Category: Cultural Intelligence

The Blind Alley of J Street and Liberal American Zionism

by Abba A. Solomon and Norman Solomon

It was a clarifying moment on April 30 when the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejected an application for membership from J Street. For several years, the J Street leadership has worked hard to create a palatable alternative to hard-line versions of what it means to be pro-Israel. But this spring, J Street’s leaders could not get the seal of approval they craved from the organized American Jewish establishment, which apparently sees little need for Zionism to acquire a more humane face.

The Conference of Presidents was founded in the 1950s to speak with “one voice” for American Jews to U.S. officials. In that context, six decades later, the Conference voted to crush the claim from J Street that dissent — even channeled, “pro-Israel” dissent within Zionist consensus — can be effective or respected. This latest turn of events is a progression in the dynamics that took hold during the late 1940s with the banishment of substantive dissent from major Jewish groups in the United States, an exile that continues to this day.

Since its founding six years ago, J Street has emerged as a major Jewish organization under the banner “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” By now J Street is able to be a partial counterweight to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The contrast between the two U.S. groups is sometimes stark. J Street applauds diplomacy with Iran, while AIPAC works to undermine it. J Street encourages U.S. support for “the peace process” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, while AIPAC opposes any meaningful Israeli concessions. In the pressure cooker of Washington politics, J Street’s emergence has been mostly positive. But what does its motto “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace” really mean?

That question calls for grasping the context of Zionism among Jews in the United States — aspects of history, largely obscured and left to archives, that can shed light on J Street’s current political role. Extolling President Obama’s policies while urging him to intensify efforts to resolve Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, the organization has staked out positions apt to sound humanistic and fresh. Yet J Street’s leaders are far from the first prominent American Jews who have struggled to square the circles of the moral contradictions of a “Jewish state” in Palestine.

Continue reading “Tikkun Rabbi Michael Lerner: The Blind Alley of J Street and Liberal American Zionism”

My new friend George Hishmeh has written a very interesting opinion piece for the Gulf News on the Pope’s upcoming visit to the holy land (attached beneath this introduction).

Assuming George's reporting is accurate, it is clear Pope Francis is raising the stakes by using something like a Motherhood and Mismatch (M&M) Strategy [1] to place Israel on the horns of moral dilemma: by refusing protection of an armored car and making it easy for Israeli extremists in the settler movement to kill him, he is forcing Netanyahu to clamp down on security by sealing Francis off from the people via the expedient of turning the Old City of Jerusalem into a ghost town, setting up cordons and a strict permit regime to keep the people, including Christian Arabs, far from the Pope.  At the same time the Palestinian Authority is opening up the streets of Bethlehem and providing the Pope with an open car.  The fact that the Pope will be accompanied by a group of Muslim and Jewish leaders ices the cake.

If some Israeli fanatic kills or tries to kill the Pope, Israel loses.  But if not, the conflicting pictures of the Pope’s visit to an Old City and Bethlehem will flood the world, and Israel loses.  One set of photos will show the Old City, the holiest part of Jerusalem for all three religions, under a military lockdown; and that set of pictures will be compared to a second set showing Palestinians joyously celebrating the openness of Pope's visit to Bethlehem.  If Israel tries to dodge the bullet launching another of its false flag operations like the infamous Lavon Affair — in this case, trying to attack or discredit the Pope by making the offensive action appear to have come from the Palestinians, the truth will come out, and Israel loses big time.

So, If the Pope can pull this off, Israel hoists itself on top of a petard by creating a welter of mismatches bringing Israel’s own moral legitimacy into question — i.e., by exhibiting behaviour that drives wedge after wedge into the legs of its own moral triangle (depicted in abstract terms from the Pope’s point of view, with Israel as the competitive adversary by this figure):

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: George Hishmeh – Pope Francis Confronting Zion in Courageous Brilliant Manner”