What will it take to convince supporters of Peace Now the imperative of their organization’s name depends on the Arabs rather than the Jews? After 18+ years of Arab terrorism and rejection of peace offers since the Oslo Accords, it’s hard to say whether anything the Palestinians could do or say would cause them to rethink their myopic view of the world. But give Americans for Peace Now’s Lara Friedman a little credit. After schlepping to an Arab League conference on Jerusalem, she at least had the wit to notice that just about everybody else there was focused on delegitimizing Israel, denouncing its existence within any borders and denying thousands of years of Jewish history.
However, it’s hard not to chuckle a little bit at the indignant tone affected by Friedman in her op-ed published in the Forward as she conveys her shock and dismay to discover the Arab world believes Jews have no rights in Jerusalem or any other part of Israel. She and her group had so convinced themselves all it will take to create peace “now” was for Israelis to support a two-state solution and negotiate, it appears they never took the time or effort to realize the other side has little interest in peace, now or at any other time. This gives her piece the tone of a parody worthy of The Onion even though it was written in deadly earnest. Indeed, it must be considered in writing such an article she has demonstrated the utter cluelessness of her group better than anything the group’s critics could have come up with.
What is so touching (as well as more than a bit comical) about Friedman’s piece is that much of what she says in it is true. For example:
If President Abbas cannot acknowledge Jewish claims in Jerusalem, even as he asserts Palestinian claims (a problem Yasser Arafat suffered from), he should not be surprised if it is more difficult for Israelis and Jews, wherever they are, to believe that he can be trusted in a peace agreement that leaves Jerusalem sites precious to Jews under Palestinian control.
If representatives of the organization that sponsored the Arab Peace Initiative cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish equities in Jerusalem, they should know that they discredit their own professed interest in peace. …
All throughout the day, it was unfortunately the same story. Participants talked about Jerusalem as if Jewish history did not exist or was a fraud — as if all Jewish claims in the city were just a tactic to dispossess Palestinians.
Friedman is quite right about all of this. But does it really need to be pointed out that she needn’t have traveled to Doha to figure this out? The Palestinians and their cheerleaders have been making this clear for decades. That is why Peace Now in Israel has been discredited by the events that have transpired since the Oslo Accords were signed, and their political supporters in the Knesset have been trounced in election after election. The traditional left in Israel, at least as far as the Palestinian issue is concerned, is barely alive, though you wouldn’t know it from the way many on the Jewish left in the United States talk. The conceit of groups like Americans for Peace Now and J Street — that Israel must be pressured to make peace by the United States for its own good — makes no sense once you realize the Jewish state has repeatedly tried and failed to trade land for peace and the Palestinians have little interest in a two-state solution no matter where Israel’s borders would be drawn.
Friedman archly compares the Arab hate fest she is attending to Jewish conclaves where only pro-Israel speakers participate. This is a bit much as is her insinuation no one who cares for Israel’s future can possibly oppose a partition of Jerusalem that would place Jewish holy places in the tender care of Abbas and his Hamas allies. As she has discovered to her consternation, Palestinians don’t care about Jewish sensibilities, let alone Jewish rights. Her failure to draw any rational conclusions from what she has heard in Doha tells us all we need to know about the irrelevance of Peace Now to any serious discussion about the future of the Middle East.
sweet! first Norman Finkelstein admits that the BDS movement is mostly about destroying Israel entirely. now this lefty discovers that Palestinian peace activists might not really have Israel's best interests at heart either. n nwhat's next: Roger Cohen admitting he's been wrong about Iran all this time and encouraging Bibi to take out the mullahs' nuke sites?
There is nothing more amusing than watching a left-wing Jew discover she is a fool.
Yes, it is pretty damn funny.
Cannot say it better than Gord11 – "There is nothing more amusing than watching a left-wing Jew discover she is a fool." n nWell, unless it is watching an unrepentant Liberal get their full Harvest, exponentially increased, of Seed in Kind, full upon their own head AND NOBODY ELSE'S at all, while their intended prey is rescued and Blessed abundantly. IN A MANNER THAT INCLUDES TOTAL VINDICATION and outs the Evil One before the World. nI remember a good while back, in the 90's – when a lady UN observer went to Israel and was among the so-called palestinians to observe the evil Jews mistreating the terrorists. And her car was shot to pieces and most everyone else in it but her was killed, and there were plenty of bullet holes in her door and places that showed what a miracle she was not cut to pieces by bullets herself. It was NOT on PURPOSE that she was missed, they had tried their VERY best! nThen forensics proved, not only was it NOT the Jews, but it was HER HOSTS! She couldn't get out of there fast enough and scurried back to UN home building. n And refused to condemn the Jews for her experience anyway.
