Netanyahu's deceptive discourse forces Israelis to ask: What do we want?

Netanyahu's deceptive discourse forces Israelis to ask: What do we want?

The choice of a messianic, racist, Jewish society is not yet accepted by most Israelis - so Netanyahu has made the tactical decision to conceal present his actions as a prolonged reprisal action, By Sefi Rachlevsky | Haaretz Sep. 30, 2014 |

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ address at the United Nations is an important part of his movement toward an upheaval in Israel. It’s a continuation of the identity putsch in his “Jewish state” campaign.”

At its core, Zionism was an attempt to wrest Jewish identity from the hands of hostile non-Jews and take possession of it. Netanyahu’s move does just the opposite. His use of fear tactics is not “solely,” or even mainly, aimed at returning the Jews to the ghetto defined by non-Jewish racism. Through his all-consuming focus on “exposing” the intentions of others, Netanyahu is dismantling independent Israeli identity and Israeli choice. The question of “What do we want?” was disposed of, almost the same way that Yitzhak Rabin, one of the symbols of the world of this question, was disposed of, together with the decision to adopt his order of priorities.

Click here for a transcript and video of the full speech.

There is a symbolic aspect to Netanyahu’s focus on the UN and the fact that he does so in English. Gone is the talk of universal Jewish ideas about the family of nations, the Hebrew Ben-Gurionism of “oom shmoom” to dismiss the UN or “It doesn’t matter what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.” Instead, we have the exact opposite: an identity that is dictated by others and presented as an endless reprisal action to the primary move of exposing gentile racism.

Behind all of this is a great deceit. There is no greater success for Netanyahu than the repeated asking of the question, “What does he want?” and answering that all he wants is to remain in power. The truth is very different. After all, the settlement enterprise, that Kookian enterprise of Rabbi Dov Lior and Naftali Bennett, is entirely an Israeli choice — and from their perspective, a Jewish choice. It is an arrogant, messianic, racist choice by the “chosen people.” But since this choice of a messianic, racist, Jewish society, a society of extreme inequality, a society without borders, a society of settlements, is not yet accepted by most Israelis, Netanyahu has made the tactical decision to conceal this fact for now and to instead present his actions as a prolonged reprisal action, the response of the eternal Jewish victim to ongoing anti-Jewish hostility.

It is clear that all of Netanyahu’s activity is deliberate and planned, from the complete support of the settlement enterprise, through the Judaization of Israel, his more than nodding support for incitement against Arabs and the left, the crushing of the free media and the imposition of extreme capitalism that leads to record inequality. But because it is so extreme, he feels the need to disguise it and present it as ongoing retaliation. If as a result the basis for Hebrew identity — the independent, confident identity that was a central tenet to the creation of Labor Zionism — is undermined, all the better.

From this, we get to one of the changes that Israel’s non-right must make in order to keep the deceptive discourse of the right from dominating. Instead of pinning its hopes on “peace,” thereby helping Netanyahu to frame the anti-Zionist debate of “Who are the goyim?,” “What do they want to do to us?” and “Can we trust them?,” with all its racist responses, the non-right would do well as to ask the fundamental Zionist question: What do we want?

This, in many respects, is how the Bible was made: through choice. And it is definitely the way modern Jewish identity developed — by pouncing on the promises of the French Revolution in order to rescue itself from an identity held by others into an identity constructed from free choice.

The non-right has the power to return to the path that created Israel’s independence and its Declaration of Independence; the path that asks, What does Israel want? What does Israel need? The substantive answers are a free and egalitarian society, not one that is racist-religious; a society that is sure of itself. A society with borders. A society that doesn’t create a new, inverted Pale of Settlement beyond its borders, in which the Jews are citizens and their neighbors are not. A society that isn’t obsessed with exposing non-Jewish evil, but with developing Israeli power, freedom, spirit, self-confidence and justice.

Back to liberal Zionism

Israel's silent majority needs to rise up against the extremists from both right and left and free itself of their stranglehold.

By Ari Shavit | Sep. 11, 2014

You want the truth? We’ve had it. We’ve had it with the delusional nationalists who are leading Israel to destruction, and we’ve had it with the visionary leftists who are stoning Israel. We’ve had it with the skullcap-wearing post-Zionists who are burying Zionism in the hills, and we’ve had it with the bespectacled post-Zionists who are depicting Zionism as a series of crimes. We’ve had it with the messianic believers in the entire Land of Israel, who don’t understand that without dividing the land, there will be no state, and we’ve had it with the messianic believers in a perfect peace, who don’t understand Hamas and the Islamic State and don’t know where they are living.

