will host a conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict here in Seattle February 19-20th at St. Mark’s Cathedral. Among the speakers will be Neve Gordon, professor at Ben Gurion University, whose Los Angeles Times op ed supporting the BDS movement was hailed and derided around the world, leading to denunciation by his own university president and an attempt to sack him.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=81c72dab-51d9-4dbf-bbf0-3a044903f276)
Naim Ateek: the man who never called Israelis “Christ-killers”