Gord11 says:
February 28, 2012 at 10:29 pm
There is nothing more amusing than watching a left-wing Jew discover she is a fool.
It is difficult for me to be amused when I think about how these organizations, which have the unmitigated audacity to classify themselves as “progressives”, in- directly caused the death of Israeli civilians and may be responsible for many more in the years to come. Especially when one scratches the surface of these organizations and realizes that the money is coming from relatively few people, rather than being a popular movement. The NGO’s in question, we know who, are a facade created by a clique of self righteous, often wealthy, phoney baloney, willfully obtuse manipulative flat footed and ugly,indifferent disgraceful oppoortunistic appeasers of terrorism. I’ll tell you what is amusing. What is amusing is these organizations hiring wanna be journalists who just want a job, in a difficult economy in Israel. Can you imagine, selling your soul for a chicken shit job with Haaretz.
Take Rabbi Michael Lerner, for example. Very smart and evil guy. Realized that his doctorate could only get him so far with The Jewish Community, whom he wished to manipulate in order to bankroll and provide succerance to these organizations, so he became a rabbi. It reminds me of the dentist on Seinfeld who converted to Judaism so he could tell the jokes. Well the joke here was on us. Lerner influenced among others Hilary Clinton, actually advising her as first lady to believe that yes the American Jewish Community wants to see The US President pressure Israel to “make peace” and end the miserable “occupation” of “Palestine”. It almost worked, except for what Mr. Tobin describes above. Has lerner learned anything? He cannot be dumb with a doctorate in psychology can he? Let’s look at a recent writing of his;what he has to say after all of the damage he has done:
…Yet Judaism has another strand, what I and others call “Renewal Judaism,” which started with the Prophets and has reasserted itself in every major age of Jewish life, insisting that the God of Torah is really the Force of Healing and Transformation, and that our task is not to sanctify existing power relations but to challenge them in the name of a vision of a world of peace and justice. Perhaps the greatest danger that Israel poses to the Jewish people is the extent to which it has helped Jews become cynical about their central task: to proclaim to the world the possibility of possibility, to affirm the God of the universe as the Force that makes possible the breaking of the tendency of people to do to others the violence and cruelty that was done to them, the Force that makes possible the transcendence of “reality” as it is so that a new world can be shaped. If Israel is ever to be healed, it will only be when it is able to reject this slavish subordination to political realism and once again embrace the transformative spiritual message of renewal. [end quote]
I rest my case.
Lara Friedman is SHOCKED. Just SHOCKED! (laughter)
@TobinCommentary Your "Not a parody: Peace Now shocked to discover Arabs don't want peace." is – sorry – a piece of intellectual poverty. Gratuitous, and totally ignorant of her final impressions & thoughts on the Doha conference. n
Maybe you can specify how this article is "Gratuitous, and totally ignorant of her final impressions & thoughts…" Or are you just throwing in an ad hominem?
I don't think anyone seeking peace in the Mideast believes it's completely Israel's responsibility to initiate dialogue. We just prefer discussion to begin. As the one potent state in the equation, Israel must bear lion's share of that effort. It won't. With peace would come reckoning with the past; it would mean Israel would be forced to change its modus operandi. So, Israel doesn't want talk of peace, and as long as its powerful lobby holds sway on Capitol Hill, it won't get what it doesn't want.
However tempting, it is unseemly to mock Peace Now, and Jonathan Tobin deserves credit for his restraint. (I wouldn't have minded more.) Peace Now is an expression of the classical Jewish striving for peace. Yes, its efforts have been met by indifference by Israel's enemies. Would that they would have been met only by indifference, rather than vicious denunciation, by Israel's friends. Instead, some of Peace Now's supporters have paid a heavy price for their idealism: think Emil Grunzweig, z"l. Peace Now's striving is sincere and worthy of respect. Moreover, the organization has exposed the corrupting effect of the occupation on the Zionist Dream — corruption that will not end until Palestinians achieve political and economic stability — and freedom. Gloating is unseemly.
