WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: The vast majority of American Jews who are Democrats must stand up more assertively for Israel in their party, and this need runs deeper than stopping with just contesting “The Squad.”
Tobin is Right American Jews Need To Stand Up For Israel in Democratic Party, But He’s Just Not Quite Right Enough
Jonathan Tobin had a JNS article this week, Democrats Don’t Want To Save Bipartisan Support for Israel (Wed, 3/9/22), appealing to pro-Israel Democrats “to get behind members of that party who are willing to stand up to ‘The Squad’ and their pop-culture cheerleaders” who are increasingly making the Democratic Party “a hostile environment for Zionist Jews.”
For two reasons of my own, I think Tobin is right, as far as he goes. Today, the Democratic Party is where the voice of pro-Israel American Jews is most needed, and sorely at that. As Tobin notes, the GOP today is more strongly pro-Israel. Secondly, there are deep differences today between the two parties – for instance, on state versus federal control of everything from elections to education. And we GOP-ers are largely pro-Life, pro-Second Amendment, pro-energy independence, pro-borders, pro-police and law enforcement, pro-boys-can’t-become-girls, etc. We, well, I, anyway, fear that if much of the two-thirds to four-fifths of U.S. Jews who are Democrats switched parties, they’d bring contrary views on all these along.
And we, well, I, anyway, feel Tobin didn’t go far enough. It’s not just the anti-Israel activism of “’The Squad’ and its pop-culture cheerleaders” that pro-Israel American Jews must stand up against, but a well-meaning but deadly-to-Israel “consensus policy” pervasive within the U.S. Democratic Party. A 5/18/20 Times of Israel article quoted former U.S, Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro as putting it this way:
“Support for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps remains a consensus policy within the Democratic Party ….”
I know from your frank emails that a number of You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly favor “the two-state solution” as a final solution, to borrow a phrase, to what’s considered “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
I can do no better, I think, in trying to get across to you the dire consequence to the Jewish homeland and us of restoring the ante-bellum Six Day War state than restating with background and my summation the speakers I quoted in BSMW #949, three years ago this month, who addressed an off-site counter-session to AIPAC, which endorses “the two-state solution”:
Does a western Palestine “two-state solution” ceding the Judea-Samaria Jewish homeland high ground to who-knows-what ultimate “Palestinian” entity, leaving Israel 9-miles-wide in the lowland middle, seem a whit more realistic than the “Green New Deal”?
According to a new Haaretz poll, Israelis themselves no longer think so. The full title of that ZOA release cited above [in #949] is “New Haaretz Poll: Only 34% Israelis Support ‘Two State Solution,’ Meaning a Palestinian State.” Its subtitle: “Poll: Majority of Israelis Support Full or Partial Israeli Annexation of Judea/Samaria.” This is ZOA citing this, not alone saying this. ZOA:
“The new Haaretz poll confirms other recent polls that demonstrate overwhelming Israeli opposition to a Palestinian-Arab state. For instance, the 2017 Maagar Mochot poll showed that an overwhelming 10 to 1 majority of Israelis oppose a Palestinian-Arab state and favor Israeli sovereignty over Judea-Samaria. (See ‘New Polls Show Overwhelming Opposition to Palestinian Arab State and Concessions,’ ZOA, Apr. 3, 2017).”
Some 18,000 supporters of Israel attended the essential American Jewish organization AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington this past week [of 2019], but JNS ran an article Wednesday, “Judea and Samaria Still Off-Limits at AIPAC, Supporters Gather Off-Site.” Retired British Col. Richard Kemp was among this off-site gathering’s speakers. He stressed that “from a purely military perspective, it is completely impossible for the security of Israel to be maintained” without Judea-Samaria being within “the security envelope of the Israel Defense Forces.” He warned: “As Gaza has been used to attack Israel, as Sinai has been used, as Southern Lebanon has been used, so, too, would Judea and Samaria be used,” if Israel were to cede military control of them.
Co-host spokesperson for the Jewish community of Hebron Yishai Fleisher said, “If you listen to the media, we are not the startup nation, we are the occupation nation. It is a pernicious narrative.” JNS:
“He [Fleisher] stressed that the most important war Israel is fighting today is ‘the narrative war,’ which he says focuses on battling the worst form of delegitimization, whereby Israelis are considered ‘thieves’ in their own homeland.
