Last week, Seth wrote an excellent post on the irreconcilability of European and Israeli visions for a two-state solution. What’s far more worrying, however, is that liberal American Jews appear to be on the European side of the divide. To grasp just how wide the gap yawns, compare the Union for Reform Judaism’s response to planned Israeli construction in the West Bank’s E-1 area to today’s remarks by one of Israel’s most dovish politicians, Tzipi Livni.
Last week, the URJ issued a statement condemning Israeli settlement activity, “especially in the E-1 area,” saying it “makes progress toward peace far more challenging, and is difficult to reconcile with the Government of Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution.” Now here’s what Livni–long the darling of liberal American Jews for her dovish views, and someone who has consistently blamed the Netanyahu government for the impasse in peace talks–told a gathering of foreign ambassadors today:
“It doesn’t matter what you think about settlements,” Livni said with uncharacteristic bluntness. “We have settlement blocs close to the Green Line and the only way for the conflict with the Palestinians to end is for Israel to keep them. Any pre-agreement by the international community to a withdrawal to 1967 borders before the talks occur, makes it difficult to negotiate. It was clear in the talks I conducted with the Palestinians that there would not be return to 1967 borders.”
Given that E-1 is the corridor that links one of those settlement blocs, Ma’aleh Adumim, to Jerusalem, it’s hard to reconcile those two views. After all, if the settlement blocs will be part of Israel under any agreement, then so will E-1–which, as Rick noted yesterday, is precisely why every peace plan every proposed, including former President Bill Clinton’s, in fact assigned E-1 to Israel. Indeed, the annexation documents for E-1 were signed by the patron saint of the peace process himself, Yitzhak Rabin, less than a year after he signed the Oslo Accords. Like everyone else who has seriously studied this issue, Rabin concluded both that it was vital for Israel’s security and–contrary to the widespread misconception today–that it would in no way preclude a viable and contiguous Palestinian state (a point Rich’s post also explains).
So if everyone knows that Israel is going to retain this area anyway, how can advancing construction within it possibly “make progress toward peace far more challenging”? In fact, as Livni noted, the opposite is true: The real impediment to negotiations is the Palestinian belief that the world will back their demand for a full withdrawal to the 1967 lines and eventually force Israel to comply. And that’s precisely the belief the URJ reinforced via its condemnation: After all, the Palestinians must be saying, if even American Jews won’t back Israel’s position, it will soon have no choice but to capitulate.
Back in 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Palestinians that if they weren’t prepared to concede Ma’aleh Adumim, “Then you won’t have a state!” Livni said the same thing today. But the URJ effectively told the Palestinians the opposite: It’s not the Palestinian refusal to cede Ma’aleh Adumim that’s the problem, it said, but Israel’s insistence on acting as if Ma’aleh Adumim will remain Israeli.
And when liberal American Jews can’t support a wall-to-wall Israeli consensus that encompasses even its most dovish politicians, you have to wonder whether they support the real Israel at all–or only some idealized fantasy of it that exists only in their own minds.
Most American jews are blinded by their support for abortion and gay marriage. Nothing else really matters. Alan Dershowitz is a quintessential example. "Mainstream" Catholics, Protestants, and Jews are now dedicated secularists. They have lost the faith of their forefathers.
There is no "two-state" solution to the war between the Arab (Muslim) states and Israel. The Arabs who call themselves "Palestinians" are propagating the lie of Soviet propaganda, for the Soviet Union, with Gamal Nasser in Egypt, in Cairo in 1964, invented the "Palestine Liberation Organization" (P.L.O.), which came to fame in 1972 by murdering the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich. One effect was to call Arabs "Palestinians." nThe names "Palestine" meant "land of the Jews" and "Palestinian" meant "Jew" from the time that the Roman Emperor Hadrian changed the name of Judea to "Palestina" in 135 A.D., after defeating the last Jewish rebellion under Bar Kochba, for he wanted to eradicate all memory of Judea and the Jews. (He outlawed Judaism and renamed Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina," "Aelius" being his gens name.) After World War I, Great Britain was awarded the "Palestine Mandate" to be "the homeland of the Jews."
And many Reform Jews in America are not Jewish at all, being the offspring of non-Jewish mothers who never had a valid conversion. The problem continues to worsen the longer the Reform movement mistakenly says that non-Jews are Jewish.
Mentioning 1967 CEASE FIRE LINES OF 1948 as "borders" is misleading and one of the counterproductive nomenclatures of even strongly pro-Israel supporters. There never have been borders to the State of Israel. Only CEASE FIRE LINES OF 1948 and then 1967. Arab aggressions have moved those lines again and again. AGGRESSIONS, not simply wars. These facts have to hammered home ceaselessly. The penalty for these aggressions will and should be a smaller Arab state in Judea Samaria. Perhaps none at all if there will be justice.