When Palestinian TV is on, it shows Sesame Street. nWhen it shows Sesame Street, it shows Bert. nWhen it shows Bert, it shows it might be OK to be gay. nWhen it shows it might be OK to be gay, the TV censors come out. nWhen the TV censors come out, they get friendly with the Palestinians. nDon’t let your TV censors get friendly with the Palestinians. nConfiscate Palestinian TV.
Peace Now is a business and a profitable one for it's leaders. It is largely supported financially by pro Palestinian and anti Israel European states, at least in Israel, and since it's leaders are Israeli Jews, it lets the Europeans deny their anti Semites. Peace Now in America is a different story. Much like JStreet it is composed of Left wing Jews who need an outlet for their politics which largely see Israel, and America, as capitalist predatory nations which use their military and economic might to rape and pillage the rest of humanity to provide a high standard of living while impoverishing the Third World. Since they are driven by this ideology, facts and the truth have no influence over them, like most Leftists, they will not let reality confuse them. nAlthough Ms. Friedman seems to have seen some light, I doubt if she will let this confuse her beliefs about how evil Israel is and how pitiful and humane the Arabs are.
Credit aside, those who stubbornly cling-despite all the facts on the ground to the contrary- to their religion of liberalism/delusion/appeasement and PC constraints, may or may not come to an epiphany. Big deal. nIt appears this is the case with Friedman. HOWEVER, the fact of the matter is that such delusions cost dearly, mainly in rivers of Jewish blood sacrificed on their (false) altars of peace! n nAdina Kutnicki, Israel
my comments are in double brackets [[]]
tamtzit613 says:
February 29, 2012 at 4:38 pm
However tempting, it is unseemly to mock Peace Now, and Jonathan Tobin deserves credit for his restraint. (I wouldn’t have minded more.)
[[Well that is just too bad. I think it was about right, plenty restrained enough, considering the lives lost thanks to Peace Now]]
Peace Now is an expression of the classical Jewish striving for peace.
[[No it's not. Peace Now does not act like in any classical way or otherwise like The Jews. If that were the case, we would be extinct.]]
Yes, its efforts have been met by indifference by Israel’s enemies. Would that they would have been met only by indifference, rather than vicious denunciation, by Israel’s friends. Instead, some of Peace Now’s supporters have paid a heavy price for their idealism: think Emil Grunzweig, z”l. [[more of you should pay that price, then maybe you'll wake up from your coma]]
Peace Now’s striving is sincere and worthy of respect.[[Actually it is neither. It is willfully obtuse. ]] Moreover, the organization has exposed the corrupting effect of the occupation on the Zionist Dream — [[no it has not, it has exposed itself to be a sham]]corruption that will not end until Palestinians achieve political and economic stability — and freedom.[[they are not concerned with that as a priority, first things first, destroy Israel, then will come peace and economic stability]] Gloating is unseemly. [[no gloat, only you represent The Goat]]
Peace Now is a dirty filthy lying self delusional arm of global terrorism and they deserve no better than the terrorists whom they actively shield.
Look, if the Palestinian Arabs called a press conference, broadcast globally on satellite television, and told the world in perfect English that they had only one goal: the destruction of the state of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the region, Lara Friedman and Peace Now and J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace and all the other leftists groups would immediately respond that the Arabs didn't actually mean what they said, or that they were only compelled to say this due to the brutality of the occupation, or that there was a mistranslation, or that one had to more carefully parse the statement to truly understand the nuances of the message. n nOh, I forgot; this happens every day.
Jonathan S Tobin: Not a Parody: Peace Now Shocked to Discover Arabs Don’t Want Peace n nThat mischaracteries the views of many at the conference, and not only the self-proclaimed Zionist, Lara Friedman. The conference Civil Service Commission stated, n n"The Civil Society Commission (CSC) — including 50 people representing NGOs, a number of governments and experts coming from all continents — agreed that action by civil society is essential to the protection of Jerusalem. Acknowledging that (1) there are two peoples and three religious groups linked to the Holy Land, (2) that respecting their full political and religious rights is essential for peace, and (3) acknowledging that Jerusalem as a city sacred to Islam, Christianity and Judaism must be safeguarded and preserved…" n nIn other words, they explicitly recognize the political and religious rights of all parties. That is certainly not the view of all participants, but your original statement is an overgeneralization. n n