“Fleisher said it’s time we ‘retell our narrative,’ pointing to education and outsiders visiting the areas in question to see them firsthand. He also said another crucial way ‘is to be strong, and to settle and live in our land.’
“Fleisher and co-host Eve Harow noted the importance of discussing the future of the settlements, which they acknowledge is a controversial topic in the United States. Both expressed their hope that AIPAC would bring such an event out of the sidelines and into the conference itself next year.”
“Settlements” is not just “a controversial topic in the United States,” but a controversial topic among us Jews, including sincerely pro-Israel Jews, in the United States. But let us sincerely pro-Israel American Jews, and our American Jewish institutions, agree among ourselves and advocate the Jewish homeland case to the extent that we can.
[1] Let’s start with this: “Settlements” is a dirty word. The mainstream western media, which means us no good, revels in bluntly contrasting “Israeli settlements, Jewish settlements” in the same sentence with “Palestinian neighborhoods, Palestinian villages, Palestinian towns.” Say “Israeli communities, Jewish communities in Jerusalem, in Judea-Samaria,” not “Israeli/Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.”
[2] Israelis [can you blame them? I can’t] have by a large majority given up on “the two-state solution,” meaning a Palestinian Arab state in part of Jerusalem and in Judea-Samaria. It’s not for us, American Jews and our institutions, to tell Jews in Israel what compromises, what sacrifices they should make in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace. AIPAC rightly has a policy heading on its website: “Support Direct Negotiations, Not Imposed Solutions.” But its very first sentence beneath that heading states: “A negotiated two-state solution – a Jewish state of Israel living in peace and security side by side with a demilitarized Palestinian state – is the clearest path to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” For a host of reasons – standing, strategic, substantive – we American Jews, and our institutions, should back off from touting such “clearest” if not most realistic [“demilitarized”? For how long?] path-treading suggestions for Israel.
[3] We can all, including those among us who would settle for less, join in making what Fleisher calls “our narrative,” that the Jewish people has a real homeland claim to Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria. To be at all effective in getting the West to listen, we have to state our claim and peace settlement position as simply as possible – We never left and are the original Palestinians, and Israel and Jordan, 22% and 78%, respectively, of the Palestine Mandate, with their respective Jewish and Palestinian Arab-majority populations, are the Palestine Mandate’s two-states for two peoples solution.
If Col. Kemp is right that permanent Israeli security control over Judea-Samaria is existential for Israel, and, which I also believe, that a Jewish homeland without historic Jerusalem (i.e., on “Israel’s 1967 borders”) would be as Zion-less a Zion as Uganda, we have no choice.
Two Books on The Six Day War
It’s essential we American Jews understand clearly what the Six Day War and its accomplishments, which completed the homeland sovereign redemption partially completed in 1948, meant and mean to Israelis. Two books (doubtless among many others) which powerfully get this across are Steven Pressfield’s The Lion’s Gate, which goes “in the cockpit, inside the tank, under the helmet” in presenting the experience and emotions of selected IDF members, and Eric Hammel’s Six Days in June: How Israel Won the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, detailing how over two decades Israel built the armed forces which performed what seemed to us Diaspora Jews to be miracles.
Where Things Stand Today and What We Must Do About Them
Israel today is under utterly unjust international attack as trampling upon the human rights of “the Palestinians.” I read this week, Biden Administration [!] is Funding the Effort to Delegitimize Israel, 3/11/22, Washington Free Beacon, that “the Biden administration is offering nearly $1 million for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, an effort that will delegitimize Israel, according to sources that spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.”
There is one place on Earth, the Jewish homeland of Israel, where Jews must be free to live without being attacked just for being Jews, like they have been in our own lifetimes in places like Europe, not least there Ukraine. And Israel is where “The Palestinians,” majority population of 78% of Palestine, Jew-free Jordan, pay people who murder Israelis for being Jews. American Jews who’d sever from Israel and hand over to “The Palestinians” defensible border Judea-Samaria and heart of the heart of our homeland historic Jerusalem may be “woke,” but they need to wake up.