Very true. As is the misconception that UNSC Resolution 242 requires withdrawal from all lands captured in 1967 rather than withdrawal to secure and recognized borders to be negotiated by the parties. n nOr that 242 requires ANY withdrawal before those borders are agreed upon in a comprehensive peace agreement. n n
Or, to the Devil with all of this nonsense. Israel should remind the UN that not only Judea, Samaria and Gaza are part of the territories designated for Jewish settlement under their own precious "international law," but Jordan as well. n nAs things are now, Jordan and the "Palestian" Arabs are illegally and forcefully occupying Jewish lands and deserve no recognition or legitimacy either as a people or as nations. Period. End of discussion. Talk to the hand. If the UN disagrees, it must somehow try and abrogate the San Remo conference agreement before demanding territorial concessions from any nation in the former Ottoman territories.
if all liberal American Jewish denominations were gathered in one place at one time they would about equal the viewing audience for any one episode of Charlie Sheen's Anger Management. The left-wing secular Jews who don't associate with any shul may well *be* the viewing audience of Anger Management… n nwinning!
Unlike what what the Nazis, progressives and bloggers think, we tiny 1.8% of the population don't wield infinite power. So it's largely irrelevant what American Jews, particularly far left secular American Jews think about much of anything. None of the other Jews are listening to them and neither is the rest of American polity. They are, as a group, uninformed, blinkered and reduced to marching around with a sign that could just as easily be about Darfur or a school board meeting as Israel. They are simply the angry people doing angry people things. It doesn't matter what it is or why or to what end. Israel to them exists as a signpost of something to be irritated about.
The religion of the URJ is progressive politics. Their connection with the life and the land of Israel is extremely remote. It can thus hardly be surprising that their policy statements are indistinguishable from that of the EU.
As time goes by there is less and less communality between Liberal Am. Jews and IL Jews. Soon they will be like the Sunnis and the Shias! Am. Jews have less and less interest in IL. Too bad. Division weakens both sides.
I was a guest at the URJ convention a few years ago, and was frequently asked why the Reform Movement has not taken on in Israel. (Their non English speaking members, tend to be exclusively Ashkenazi, non-Russian Yuppies or members of the rural gentry.) This article tangently gives the answer: the Israeli Reform movement has also positioned itself deep in the Progressive elite. By doing so, they make people with other political opinions feel unwelcome in their congregations, and have made the self irrelevant to the Zionist, traditionalist majority.
Liberal Jewish Americans have been ambivalent about "identity" for as long as they've existed! They question their American-ness as well. In fact the Left is devoted to dismantling whatever identifies individuals as "different" from one another. They hate the status quo in particular—because it is "what we are at present." Even this is too much for them. n nAnd so they pound away at "being Jewish," "being men," "being American," etc. They adopt transient and shifting ideas about gender, religion, nationality, sexual preference—i.e., anything when it comes to defining who one is. They want everything in flux, nothing definite, nothing defining. No walls, no boundaries, no lines of demarcations—and definitely (!!) no settlements. n nPalestine, to them is "not Israel." Palestinians, to them, are "not Israelis." The European way of life is, to them, "not the American way of life." And so on. Anything that isn't what they are, anything that doesn't threaten to give them too much "identity," this is what they embrace. And it extends to the Reform Jewish Movement as well. It's "not too much Judaism," kind of all-inclusive, not exclusive, in flux, vague, whatever you want it to be, one thing today, quite another tomorrow, endless permutations and forumulations. Indefinite. n nI had a famous friend once, a Jewish woman who was so liberal that she removed every door in her house, tore down interior walls separating the kitchen from the living room from the sleeping quarters, etc. She couldn't bear the separations, the boundaries, because she hated being defined. n nThis is the most infantile, least adult state of being there is. Newborns cannot stand being separated from their mothers. And this is all one needs to know about "being a liberal." It is a life of yearning to be "little" once more, to be dependent on mom and dad, to be "theirs," to belong to them. And this explains all one needs to know about why Reform Jews are who they are, why they think as they do.
Many American Jews are suicidal – apparently 70% voted for Barack Hussein Obama in the presidential elections. AIPAC officially supported Obama – they should be called the "Anti-Israel PAC." See David Horowitz's speech to the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America).
Is the URJ seriously contemplating the ethnic cleansing of 40,000 Jews from Ma'aleh Adumim just because the Palestinians and the international peanut gallery demands it? Or do they anticipate, absent the E1 corridor, that Ma'aleh Adumim will remain isolated and disconnected, as Mount Scopus was from Jerusalem until 1967? The first won't happen, and the second is not workable.