We’ve had it with the racist right, which destroys the image of the democratic Jewish state, and we’ve had it with the lamentations of the foolish left, which has lost any feeling of blue-and-white pride. We’ve had it with those who live in an immoral world of being only for ourselves, and we’ve had it with those who live in a warped world of being only against ourselves. They’re all so childish, the extremists of both right and left; they’re so pathetic. They resemble each other and deserve each other, and together, they are bringing disaster upon us.

You want the truth? We’ve been broken. We’ve been broken by the crude discourse of power and pillars of smoke, and also by the empty discourse of the Arab peace initiative, the Mahmoud Abbas hope and peace in our time. We’ve been broken by the moldy slogans of “if we just stand firm,” and also by the hollow promises of “if we just extend our hand.” We’ve been broken by the stubborn refusal to understand that the occupation is killing us, diplomatically, morally and demographically, and also by the refusal to recognize that Palestine isn’t California and Hamas leader Khaled Meshal isn’t Martin Luther King. We’ve been broken by those who see bloodthirsty Arabs and anti-Semitic heirs of the Nazis everywhere, and also by those who refuse to admit that Arab fascism and Palestinian fundamentalism and anti-Semitic European Israel-haters exist.

We’ve been broken by those who think we are the only victims, and also by those who are convinced the Palestinians are nothing but victims. We’ve been broken by those who haven’t yet learned that if you grab too much, you’ll end up with nothing, and also by those who have forgotten that in the Middle East, anyone who doesn’t have power or who doesn’t exercise power won’t survive. They are so disconnected from reality, the extremists of both right and left. They resemble each other and deserve each other and, together, they are bringing disaster upon us.

You want the truth? It has to be stopped. The nationalist right has been acting for years in an anti-national fashion, weakening the Jewish nation-state and endangering the Zionist enterprise. The universalist left has been acting for years in a non-universal fashion, adopting a particularistic approach that blames Israel (for everything) and forgives the Palestinians (for everything.) The impassioned stupidity of both poles blinds us from seeing the fate of our generation, half of which was described by Moshe Dayan at Nahal Oz almost 60 years ago: to be prepared and armed and strong and hard, but also to be wise and moderate and just. The stupid spat between the blind zealots is preventing us from seeing a complicated but clear reality: There is no Zionist future in this place that isn’t liberal, and there is no liberal future in this place that isn’t Zionist.

The delusional right currently has the support of less than 30 percent of Israelis, and the delusional left has the support of less than three percent. The former control the political system and the latter control significant portions of the media, academia and reports submitted to The Hague, but neither of them understand Israeliness or reflect Israeliness. They haven’t internalized the miracle of our existence, the uniqueness of our existence or the challenge of our existence.

The time has come for the silent 70 percent of Israelis in the center to rise up against the extremists from both right and left and free themselves of their stranglehold. The time has come for a broad-based, angry Israeli rebellion that will return Israel to reality, morality and sanity. We mustn’t give up this one country of ours without a fight. Our duty now is to repossess it, redefine it and put it back on track.

For Israel engagement on campus: Coaches, not cheerleaders - YEHUDA KURTZER September 11, 2014

For Israel engagement on campus: Coaches, not cheerleaders - YEHUDA KURTZER September 11, 2014

School is back in session, and amidst all the excitement of new beginnings there is a mounting, murmuring anxiety for what awaits Jewish students on college campus this year in the wake of the summer’s war.

Some of this concern is well founded. Two isolated incidents – one in Athens at Ohio University, the second at Temple University – demonstrated the perversity and repugnancy of anti-Israel vitriol, whether in the form of a publicity stunt gone awry or resorting to violence to silence a provocative debate. A perfect storm seems to be assembling against the forces of pro-Israel.

On one side, the situation on campus combines an academic culture that leans far left on issues relating to Israel-Palestine, the high visibility over the summer of what was perceived by some as a disproportionate war, and Israel’s growing isolation in parts of the West. At the same time, the Jewish student body that cares about these issues seeks to maintain a combination of a deep relationship with Israel, to be Jewishly visible, and to be fully integrated as Jews in the life of the campus. Mapping this new reality against this aspiration creates dissonance and discomfort, and many of my own conversations with leaders in Jewish campus life have borne out these concerns about what may unfold this fall.

