WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Ben & Jerry needs to be countered, but by whom and how? By us by not buying that brand. But the main thing to counter is so many people believing “occupied Palestinian territory” and “settler-colonial project” canards. We need to state clearly the facts that dispel these canards, and enlist more U.S. Jews in this effort.
The Gang that REALLY Can’t Shoot Straight – Us
It’s not every week that the vendor of a less than quintessentially indispensable product marketed to ultimate retail consumers tells an ethnic group of its customers that it won’t sell its products anymore to some of the group’s members because they live in contested areas (where this people has lived for 3,000 years) because the vendor sides with the contesters. But that’s just what ice cream, of-all-less-than-indispensable-products, maker “Ben & Jerry” (a shanda on the name Jerry) told our Jewish people last week regarding Jews living in of-all-places our homeland’s historic Jerusalem (Old City, City of David and surroundings) and Judea-Samaria heartland – that this heart & soul and defensible hill country of our Jewish homeland is “occupied Palestinian territory.”
The Jewish people, here in America as well as in Israel, needs to shoot back, but aim straight in doing so. I read this week about efforts to get U.S. states to invoke anti-BDS laws, and even of an effort in Israel to confiscate the brand name “Ben & Jerry” and market its stuff through a pro-Israel channel. By me, shooting in this direction misses the mark in three ways.
First, we should shoot back ourselves, not just depend on laws and governments, Some of us grassroots Jews – those living in Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, where Jews of all peoples have the most right to live – are being directly targeted here, and we, us grassroots Jewish ice cream eaters, should directly respond to it by actions we ourselves take.
Second, we should aim to reduce, not restore, Ben & Jerry company sales, and certainly not start selling “Ben & Jerry” brand ice cream ourselves. Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem (Old City, Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David, surroundings and all) are “occupied Palestinian territory”? Nothing new here with this brand name, girls and boys. Quick Jeopardy-style pop quiz: What’s the question the answer to which is “Bevin & Kerry”? “What was ‘Ben & Jerry’s’ name before they changed it.”
And third, keeping perspective, what we do have to aim at primarily is not “Ben & Jerry,” but what so much of the world along with Ben & Jerry mistakenly believes – that Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem are “occupied Palestinian territory.”
We have to focus on fighting the foundation stones of this widespread mistaken belief.
Dirty Words
The first of these Jewish homeland delegitimization foundations is our own idiocy in ourselves joining in the world calling our opponent in the long Jewish-Arab struggle over western Palestine “THE Palestinians.” And add to that all the other Arab-Jewish conflict dirty words deliberately designed to delegitimize us that we ourselves join in using. Talk about not shooting straight. We can’t even shoot our own mouths off straight. To wit:
“West Bank” – coined by invader Jordan in 1950 for the same reason the Romans renamed Judaea as “Palestine” in 135 – to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews. Hebrew-origin names “Judea and Samaria” remained in use from biblical times to 1950, including by the UN itself in its Palestine partition resolution in 1947. “West Bank” isn’t a synonym for “Judea-Samaria.” It’s an antonym.
“East Jerusalem” – “East” Jerusalem isn’t some satellite city or suburb of the historic Jerusalem that’s been the capital of three native states – all Jewish – in the past 3000 years, and has had a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Turkish empire rule. It IS historic Jerusalem itself, miscalled “East” for the same reason, redirecting ownership equity, “the West Bank” is miscalled “West.”
“Occupied Palestinian Territory” – favorite expression of the UN, see UNSC 2334, in direct defiance of the San Remo treaty and Palestine Mandate with their Jewish national home and close settlement of Jews on the land, along with dismissing three thousand years’ homeland Jewish presence.
“1967 borders” – deliberate mischaracterization of the Israel-Jordan military ceasefire lines of 1949, expressly declared in their defining document not to be international borders foreclosing the sides’ border claims, and even as such obliterated by renewed fighting, again initiated by Jordan, in 1967, resulting in successor ceasefire lines.
“captured by Israel in 1967” – media-speak for suppressing pre-1967 Jewish presence in Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem, which goes back three thousand years.
