Jewish Reconstructionist Federation

The Israeli government’s blindsiding of Joe Biden last week seems to have given rise to the crisis that won’t go away.  Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it has uncovered fault lines between the US and Israel that have apparently been simmering now for some time.

Amid the myriad of press reports on the disastrous Biden visit, for me the most eye-opening were the Israeli press reports of Biden’s private excoriation of his hosts:

People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism. 

If that report wasn’t sobering enough, now there’s word that CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus feels the same way. Mark Perry, posting on Foreign Policy, has reported that Gen. Petraeus briefed Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back in January: 

The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM’s mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region…

 The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus’s instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. “Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling,” a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. “America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding.” But Petraeus wasn’t finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command — or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus’s reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged  in the region’s most troublesome conflict.

Wow. “Stunning” and “unprecedented” are the right words. When was the last time we heard the US military claim that Israeli policy was putting their troops in danger?

It’s much too early to tell where all this will lead, but I think its safe to say that the “special relationship” between the US and Israel is currently under serious reevaluation. It’s particularly mind-boggling to contemplate that Petraeus seems to share the same conclusion as the much-maligned Walt and Mersheimer: that Israel’s policies represent a strategic liability to US interests in the Mideast. Who would have thought?

Perry concludes:

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers — and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has forever shifted America’s relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now. 

I’m not particularly a fan of US military adventures in the Middle East – but if it takes the US military to convey the message that Israel has to turn from its disastrous settlement policies, I’m all for it.

Zochrot, an Israeli organization dedicated to educating Israelis about the Nakba recently released this remarkable video. Check it out: an interviewer poses difficult questions about refugees to Israelis on the street in Jaffa. Their honest responses may surprise you.

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Here’s one I’ve been meaning to get to for a few weeks now: a great point/counterpoint between Rabbi Daniel Gordis and journalist Charles London (above).

Back in February, Gordis wrote a Jerusalem Post column in which he addressed Im Tirtzu’s nasty campaign against the New Israel Fund and its President, Naomi Chazan.  His conclusion: while Im Tirtzu may have gone a bit overboard in its rhetoric, folks need to understand that the Jewish people are at war with those who would “delegitimize Israel.”  And when you are fighting a war, you can ill-afford luxuries such as civil liberties:

Commitment to our democracy must not come at the cost of commitment to our survival. No country at war maintains the same freedoms of speech or action that countries not facing existential threat can permit themselves. Since the Jewish people is at war, it must think as a people at war must think.

London’s eloquent counter in the Huffington Post:

In my experience around the world, the Jewish people are not at war. There are Bosnian Jews building institutions in cooperation with their Muslim and Christian neighbors; there are Ugandan Jews who are at war with Malaria, HIV, and poverty, but not with some eternal anti-Jewish enemy. There are Iranian Jews struggling alongside Sunni, Shiite, Christian, and Baha’i for the very “liberties” their government denies all Iranians. There are Israeli Jews who are trying to build democratic institutions, multi-ethnic schools, and interfaith understanding, all of whom should take serious umbrage at his characterization of the Jews as a people at war.

Bravo: London’s response to Gordis’s Jewish siege mentality is spot on.

Yes, the Jewish people face challenges today, but we have faced daunting challenges throughout our history. And through them all, we have resolutely rejected the notion that physical might can ensure our survival. Mighty empires have come and gone, but the Jewish people have remained not by compromising our values (as Gordis counsels) but by affirming them.  By connecting our survival to a more transcendent truth.  By asserting that there is a Power far greater than physical power.

On this point, the young journalist eloquently reminds the rabbi:

I fear that arguments like Gordis’s war without end and war that values cannot endure undermines the spiritual genius of our culture. Jews have not survived for 2500 years because of nation-states, nor because they were not willing to risk life and limb for higher values. They have not survived merely to survive.

If this Jewish vision is your cup of tea, check out London’s recent book “Far from Zion: In Search of Global Jewish Community.”  (I far preferred it to Gordis’s “Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End.”)

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There are the kinds of people who are taking over Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem…

PS: Many attendees of Saturday’s demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah reported that a speech by young Israeli activist Sara Benninga was the highlight of the demonstration. Click here for the complete text of her speech, translated into English.