Nevertheless, there is a strategic error already starting to emerge in the Jewish community’s predictable response to these concerns, which places the entirety of emphasis on the facts and fictions of the war, and proffers only a militaristic and defensive response in what is ultimately a conflict of ideas. We can already see it coming, in talking points and flashy brochures (“Five Facts College Students Need to Know About the War in Gaza,” and the like) that seek to educate retrospectively about a conflict whose optics (we are Goliath, they are David) are not on Israel’s side. This instinct is born of defensive thinking: it suggests that when it comes to Israel education, our goals are to explain and defend practices that have already happened, or to reframe the historical realities that have befallen us that are outside our control.

This instinct is problematic in three ways. First, it ironically undermines the core goals of Zionism, which meant to engage the Jewish people in the exercise of being agents of change with respect to our own political, social, cultural, and economic realities. Zionism intended to bridge concrete activism toward Jewish national aspirations with the ongoing act of imagination about the ideal forms that those national aspirations should take. Substituting passive (and worse, retroactive) support in exchange for these activities of imagination replaces participation with a thin patriotism, and substitutes deep belonging for hollow particularism. Zionism and taking Israel seriously should demand of us a willingness to confront what Israel does well and what it does not do well, and should empower us to be change-agents in making possible the Israel we imagine.

Second, this defensive approach tends to reduce our morality to Manichaeism. In this worldview, which is sadly emerging as a louder voice in the Jewish community, the discourse is reduced to ‘we are right’ and ‘they are wrong,’ and ‘here are the facts to show to ourselves and others.’ Loyalty to Israel does not demand, nor does it depend on, the total moral clarity and coherence of all of its actions; if anything, true moral clarity requires a meaningful blending of loyalty to self, empathy to others, and the recognition that short of the battles waged on the Kingdom of Heaven, it is borderline idolatrous to consider any human conflict to be one between the forces of pure light and pure darkness. Conditioning ourselves to be discerning moral thinkers and actors in an atmosphere of moral complexity while remaining loyal to our people and the State of Israel is not a betrayal of Israel; but insisting on a framework of loyalty that requires us to suppress our ethical instincts to both self and other might just be a betrayal of humanity.

And third, these advocacy efforts based on a curated set of facts also undermine the best professionals and educators that we as a Jewish community have in place to do the critical work of student engagement on campus. Our colleagues working at Hillels around the country are talented, and they are driven to do their work by a passion for the big questions of identity, belonging and meaning. They did not go into Jewish education to win a Kafkaesque “color war” mapped onto complex geopolitical realities; they went into this line of work to shape lives and help inform life decisions. To describe them as deployed as ‘the front line in a battle’, to think of our responsibility as to supply them the weaponry of talking points to be used in a fundamentally unwinnable battle of ideas – this approach and these resources implicitly call into question their ability as professionals to manage nuance, shepherd conversation, steward sophistication, and model a form of leadership that will enable Jewish life to arise above the gutter to which it is being dragged.

I am saddened that we are making cheerleaders out of people who we need to be coaches. Out of a fear of the threats of delegitimization, demonization and double-standards, we are building a system through which we demoralize, destabilize, and diminish the very leaders we need our campus colleagues to be. While I understand the value of Israel advocacy in frameworks that demand advocacy (with elected officials, foreign governments and the like), and while I see the appeal of the advocacy approach to concerned parents in reassuring them that we have facts as ammunition to combat those who oppose us, the notion that college students crave concise clarity when it comes to complex issues – especially those students without strong enough roots to believe that ‘their side’ has a credibility advantage – misreads how young adult development works, and barters the credibility that comes with taking people seriously in exchange for the desire for lockstep loyalty. It makes Hillel a place of retreat for safety rather than a place to grow, and turns educators into gatekeepers.

