WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: What’s important for us goes beyond not eating one brand of ice cream and not using dirty words designed to delegitimize us. We American Jews must stand with Israelis in rejecting schemes for our Jewish homeland’s dismemberment.
Why Not Eating Ben & Jerry Ice Cream Isn’t Sufficient; Historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria are Heart of Israel
Beyond Not Eating B&J Ice Cream
In last week’s #1072, So Why Are We Mad at Ben & Jerry, But Not at John Kerry?, I drew a distinction between western Jews who’d deprive Israel of Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem because they’re “occupied Palestinian territory” and those who’d part with these most Jewishly meaningful and most militarily defensible areas of our historic Jewish homeland in a “two-state solution.” That latter group, I pleaded, should, like me, not eat Ben & Jerry brand ice cream and not call Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem “occupied Palestinian territory.”
Necessary, but not Sufficient. What doesn’t go in and doesn’t come out of our American Jewish mouths is not the important thing. The important thing, for us American Jews, is doing what Ben-Gurion called on us to do back in 1948, to “stand by us in the struggle for fulfillment of the dream of generations for Israel’s redemption.”
Ask yourself, what was that “dream” dreamt by generations of Jews living as dhimmis in Muslim lands and Jews subjected for centuries to persecution as homeland-less strangers in Christian Europe, and what did Ben-Gurion mean by that dream’s “fulfillment” and Israel’s “redemption”? You can bet that none of these dreamers dreamt of a redeemed Jewish homeland that excluded historic Jerusalem – Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David, etc. You can bet that that dreamed of redeemed homeland wasn’t one of an indefensible ghetto-sized coastal plain excluding both historic Jerusalem and its Judea-Samaria hill country heartland, any more than that it wasn’t in the Land of Israel but in Uganda.
U.S. Jews and “Two-State Solution”
I appreciate that not one of you Gentle Readers who put up with me weekly sees Israel as an “apartheid” state or “settler-colonial project” needing “dismantling.” But some of you (and I especially appreciate your putting up with me) believe in or at least accept as inevitable what Amb. Shapiro calls “consensus policy” of the Democratic Party – “two states along the 1967 [i.e., 1949] lines with mutually agreed land swaps.”
Supporting “two-states” is the majority position of American Jews and our institutions. See, e.g., May 3, 2019, Haartez article, Two-State Solution: U.S. Jews Won’t Budge. Will It Cost Them Their Relationship With Israel? But it’s a dangerous position for Israel. In 2019, 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 support 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)
Alternative Solutions
Reflect – without becoming Republicans, or taking my own view that Palestine states for Arabs and Jews already exist – on the alternative described in the Trump plan.
President Trump’s “Peace To Prosperity” plan, a/k/a “The Deal of The Century,” says on page 12 that of the 12% of the territory captured in 1967 from which Israel has not withdrawn that this is “territory to which Israel has asserted valid legal and historical claims, and which are part of the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.” [emphasis added]
There’s another paragraph in the Trump plan, on page 7, citing the view of Yitzhak Rabin, which American Jews inclined towards the “two-state solution” should consider. Trump plan:
“Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords and who in 1995 gave his life to the cause of peace, outlined in his last speech to the Israeli Knesset his vision regarding the ultimate resolution of the conflict. He envisioned Jerusalem remaining united under Israeli rule, the portions of the West Bank with large Jewish populations and the Jordan Valley being incorporated into Israel, and the remainder of the West Bank, along with Gaza, becoming subject to Palestinian civil autonomy in what he said would be something ‘less than a state.’ Rabin’s vision was the basis upon which the Knesset approved the Oslo Accords, and it was not rejected by the Palestinian leadership at the time.”
Bottom Line for American Jews
Twenty and a half years ago, I began what became these weekly emails as a “media watch.” My aim was to alert our community to the severity and intensity of the mainstream American media’s malportrayal of Israel, which, alas, continues. Over time, I broadened this to an obsessive campaign against our own mouthing of the loaded lexicon of anti-Jewish homeland poisoned pejoratives lacing Arab-Israeli conflict common discourse. This misuse of language likewise, alas, continues. Neither of these efforts – fighting media bias and not calling Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem “occupied Palestinian territory” – is an end in itself. The end is aiding fulfillment of so many generations’ dream of a momentous redemption taking place in our time.
I cannot understand how today’s American Jews can support a “two-state solution” depriving the Jewish homeland of its defensible Judea-Samaria hill country heartland and the core of the core of that dream of Jewish homeland redemption, historic Jerusalem. Yet that is exactly what a solution based on the 1949 ceasefire lines except for mutually agreed land swaps does, restoring the pause of an unfinished war at what Eban, hardly a right-wing fanatic like me, not unrealistically called “Auschwitz lines.”