Last night JRC was honored to host a performance of the one-woman show “Unveiled,” by Rohina Malik. Breathtaking.

Rohina is a playwright, actress and solo artist of South Asian heritage who was born in London and emigrated to Chicago when she was 15.  She is an impressive and important contemporary artist – and her identity as an American Muslim woman clearly plays an important role in her art.

“Unveiled” is constructed around five monologues by five Muslim women. During the course of the play, each of them greets the audience in turn, “welcoming” us with tea.  Each woman tells the story of their lives, explains their Muslim culture and shares the experience of living as a Muslim woman in the post 9/11 world.

For her appearance at JRC last night, Rohina performed three monologues: “Maryam,” a Pakistani-American who has a dress making shop on Chicago’s Devon Avenue; “Shabana,” a young rapper of South Asian descent who was born and raised in London; and “Layla,” a Chicago restaurant owner from the Middle East who lost a brother to the fall of the twin towers.

It’s difficult to convey the cumulative effect these women had upon the audience. Rohina’s performances cut to the heart of painful and complicated political issues – but even more profound was the immediately empathy Rohina was able to conjure for us through these remarkable women. In a relatively short amount of time, she was able to bring us through an entire gamut of emotions – and in the end, the common humanity we shared with these women was palpable to everyone in the room.

Following the play we had an equally powerful post-performance discussion facilitated by the play’s director, Ann Filmer. Nearly 250 people were in attendance – including many members of the Chicagoland Muslim community – and it was truly a tribute to Rohina’s art that so many members of this large and diverse group were inspired to share deeply personal comments about their own lives and struggles.

If you live in the Chicago area, you should know that “Unveiled” will be starting a run at the Victory Gardens Theater on March 24. Highly, highly recommended.

By all reports, the protests against Palestinian home evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem have evolved into a political phenomenon that cannot be ignored. Last Saturday night, thousands of demonstrators came out in the largest joint Israeli-Palestinian protest on record.

For more: this Ynet article posted in Coteret, blogger Jerry Haber’s report on Magnes Zionist, and a piece from the Jerusalem Post.  My friend and colleague Father Cotton Fite is currently visiting Israel/Palestine; he attended the rally and has just posted impressions on his blog.  My good pal Rabbi Brian Walt also offers a thorough report.

An excerpt from Brian’s post:

I have attended several Israeli demonstrations but this was the first demonstration where there was a large presence of Palestinians, Palestinian flags, and speakers who addressed the crowd in Arabic.  The mixed crowd – Israeli Jews, mostly secular but some wearing kippot, Palestinian women in traditional dress, Palestinian and Israeli youth – felt wonderful, a rare experience of the reality in this country, two peoples living together on the land with two languages, two cultures and three or more religions.  It is very rare for the two peoples to share anything.   I think among the young people involved in this struggle it is truly an Israeli – Palestinian effort and their vision is one of a shared future.  One of the most prominent posters at these rallies reads: Jews and Arabs together, refuse to be enemies.  In Hebrew it rhymes: Yehudim v’Aravim, mesarvim lih’yot oyvim.

This image inspired something in me something resembling hope – something I haven’t felt re the Israel/Palestine conflict in a long, long time…

Can I just say that Washington Rep. Brian Baird is my personal hero? Watch this recent interview with RTAmerica which took place on the heels of his third trip to Gaza. Among other things, Baird calls for the US to break the blockade with Gaza, for US envoy George Mitchell to visit Gaza personally, and to consider withholding “certain kinds of aid” to Israel if it continues to settle the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  Toward the end of the interview, he comments: “ignoring the plight of these good people is at our peril.”

On the international front, my personal bravery award goes to Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin, who was recently the first European Union foreign minister to visit Gaza in over a year.  He discussed his experiences yesterday in a powerful NY Times  op-ed:

The tragedy of Gaza is that it is fast in danger of becoming a tolerated humanitarian crisis, a situation that most right-thinking people recognize as utterly unacceptable in this day and age but which is proving extremely difficult to remedy or ameliorate due to the blockade and the wider ramifications of efforts to try and achieve political progress in the Middle East.

One can imagine how hard it is not to give in to despair and hopelessness in such an environment. However, what was most impressive and heartening during my visit was the resilience and incredible dignity of ordinary people.