Israel engagement, in responding to this micro-crisis and in the work more broadly, must instead do something radically different. It must enlarge our educators, our Hillel directors, and our student leaders: it has to give them the confidence to lead difficult conversations and to model thought-leadership on hard issues, such that engaging with Israel – with whatever partisan lens one chooses – is an intellectually, morally, and affectively compelling activity. Instead of name-calling – such as responding to calls for boycotts of Israel by demanding our own boycotts of news outlets or speakers we do not like – we must provide the space for the Jewish leaders to whom we entrust our children to actually lead, and the trust for them to do so in ways that will be developmentally appropriate and intellectually compelling for the campus environment in which they operate and live.

The sad truth is that there is little reason to believe that this is the last war Israel will face, and little hope that – whatever the majority of the Israeli populace felt about this war – Israel’s policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians will become instantly morally unambiguous. In these conditions, let’s invest in our educators and leaders to make them capable of leading with integrity and authenticity, rather than undermining them with the kinds of pseudo-education that merely represents the façade in front of our own anxieties.

Israel’s land appropriation: Foolish, ill-timed and self-destructive

Nothing unites the world against Israel like settlement building. Even Israel’s staunchest supporters abroad, trying to make Israel’s case to a skeptical public after the Gaza war, are asking: Why undermine us now?

By Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie | Sep. 3, 2014 | 

Perhaps there could be a more foolish, ill-timed, and self-destructive decision than the one made by Israel’s cabinet this week, but it is hard to imagine what it might be.
Israel’s enemies in the Middle East and throughout the world are rejoicing. If you really despise the Jewish state, nothing makes you happier than a move by Israeli leaders to expand settlements. The move, in this case, was a decision by the cabinet to appropriate 1000 acres of West Bank land for settlement building in the Etzion settlement bloc, near Bethlehem. The land has been designated as “state land,” even though ownership is claimed by local Palestinians.
What happened after the decision was, of course, completely predictable. European governments were infuriated, and the hands of those already pushing for a total economic boycott of the West Bank were strengthened. And Israel’s most important ally, the United States of America, rarely inclined toward public criticism of Israel, issued a condemnation of its own.
Nothing unites the world against Israel like settlement building. And while there is never a good time to build settlements in the territories, the timing in this case was astoundingly bad, even for tone-deaf Israeli politicians more concerned with immediate political advantage than with Israel’s standing in the world.
Israel’s staunchest supporters are among those who are wondering how such a decision could possibly be made at this time. With the war in Gaza just concluded, Israel’s friends in the West are now immersed in the task of making Israel’s case to a skeptical public. Israel’s struggle against Hamas was a just war, imposed on Israeli leadership by more than a decade of relentless rocket fire. This barrage of rockets ended any semblance of normal life for more than a million people. To be sure, the death of every Palestinian innocent is a tragedy that rends the heart, but that does not make Israel’s cause any less just or her case for responding to constant attacks any less compelling. Israel, in my view, did not act too quickly or too harshly; if anything, she acted too hesitantly and reluctantly, when a more prompt and targeted response might have been both more effective and more humane.
But, alas, while the responsibility of Hamas for this conflict should be abundantly clear, it has not proven to be so. Europeans, impacted by a struggling economy, an emerging political radicalism, and above all countless media images of dead Palestinian civilians, have allowed ugly anti-Israel sentiments to surface. And even in America, especially among the young, support for Israel has declined.
In short, there is no denying that Israel is vulnerable right now. Even though Hamas connived to promote rather than prevent the death of its own people, ours is a media age, and the pictures of destruction in Gaza are hard to overcome. And so Israel’s supporters set out to patiently build the case for her position. And in response, what does Israel’s cabinet do? It announces new settlements, thereby undercutting all the carefully marshalled arguments for a justice-seeking Israeli government motivated by principles and high ideals.
Israel, I am quick to say, has no responsibility to make my life as an Israel supporter easy. Israel needs to look after her own security and interests. But the problem I have is that building settlements in Gush Etzion does not add to Israel’s security in any conceivable way; it does not protect her citizens from rocket fire or guard them from terrorists. In fact, by undermining her political standing and weakening her regional alliances, it does just the opposite. Why then would the government make such a decision? The only possible reason is to appease the restive settler parties; and while local politics exist everywhere, this is, by any reasonable standard, simply too high a price to pay.
Of course, even absent support from a single significant ally or friend, the Jewish world does not lack for those who rush forward with excuses for settlement building. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs argued in its statement that it “became clear” in recent negotiations that Israel would keep Gush Etzion and the other settlement blocs, a point confirmed by the 2004 letter from President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon and statements made in 2011 by President Obama. But while Israel can make a case for keeping the settlement blocs, she cannot do so if she refuses, as she has done, to define with precision what the settlement blocs are. To lay claim to settlement blocs without delineating their borders permits the government to settle practically anywhere. And to suggest that Presidents Bush and Obama saw their statements as offering approval for settlement expansion is truly absurd, as every American statement over the last decade indicates.
We in the Jewish community need to stop denying reality. Settlement building is a disaster. To be sure, Zionist principles and democratic values dictate an end to settlement expansion. But all that aside, practical reasons are enough. At a time when the war with Hamas is unfinished, Iran pursues nuclear weapons, and Syria and Iraq are engaged in a bloody civil war, Israel has enough challenges to meet without the endless complications that flow from building more settlements. A little common sense, please. Israel’s government needs to reverse its decision of last week and stop expanding settlements once and for all.
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie served as president of the Union for Reform Judaism from 1996 to 2012. He is now a writer and lecturer living in Westfield, New Jersey. 

