#1004 4/19/20 – American Jews’ Job: Making the Jewish Homeland Case to American Jews

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  How far apart from the views of Israelis on the Jewish homeland’s sovereign borders are the views of American Jews?  How dangerous to Israel is this American Jewish view?  And whose job is it to get a majority of American Jews to see Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem as historically and legally parts of Israel?  Our job.  Come see.

American Jews’ Job:  Making the Jewish Homeland Case to American Jews

Where the American Jewish Community Stands

Jonathan Tobin told me once, a long time ago, that the biggest victims of western media anti-Israel bias are American Jews.  Perhaps that’s still true and explains things I quoted last week from “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street’s 2020 haggadah:

*  “Israel grabs and settles territory”

*  “Can we be forgiven for the ways in which we have mistreated Palestinians, and what actions on our part might be necessary before we are?” 

*  “The Troubled Son’s” question: “How did you let all those settlements get built, and how do you tolerate the mistreatment of Palestinians by settlers and soldiers?” 

“As a Jew, as someone connected to Israel, how do I reckon with the terrible price paid by the Palestinian people for the creation of the Jewish state?” [n.b., this goes beyond Israel just “grabbing” territory over the green line]

*  “The Plague of Settlements” [one of the “Ten Modern Plagues”]:  “The two-state solution and therefore Israel’s democratic and Jewish nature are severely threatened by the continual and seemingly unabated expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”

What’s scary is that J Street isn’t an exception, as the American Council for Judaism was in the 1940’s.  Except in the self-disrespectfulness of J Street’s language, among American Jews today “Israel Stops at The Green Line” is the rule.

Exactly one year ago this week the JTA headlined:  “Establishment Jewish Groups’ Unprecedented Plea Implores U.S. President to Restrain Israeli Prime Minister.”  Nine heavyweight American Jewish groups – the Reform Movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis and Union for Reform Judaism; the Conservative Movement’s  United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Rabbinical Assembly and Zionist affiliate Mercaz; and “the Anti-Defamation League, the lead Jewish civil rights advocacy group; Ameinu, a liberal Zionist group; the National Council of Jewish Women; and the Israel Policy Forum, a group focused on reaching a two-state solution” (JTA. 4/13/19, “Reform, Conservative Jews to Trump: don’t let Netanyahu annex West Bank”) – had penned a joint letter to the President, which they released to the JTA.

These heavyweights’ letter labeled application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea-Samaria, under Israel’s control now for more than half a century, as Israeli “annexation” in “the West Bank,” and called for a western Palestine “two-state solution” with borders that “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders,” save for any agreed-in-writing “territorial adjustments.”

The JTA article quoted a “separate statement, released at virtually the same early-morning hour, by the four members of the U.S. House of Representatives who are closest to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee [AIPAC]” – “pro-Israel Jewish Democrats” Cong. Engel, Lowey, Deutch and Schneider – which stated:

“As strong, life-long supporters of Israel, a U.S.-Israel relationship rooted in our shared values, and the two-state solution, we are greatly concerned by the possibility of Israel taking unilateral steps to annex the West Bank.”

JTA:  A “third warning to Netanyahu, at a similar time Friday morning” came on Twitter from Prof. Alan Dershowitz:

“Mazel tov to @IsraeliPM@netanyahu, who I’ve known since he was a student at MIT.  Waiting for the new peace plan to be implemented.  Time for a fair two-state solution that assures Israel’s security.”

AIPAC’s website:

“AIPAC strongly supports a two-state solution and works tirelessly to bring peace to the region. A two-state solution – a Jewish state of Israel living in peace with a demilitarized Palestinian state – with an end to all claims is the clear path to resolving this generations-old conflict.”

What’s Wrong With That

 In a 4/25/19 JNS article, “Most Israelis Disagree With Dershowitz’s Support for a Palestinian State,” the ZOA’s Mort Klein and Elizabeth Berney issued a six-point statement challenging Prof. Dershowitz’s statements, including his tweet issued simultaneously with the Reform and Conservative movements’ and others’ open letter to President Trump.  Points made by Klein and Berney:

[1] Opposing “two-states” is not “extreme” and favoring it not “centrist,” as Dershowitz claims.  Polls show Israelis are heavily against “two-states.” [ZOA, 3/26/19 release:  “The Haaretz poll released this week reveals that only 34% of Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) favor a so-called ‘2-state solution’(a euphemism for creating a Palestinian-Arab terror state).  The Maagar Mochot poll showed that Israelis oppose a Palestinian-Arab state by a margin of 10-to-1.”]

[2]  Israel’s Declaration of Independence was not “based on the partition plan,” as Dershowitz claims, but cited that document along with the Palestine Mandate, the Jewish people’s natural rights and other grounds for reconstituting their state.

[3]  It’s wrong to invoke the partition resolution as justifying a Palestinian Arab state, as the Arabs rejected  that recommendation resolution with an invasion for Israel’s destruction.

[4]  In the face of the British blockade against Holocaust survivors coming to Israel, Ben-Gurion expressed willingness to “consider” accepting less than what the Jewish people had a right to, but he testified to UNSCOP that justice, history and international law entitle Israel to all of Palestine west of the Jordan.

[5]  It was misleading for Dershowitz to invoke Netanyahu’s 2009 Bar-Illan University speech re a Palestinian Arab state because the P.A. has never agreed to any of the five statehood conditions laid out in that speech.

[6]  Forming a Palestinian Arab state is not current U.S. policy, and Rabin, in his last Knesset speech, opposed a Palestinian Arab state.

Last summer, the U.S. Congress passed H. Res. 246, opposing “BDS” against Israel, but endorsing the “two-state solution.”  That led 21 members of Israel’s Knesset to address a letter to members of the United States Congress that week, thanking them for supporting recent passage of H. Res. 246 that condemned BDS against Israel, “but warning them that the resolution’s endorsement of a two-state solution is harmful, because the repercussions of a Palestinian state would be ‘far more dangerous for Israel’ than the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement.”  (Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, 8/12/19, emphasis added).

Further, American Jewish clamor for a “two-state solution” is doubtless seen as support for, e.g.,

UNSC 2334, which combines UN support for “two-states” with denial of Jewish claim to historic Jerusalem:

“… the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.” (emphasis added)

So Whose Fight is Making the Full Jewish Homeland Case to American Jews?

Last week, over 130 self-described “American Jewish communal leaders” wrote Benny Gantz, imploring him to oppose “moving forward on unilateral annexation” during the current virus pandemic, or else “American Jews – the majority of whom oppose such a policy – will feel more alienated from Israel as a result.”

Certainly, Israelis can and should try to make clear to American Jews that the Jewish homeland doesn’t stop at the 1949 ceasefire lines [not “1967 borders”], excluding Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, but that through continuous homeland presence and San Remo and the Palestine Mandate with its western Palestine “Jewish national home” and “close settlement of Jews on the land,” Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem (Old City, City of David and all), under Israel’s control now for over half-a-century, are historically and legally Jews’.

But defying “American Jewish communal leaders” and getting a majority of American Jews to support the Jewish state being coextensive with the Jewish homeland is the job of so-believing American Jews and of our grassroots organizations.  Each of us must do what he can.