What didn’t happen at Camp David will happen at Blue Heron. But Palestinian and Israeli peace won’t happen before 2016: There are too many anarchists, terrorists, militarists, “sectarianists,” political apologists and lots of other “ists” — yes, even including journalists and columnists — that have too much vested in the Israel-Palestine blame recycling industries to allow peace to break out any sooner.
These two young Israelis met with some Occupy activists in the US, but unlike that movement–which so far has succeeded more in terms of symbolism and public discourse than concretely–the Israeli movement has already affected government policies.
Khad Gadya—the old Aramaic fable sung at the end of the Passover Seder is often associated with a sense of relief that the long evening is finally over. It also helps that it comes after four glasses of wine. It traces a cascade of events beginning with a baby goat being devoured by a cat. Each verse adds a link to the chain reaction; a dog comes and bites the cat, a stick beats the dog, fire burns the stick, water puts out the fire…and on it goes. Each successive verse gets longer until the fable ends in a final karmic stroke; God kills the Death Angel. It’s part morality-play, part Rube Goldberg device.
The following teaching is adapted from the Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA) weblog:
As we sit with families and friends for the Passover Seder, we rightly celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people. “Liberation” means the legendary emergence from slavery in Egypt, of course, but also the story of the Jewish people’s national liberation, which led to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. In the wake of centuries of persecution suffered by the Jewish people, Israel’s establishment was in keeping with the first of Rabbi Hillel’s great ethical guidelines, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” But, however important, the many aspects of statehood–territory, a flag, a currency, a government, an army–they do little to answer Hillel’s inseparable follow-up question, “And if I am only for myself, then what am I?” For progressive Zionists, Passover is a time when we are challenged to reconcile the tension in Hillel’s dualism: We celebrate national liberation as a Jewish success story, even as we realize today that Israel’s creation was also a Naqba, a catastrophe, for others.
Passover approaches and a fearful angel descends upon the homes of the Children of Israel. But this is not the Angel of Death, sent to take the first born son from every household of ancient Egypt. And this time, no daubing of blood on our doorposts will tell this angel to “pass over” our homes. For this is the Angel of Ignorance and Denial. This is the angel that blinds us to our own ills, that curses us to become the very Pharaoh we say we despise.
On March 7, when we published our New York Times ad against a U.S. or Israeli strike on Iran, we suggested that one step to implement a “strategy of generosity” as an alternative to the current “strategy of domination” would be for Israel to offer Palestinians a reasonable deal (as defined in my book Embracing Israel/Palestine), which would include helping Palestinians create an economically and politically viable state. One commentator, the hawkish foreign policy writer for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, said that our raising the issue of Israel/Palestine was “stupid” because to him it was obvious that there was no possible connection. But our point is that demonizing of Israel, made easy by its occupation of the West Bank and aggressive militarism, makes it possible for the tyrants in Iran and their allies in Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas to deflect attention from the evils of their own regimes by pointing to the hurtful things being done by Israel. An attack on Iran, we believe, will be used to undermine the “green revolution” that has been partially suppressed by the fundamentalists in Iran already, but which would be forced to join under the leadership of the mullahs to “defend the nation” against these attacks from Israel or the U.S.
Conversely, if Israel were to settle with the Palestinians in an obviously generous, open-hearted, and repentant way, and the U.S. were to launch a Global Marshall Plan, the Iranian dictatorship, the Syrian dictators, Hezbollah, and Hamas would have a very difficult time maintaining the loyalty of their own people. It is not because we support these regimes that we oppose a military response, but because we know that the best and probably only way that a “regime change” can take place is if the people of those countries rebel from inside.
Meretz (Yitzhak Rabin’s main coalition partner), and other dovish elements, argued for Israel to forcibly remove the extremist settlers from Hebron and/or nearby Kiryat Arba (where Goldstein lived). We don’t know if such a resolute act of contrition would have changed history by allaying Palestinian anger, but it might have….
David Grossman is one of the greatest Israeli novelists and his sensitivity to the nuances of daily life in Israel is exquisite. For those who don’t understand how far Israeli racism toward Arabs has led that country away from traditional values, just read his latest article (translated by Sol Salbe of the Middle East News Service) and contrast it with the Torah perspective articlated in Deuteronomy Chapter 21 sentences 1-9.
Today, our ad saying “No” to a first strike (preemptive attack) by either Israel or the U.S. on Iran appeared in the New York Times (in the National Edition it is on page A19).
Yesterday the AIPAC Policy Conference held a panel discussion called “The Struggle to Secure Israel on Campus” that featured Wayne Firestone, CEO of Hillel, Roz Rothstein, CEO of Stand With Us, and representatives of The David Project and AIPAC. The panel also included an unexpected speaker: 22-year-old Liza Behrendt. Behrendt unfurled a banner that read, “Settlements Betray Jewish Values” and “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof,” the Jewish text from Deuteronomy meaning “Justice, Justice, You Shall Pursue.” Her statement called attention to the silencing of Palestinians—and young Jews who support them—on U.S. campuses.