President Rivlin (the new Israeli President) working on anti-racism program Tells Reform leaders: 'This is a terrible evil and a disgrace to Israeli life.'

President Rivlin (the new Israeli President) working on anti-racism program

Tells Reform leaders: 'This is a terrible evil and a disgrace to Israeli life.'

By Or Kashti   | Aug. 27, 2014 | Haaretz

President Reuven Rivlin has been working in recent weeks on a multidisciplinary program to combat incitement and violence, as he replied in a letter to the head of the Reform Movement who had congratulated him when he took office. Several discussions about the program, which is in the preliminary stages, have already taken place in various government ministries, including the Education Ministry.

“Since I was chosen for my position, I have devoted most of my time to a cross-border, cross-sector Israeli campaign in the homes of all the soldiers who fell in Operation Protective Edge. I have met amazing families and wonderful young people who display great energy, good will, dedication and Zionism,” Rivlin wrote about two weeks ago to Reform Movement leaders in Israel. “Still, I have not refrained from expressing my fears of the rising voices of hatred, hotheadedness and racism in Israeli society, particularly between Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel.”

Rivlin added, “These voices find expression at sports matches, on social networks and in the media. This is a terrible evil and a disgrace to Israeli life, which must find ways to isolate and uproot it.”

Rivlin has spoken out several times in recent weeks against displays of hatred and racism. In his first Knesset speech after being sworn in as president, he said: “At this difficult time, too, we must not close our eyes to the extremism and violence that have raised their ugly heads among us.”

On July 30, he expressed support for the “situation room of sanity” established by Gili Roman, a teacher at Hakfar Hayarok High School, in which pupils respond “to violence and bullying with a voice of moderation and tolerance.”

On August 6, Rivlin condemned the racial slurs that had been shouted at Maharan Radi, a player on the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team, and on August 17 he wrote, “The displays of incitement against [married couple] Mahmoud [Mansour] and Morel [Malka] of Jaffa are infuriating and distressing. ... There are tough and harsh disagreements among us, but incitement, violence and racism have no place in Israeli society.”

In his letter to the heads of the Reform Movement, Rivlin wrote, “Even before I was elected, and with greater intensity since I was elected, I have been working together with my advisory team on preparing and presenting a multidisciplinary program to combat incitement and violence. I hope that this program will solidify the efforts to combat violence in society as a whole, and contribute to a positive and supportive atmosphere that will take the form of a long-term change in the public climate in the State of Israel.” Sources in the president’s official residence said that Rivlin’s work on the issue was “in the first stages of preparation.”

The executive director of the Reform Movement in Israel, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yair Lapid urging the establishment of an interministerial committee for the fight against racism, as stipulated in the coalition agreement between Yesh Atid and Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu. No such committee has been established yet.

Is this the generation that rejects circumcision?

Is this the generation that rejects circumcision?

There is no Jewish death penalty. There are no rabbinic executioners, or people who amputate limbs for violations of Jewish law. Ritual circumcision is the only act of physical harm that remains.

By Avraham Burg | Aug. 29, 2014 | Haaretz

A debate has come into being quietly here about the place of Brit Milah (the ritual circumcision of Jewish baby boys on the eighth day after birth). The debate is not taking place abroad, not in “anti-Semitic” Germany, but here in the State of Israel. When one mother refused to have her son circumcised, the rabbinical court tried to force her to do so, and theHigh Court of Justice countered the rabbis in the name of liberty.