“Greater Israel” – term mockingly applied to “ultra-nationalist” Jews’ claim to the entirety of the 22% of the Palestine Mandate left for its Jewish national home with close settlement of Jews on the land after excision from the Mandate of Palestine’s 78% east of the River as all-Arab Transjordan. This remaining 22% is already Lesser Israel, and Jews’ rejection of again dividing between Arabs and Jews that remaining 22% is not “ultra-nationalism” by Jews. Arabs demanding a second division of just Palestine’s remaining Jewish slice is.
“Zionist entity” – avoidance of calling Israel “Israel” in order to date Jewish connection thereto to the late nineteenth century, suppressing three millennia continuous Jewish connection, including through continuous physical presence. Zionism didn’t start something new, but reinvigorated millennia-long return of Jews to the homeland. It was, in a way, in pre-State times “a first Jew giving money to a second Jew to send a third Jew to Palestine.”
“Settler-Colonial Project”
Those who howl “From the River to the Sea” perforce regard the entirety of western Palestine, the land of Israel, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” Here again, we don’t shoot straight, in two fundamental ways.
[1] We don’t make the case that not only were we not exiled by Rome in CE 135, but that Jews physically remained in our homeland all through the ensuing exclusively foreign empire rule centuries until today’s Israel became the land of Israel’s next native state after Jewish Judaea. And
[2] We don’t make the case that the majority of Israel’s population is not just not “white” but indigenously Middle-eastern, having been for centuries dhimmi (i.e., Jim Crow on Steroids) minorities in Muslim lands. (Not that Jews over the centuries in Good Old Christian Europe were habitually treated as equals.) How’s that for Israel not being “a settler-colonial project”?
Waking Up American Jews
Sorry, but by me, most of our fellow American Jews don’t just don’t shoot straight, but shoot ourselves, if not in worse places, in the foot. Some American Jews are supporting Ben & Jerry [“occupied Palestinian territory”], and tons of us and our institutions ran a full-page ad supporting (capital letters) Black Lives Matter [“settler-colonial project” needing “dismantling”]. (It’s not in me not to raise this in passing: Is Trump unjustified in wondering why 70% of us voted against him and instead for a party with a “consensus” favoring a “two-state solution” based on the ceasefire lines before the Six Day War? Think historic Jerusalem and all it contains, Latrun, Judea-Samaria ridge line overlooking nine miles wide in the middle coastal plain.)
I wish we could wake some of us up. I know what, if anything might do it, but I’m assured by an honest confidant that I haven’t a chance of pulling it off. There are books embodying the incredibly moving words of courageous participants in the monumental Jewish history event of our time – our homeland’s sovereign rebirth and ingathering of our exiles from Europe and Muslim lands in the Mideast and north Africa. If we could just get U.S. Jews to read even one or two of these books, it might wake them up, if anything will. I’m told I might get them to read a magazine article. If you’ve read moving participant account-conveying books on, e.g., Israel’s 1948 or later wars, the Aliyah Bet, Magic Carpet, etc., any thoughts on what we might entice them to read them? Ideas on other alarm clocks?
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Mike Herskovitz
A very elderly Brith Sholom member I had the privilege of knowing passed away recently. His name was Mike Herskovitz, and he was both a Holocaust survivor and a fighter for Israel in its War of Independence in 1948. He spent many years describing his experiences to U.S. high school students and others. I have an autographed copy of his book, Early One Saturday Morning: Triumph of a Holocaust Survivor.
Mike wrote: “People ask, ‘How can you go on living after what you’ve been through?’ But it has the opposite effect on me. I am so glad to be alive and I try to get every drop of life out of each hour of the days that I have been given. All I can do is accept it. Live my life with clear conscience, do as much good as I can, and tell my story so the world will not forget what happened to me and six million others starting early one Saturday morning.”
Mike was the last of a breed we had the privilege of having in our fraternal order Brith Sholom – Mike; Henry Ten, who lived well into his nineties (I called him “The Last Zionist”), who’d been a young leader in Europe helping trapped Jews escape to the homeland from Nazis; Alex Stanton, long quite close friend of Begin and organizer of Brith Sholom sending “farm machinery” to Palestine in the independence struggle time, and of Brith Sholom doing more for Israel for long years afterwards; and others. What a privilege to have personally known and learned from such people. We will not look upon their like again.