From Psalm 94:

How long shall the wicked exult,
shall they utter insolent speech,
shall all evildoers vaunt themselves?
They crush your people, O Lord,
they afflict Your very own;
they kill the widow and the stranger;
they murder the fatherless,
thinking, “The Lord does not see it,
the God of Jacob does not pay heed.

Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna comments:

The specification of the oppressed shows that those described as God’s “people” are the disadvantaged and the most vulnerable segments of society…God’s “people” are the ordinary, common folk, and the evil oppressors are the corrupt, privileged upper classes in Israel, those whom the prophets denounced repeatedly from the eighth century BCE on.

I love this. The concept of “God’s people” is not defined in strictly tribal terms. No one people or nation can ultimately lay claim to this title. God’s people are the oppressed, the vulnerable, the downtrodden – and all who devote their lives to their liberation.

So are we ready for a new kind of tribalism? Not one determined by a specific religious persuasion or by national boundaries, but a “tribe” that includes all who share cherish justice and seek liberation from tyranny?

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The protest in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem seems to be reaching a fever pitch. Organizers have now called for a rally this Saturday night that they hope will attract thousands.

From a Ma’ariv article by Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel:

This Saturday night (March 6, 2010) will witness one of the most important demonstrations in years, in the struggle for human rights and justice here…

The asymmetric legal situation in Israel, through the Absentee Property Law, makes it possible for Jews to return to property that was owned by Jews before 1948 — while Palestinian property return is completely impossible. This is both unjust and unwise. In Sheikh Jarrah, this has resulted in Palestinian refugees, originally housed in the neighborhood by the Jordanian government after 1948, becoming refugees a second time. Of course, unlike the settlers forcing the Palestinians out of their homes, the Palestinians cannot return to the homes they owned before 1948 — not in Jaffa, nor in West Jerusalem or anywhere else…

(What) is happening in Sheikh Jarrah is part of a larger process — the Hebronization of East Jerusalem … As if watching the replay of a movie whose ending we have already seen, here in front of our eyes the Hebron processes are taking place once again, this time in Jerusalem: the entry of settlers to the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood, the provocations and violence, the one-sided actions of the security forces – always serving the interests of the Jewish settlers over the rights of the Palestinian residents. And then, what follows: restrictions of movement, segregation, life becoming a nightmare, and all this in the name of “security considerations.” Shuhada Street in Hebron is already closed for Palestinians for years — a street that was part of the bustling heart of one of the largest Palestinian cities, and has become a ghost road in the service of extremist settlers, the human rights of local Palestinians thrown to the roadside.

A similar process to what has already happened in Hebron is now happening in Jerusalem. Sheikh Jarrah now has police checkpoints at the entrance to the neighborhood. During certain hours on Friday the entrance to the neighborhood is generally blocked, but is open to Jewish worshipers. In contrast, Jews wishing to enter Sheikh Jarrah to express solidarity with the Palestinian families are prevented from entering the neighborhood. Violence against Palestinians ends with arrests — of Palestinians. The mechanism of dispossession and the construction of security excuses are already at work. And all this is happening right here, in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Brian Walt has also written a powerful post about a recent protest in Sheikh Jarrah. This is what I wrote about the situation there last December:

International protesters refer to these actions as “ethnic cleansing.” If that seems like too incendiary a term, what do we prefer to call it? And more critically, what are we going to do about it?

Kol Hakavod to blogger Shamai Leibowitz’s synagogue for raising money that enabled a Gazan child to receive life-saving heart surgery:

The people who came to my synagogue to hear the Megillah reading on Purim this week saw a large placard with a picture of a cute baby and a headline asking people to donate money to Save a Child’s Heart to save the life of this toddler.

It was a picture of Nour, a sweet one-year-old from Gaza who has Congenital Heart Disease, and needs life-saving surgeries and treatments to repair her heart. Congenital Heart Disease is a type of defect in one or more structures of the heart or blood vessels that occurs while the fetus is developing in the uterus, and affects 8-10 out of every 1,000 children. Nour’s expensive medical treatments are being sponsored by Save a Child’s Heart Foundation (SACH), an organization founded by synagogue members Dr. Ovadiah and Dolores Cohen.

Click here for the full post.

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