This topic, which vanished when the fighting in Gaza broke out, could have toppled governments at other times. I think the issue runs much deeper than a legal battle.

On the day that my fourth grandson was circumcised, I wondered whether the institution of circumcision would be the next one to fall. Observance of the Sabbath, kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), mikveh (family purity laws), and the religious prohibitions against same-sex relations have not been obligatory social conventions for quite some time. They became the preserve, and means of preservation, of a diminishing minority. Will the same processes cause circumcision to follow suit?

Something about the institution of ritual circumcision is no longer all that convincing for young parents of this generation. In my family, all the males were always circumcised, without exception. My parents never thought about it. My own heart was pained at my sons’ circumcision, though it was no more than a young father’s heartache over the pain of his newborn baby. The discourse is different among my children. “Maybe we won’t do it. What for, anyway?” they have asked themselves four times already. The first time we talked about it, I realized that many of their friends had the same questions. Although they did it in the end, their questions are still real and require thought.

I approached the topic with a great deal of curiosity, and conducted a kind of man-in-the-street poll for several weeks. I asked my questions with care and got detailed responses. The many answers I received all pointed in a single direction: that the institution of circumcision is coming to an end. Or, to be more precise, the institution of circumcision has no real hold among the segment of the Israeli population that is not conservative and religiously observant.

On what basis do I make these statements? Let us begin with the explanations that people give themselves and that were given to me. “It’s healthy.” “It’s hygienic.” “It’s aesthetic.” “Half of American Christian men are circumcised.” “So the kid won’t stand out.” “So he won’t be embarrassed in the shower, at the pool, on the annual school trip, in the army.”

My innocent question, “Is any one of these answers sufficient reason to maim a child?” was met with silence. I asked, “Would you take out a child’s appendix soon after birth? Or implant a pacemaker in his body in order to play it safe?” The answer, with an embarrassed smile, was, “Oh, I never thought about it that way.” Nobody, but nobody, cited religious obligation as justification for the act.

But the only reason to harm a defenseless child in that way is the religious reason: the covenant between God and the Jewish people. Besides all the difficult restrictions I mentioned above (the Sabbath, dietary laws and the Jewish family that does not contain only Jews or only heterogeneous relationships) that are violated in public, we would do well to take note of the common thread that underlies many of these nullified commandments, whose examples include an eye for an eye, the Jewish death penalty, the sorcerous ordeal whose purpose was the public humiliation of a woman suspected of adultery. They are all concerned with the physical aspect of the religious conventions.

Generations of Jews have lived since those ancient commandments were almost completely abolished. Here are the facts: there is no Jewish death penalty. We do not put out eyes or cut off hands. There are no rabbinic executioners, or people who amputate limbs for violations of Jewish law. All that are left are the mohalim – those who are specially trained to perform circumcisions.

Ritual circumcision is the only act of physical harm that remains. For how much longer?

The acts of physical harm I enumerated above, and many others, fell into disuse as the social and cultural conditions in which the Jews lived changed. Is our generation the one that is ripe for the abolition of ritual circumcision?

A challenging opponent has arisen against the ancient rite of circumcision: the concept of rights. Recent generations have deepened and broadened the discourse of rights – the rights of a human being to his body and dignity.

Rights and liberties are the true strength of Western society. This is a society that fights with all its might against female genital mutilation, which is customary in other parts of the world and still widespread among immigrants who refuse to assimilate and internalize the values of the new world to which they moved.

The fight against female genital mutilation is highly complex; the woman’s right to do as she pleases with her own body, her right to enjoy sexual relations at least as much as her male partner does, the freeing of the woman from any form of ownership by men (such as her father, brother, husband or pimp).

The way the fight against female genital mutilation radiates to the struggle against male circumcision is well known and extremely significant. After all, what exactly is the difference between them?

The difference is that male circumcision has positive branding compared with female genital mutilation, even though the issues are no different. On the one hand is the parents’ right to raise their children according to their faith. On the other is children’s inborn rights over their own bodies. On the strength of that right, violence against children was prohibited, and corporal punishment at home and in school utterly condemned.

It is likely that many people will continue circumcising their sons for religious or behavioral reasons, and many will look for other ways to express their membership in the Jewish collective without compromising on universal principles, which include the child’s right to an intact body.

Let us conclude with a paradox. An important part of the religious argument against abortion is the fetus’ right to life. According to this argument, the fetus is a living creature in every way. And, they claim, every child – inside or outside the womb – has the right to be born and to live.

So if the fetus, which is connected to the placenta, already has rights within the womb and may not be harmed for religious reasons, how is it possible to harm him, for religious reasons, from the moment he is born?

The next step for liberal Zionists after Gaza: a Freedom Summer with Palestinians

The next step for liberal Zionists after Gaza: a Freedom Summer with Palestinians

In an era of direct action, supporters of the two-state solution must start putting their bodies on the line.

By Peter Beinart | Aug. 28, 2014 | Haaretz

The third Gaza war in less than six years now seems to be over. On the surface, despite the horrifying destruction, it doesn’t appear to have ended much differently than its two predecessors. But if you think of each war as a snapshot in political time, you can see how the picture has changed.

With each war, the prospects of an American-brokered two state solution have dimmed. In late 2008, when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, its prime minister supported a Palestinian state free of Israeli troops on almost 95 percent of the West Bank. Today, Israel’s prime minister has essentially ruled that out. In 2008, the United States had just elected a president eager to put Israeli-Palestinian peace near the center of his foreign policy agenda. Now that American president has given up. In 2008, it was rare and exotic to hear intellectuals propose alternatives to the two state solution. Now the New York Times publishes them all the time. 

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement is built for this moment. Its activists long ago abandoned hope that Washington would aid the Palestinian cause. Nor would they mourn the demise of the two state solution, since key BDS leaders oppose the existence of a Jewish state within any borders.

The American Jewish right is built for this moment too. The more hostile global opinion becomes to Israel, and the more that hostility shades into anti-Semitism, the more hawkish Jewish groups can stand at the ramparts, ignoring Israel’s misdeeds and raising money by telling Jews that we’re living in the 1930s once again.

In the United States, the people least prepared for this new era of outside-the-Beltway activism are us: Those American Jewish liberals who still consider the two state solution the best hope for a just peace between the River and the Sea. Although J Street, the most well known liberal Zionist group, was born only six years ago, it was born in a prior age. In its first year of life, 2008, it saw Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas come within months of inking a two state deal. (That’s what the two of them have subsequently said). In its second year, 2009, it saw Barack Obama appoint a high-profile envoy to kick-start the peace process. It’s understandable, therefore, that J Street fashioned itself as Obama’s “blocking back,” clearing a path so Congress didn’t sabotage the White House’s efforts at peace.

J Street has made important gains. It has forged alliances with a growing number of Democratic members of Congress and with some of the Democratic Party’s biggest Jewish donors. And it has helped destroy the myth that most American Jews support the Israeli government no matter what it does.

But by itself, J Street’s strategy of pressuring Washington to pressure Israel won’t work if the White House won’t aggressively run the ball. And there’s little reason to believe that this White House, a Hillary Clinton White House or a Republican White House, will. Without outside pressure, however, it’s unlikely Israel will elect another government eager for a two state solution anytime soon. The lesson of the last few years, in fact, is that absent outside pressure, the Palestinian issue recedes from Israeli politics entirely.

The problem, for people who believe in the two state solution, is that most of the pressure that exists today comes either from Hamas terrorism or a BDS movement that is largely hostile to Israel’s existence.

It’s time for American Jews who support Israel but oppose the occupation to commit to large-scale, direct action of our own. And the most important place to do so is in the West Bank. Palestinians in villages like Bil’in and Nabi Saleh have been protesting, unarmed, for years against the theft of their land. But their efforts receive little attention in American Jewish circles or in the American press. Few American Jews have any idea that under the military law that governs Palestinians in the West Bank, Israel routinely criminalizes freedom of speech and assembly. Or that peaceful protesters can be held in detention for years without trial.

But if thousands of American Jews joined those protests, American Jews would know. Protesters would return home with videos to show their synagogues; hawkish parents would be appalled by the treatment meted out to their children. And the American media, which covers Jews far more intensively than it covers Palestinians, would follow. The model would be Freedom Summer, Robert Moses’ campaign to bring white college students to help register voters in Mississippi in 1964, and thus draw the nation’s eyes to oppression that garnered little media attention when practiced only against blacks.

Such an effort would not be simple. The call for Jewish volunteers would have to come from Palestinian activists themselves. There’s a risk that some protesters would throw stones. Even if American Jews came to support a two state solution, some of the people marching with them would not.

But even if protesters differed on their ultimate goal, the core message—that it is fundamentally unjust to deny people the basic rights that their neighbors enjoy because of their religion or ethnicity—might reach American Jews, and Americans overall, in a way it never has. By facilitating a human connection between Palestinians and Jews—the kind of connection Palestinians rarely make with settlers or soldiers--such a movement would also combat anti-Semitism. It would create the right kind of pressure on Israel: not military pressure but moral pressure, the kind of moral pressure that Washington still refuses to deploy.

As the Gaza War has shown yet again, Palestinians often remain invisible to American Jews except as killers and haters. And it is because their humanity remains invisible that we so easily justify their oppression. Perhaps if we placed ourselves among them, we might be able to see them as we see ourselves. And in the wake of a war that has brought only misery and destruction, those of us who still believe in a democratic Israel living alongside a democratic Palestine might create a beachhead of hope.  

Gaza will not go away

We must prevent any more tunneling under the border fence, but at the same time we must finally see the people living on the other side.

By Ari Shavit | Aug. 28, 2014 | Haaretz

The Gaza Strip is a failure of the Jewish national movement. Into Gaza we pushed all those other people who lost their clay huts, stone houses and fig trees during that terrible summer of 1948. True, they were the ones who refused to accept us here, who refused to divide the land and forced a war on us. But in the end, we sent them from Jaffa, Yavne and Majdal to Jabaliya, Nusseirat and Rafah. We occupied them again in 1967 and settled among them after 1967 and ruled over them for some 40 years.

The Gaza Strip is a failure of the Palestinian national movement. During a decade in which the young and fragile Jewish nation-state absorbed and rehabilitated a million Jewish refugees, the Arab nation-states, especially Egypt, refused to accept and rehabilitate hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. That same Egypt, which had shown (a degree of) solidarity with the Palestinians in time of war, showed no solidarity with them at all during peacetime. On the contrary, it trapped them in a narrow strip of land, shut them up in poorly built camps and denied them human dignity, human rights and the ability to live.

Responsibility for the formation of the abscess of despair that is Gaza rests heavily with the Arab world and Arab nationalism.

The Gaza Strip is a failure of the Palestinian national movement. The State of Israel, having become disillusioned with occupation, settlement and messianism, gave its neighbors to the south the great opportunities of Oslo (1993) and the disengagement (2005). The Palestinians wasted both. They didn’t establish a thriving Singapore in Gaza, but a totalitarian and murderous Hamastan that oppresses individuals and minorities and repeatedly attacks Israel. The movement did not turn the first liberated Palestinian district into a place of enlightened hope, but into a rocket base and a warren of tunnels infused with Islamic fanaticism.

The failures of Israel, the Arab world, and the Palestinians were exacerbated by additional failures. The international community never demanded that Gaza’s residents leave their traumatic past behind to focus on the future. The United Nations, through its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), continued to fund Gaza’s misery rather than develop the area. The various peace architects never seriously addressed Gaza’s fundamental problems of density, extremism and poverty. For many good people, Gaza was and remains the elephant in the room that they prefer not to see or think about, while secretly hoping it will go away.

But Gaza will not go away. It may be deterred (for a while) and may calm down (somewhat) – but it will not go away. The violent summer of 2014 proves that the multidimensional failure in Gaza has become dangerous. That’s why a cease-fire isn’t enough. All those who have failed in Gaza – the Israelis, Arabs, Palestinians, Americans and Europeans – must take responsibility for that strip of land that has become the country’s gall bladder.

The vision is clear: a Marshall Plan in return for demilitarization. But it is also clear that the path to that vision is long, full of potholes, and requires compromises. If it’s impossible to give the Palestinians a port now, then build, together with them, power and desalination stations and give them an economic horizon in northern Sinai. If we can’t expect the Palestinians to officially agree to demilitarization, than we must at least make sure that they don’t get any stronger.

We must prevent any more tunneling under the border fence, but at the same time we must finally see the people living on the other side. Without reasonable well-being in Gaza, Israel will not be secure. If there is no hope for our neighbors, then their past and present will continue to haunt our future.