WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Regime change is an appropriate time for friends of Israel to take stock of where it stands in the eyes of others not indifferent to its place among the nations. Here’s my shot at how some folks with interest for ill or good see it.
Taking Stock: Assessing the Attitudes of Others Towards the Jewish State
The occurrence of regime change in a country, not least a lurch toward the right in a Jewish one, is a good time for its friends to take a look at the current attitude of others toward it as it sets out on its changed course.
American Jews
Of all the American Jews’ statements I’ve deplored in these weekly emails – the notorious Reform & Conservatives’ et al letter to Trump calling for “two-states” with historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria-excluding borders hewing to “the 1967 borders” with agreed swaps; the rabbinical students’ letter calling Israel “apartheid”; etc. – the scariest seems to me a less-noticed one I quoted from an Arlene Kushner column a fortnight ago:
“According to Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, the CEO of the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, ‘The strength of the relationship between Diaspora Jews and the Jews of Israel is based on common values. We expect the Israeli government to uphold these values in order to maintain the relationship.’” [emphasis Arlene’s]
My own emphasis is different from Arlene’s. By me, the Israeli-Diaspora Jews’ relationship isn’t based on agreement on common values – i.e., the liberal non-specifically-Jewish causes which the American Jewish community largely supports, e.g., LGBTQ, climate change, abortion, gender fluidity, CRT, etc. – but on our common peoplehood with our common heritage and homeland. When a United Nations committee by a vote of 98-to-17 references the Jewish Temple Mount, the Jewish holy site, as it did just last month, exclusively by its Arabic name Haram al-Sharif, causing the American delegate to call that exclusive referencing a denigrating of Israel, that’s a dig at all of us Jews, whatever your views on abortion. Our mutual need to assert our Jewish peoplehood claim to the Temple Mount, Western Wall, Old City, City of David, etc., our homeland’s heart, (pardon the expression) trumps our other issue disagreements.
U.S. Administration
Not just Biden, Bliken & Nides, but others related to the U.S. government seem obsessed with splitting Jerusalem and driving Israel back to the 1948 war’s (never mind the 1967 and 1973 wars’) ceasefire lines.
As for prominent politically active American Jews’ present positions regarding the U.S. and Israel, Naomi Kahn, “Director of the International Division at Regavim, a research-based think tank and lobbying group dedicated to the protection and preservation of Israel’s sovereignty,” has a devastating Jewish Press article, Court Jews Courting Favor, this week, 12/1/22, refuting Daniel Kurzer and Aaron David Miller’s (K&M’s) recent Washington Post op-ed.
Kahn answers K&M’s first point, “a weak Palestinian Authority unable to control violence and terror,” with, on the contrary, citing pay-for-slay, that “controlling violence and terrorism is what the Palestinian Authority does best.” She then tackles K&M’s “alarm that this [new Bibi-led] government will have the audacity to seek to ‘bind the West Bank and Jerusalem’ to Israel [a variation of Abbas’ “Jews’ judaizing Jerusalem”], replying that the two PM’s who’d sought to use part of Jerusalem as a bargaining chip had been “routed from office by virtually every Israeli Jewish voter,” and that “the days of Israelis being afraid to claim their rights” to Judea & Samaria are gone, “as the election results prove.” As for K&M’s claim that the Biden administration is “risk averse,” Kahn answers on the contrary that it’s taking “ENORMOUS” (Kahn’s capitals) risks with Israel’s future. As for K&M’s claim that Bibi’s only motive is to save his neck from the ongoing judicial proceedings, she asks, saying K&M don’t answer, how could Bibi halt them? As for K&M’s “apocalyptic visions of what the newly elected bogeymen will do,” Kahn answers that this is the realm of “the clear and unequivocal mandate given by Israeli voters in democratic elections,” and that K&M’s “clinging to the moth-eaten mantra of the two-state solution is unfortunate at best, mendacious as worst,” and “fuels the frustrations on both sides of the conflict rather than moving anyone toward a negotiated, livable solution.” Luv it.
United Nations
Speaking of the UN, its General Assembly just voted 90-to-30 – can you Believe this? – that Israel’s 1948 statehood was a “catastrophe.” YNet News, 12/1/22, UN Resolution Calls Israel’s Founding a Catastrophe. This on the heels of a slew of unique permanent UN “investigations” of Israel that can only be fairly described as a pogrom.
And let’s go back with the UN just a little bit further, and see if this barely-dodged bullet scares you. I just finished reading a (ok, test of commitment to Zionism) 657-page just-issued Israel book, Bibi: My Story, his almost-up-to-the-minute auto-biography. On pages 577-78, Bibi talks about UNSC 2334, adopted 14-0-1 by the Security Council on the Obama administration’s post-election way out the door. “It mandated that ‘Israel stop immediately and completely all settlement activity in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem.’” It was the US that abstained, but Bibi wrote that “Egypt was chosen by the US [emphasis added] as the country to submit the anti-Israel resolution at the Security Council.” Bibi wrote “I knew definitively that I had lost this round.”
But that wasn’t all. Bibi in Bibi:
“I had received word that in the final months remaining until the inauguration of the new US president, a new and even harsher Security Council resolution was being prepared. This one would be a binding resolution calling on Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines and establishing a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
“… I communicated to Moscow my extreme disappointment with Russia’s vote on the previous resolution. ’We hear you’ was the answer I received. I was not disappointed again. The second resolution never materialized.”
Europeans
Take Ukrainians as an illustrative case. Victims themselves of both Russian and Nazi brutality, and having just asked Israel for military aid in their struggle to throw back Russia’s current invasion, you’d think they’d have today a smidgeon of rachmones for Jews. Nope, they just voted with the gang 98-17-52 in the UN to seek advisory opinions of the Court of International Justice on “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” and on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.” They said afterwards that they now thought that their having so voted was a “mistake.” The fact is they probably hadn’t even thought about it before, just voted anti-Israel by rote. Cf. Tobin, Ukraine’s Past Masters, Jewish Press, 12/2/22, referencing “the virulent antisemitism that had been part of their national culture dating back centuries.” And here’s a kicker: Bibi wrote in his book (p. 578) that back at the UN’s adoption of UNSC 2334 in the Obama administration’s final days: “To express Israel’s consternation, I called our ambassadors to New Zealand and Ukraine back, as those countries had joined Egypt in sponsoring the resolution.”
And not just Ukraine in Europe. The European Union has been out to EU us out of historic Jerusalem and Judea-Samaria ever since somebody thought “the two-state solution” up. I have this prophesy for Europe in the not distant future. When the keys to the last church in Europe are handed over to a Muslim to be turned into a mosque, the last Christian will lament to the Muslim: “You know, this is all the fault of the Jews.” And the Muslim (pocketing the keys) will smile and respond, “Yep, you’re right.”
Christian Evangelicals
Howls of “anti-Semitism” wrongfully greeted Trump’s recent statement:
“No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Envangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”
He followed this up with “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel – Before it is too late.” And I’d add a further admonition to us. We need to appreciate Evangelical Christians’ support for our Jewish homeland of Israel, and not fear them as simply “out to convert us.” I’ll mention one such group, The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministries, Inc. (“FOI”), an enormous longstanding one, with which I’ve long been familiar. A decade ago, when I had the privilege to be “national” president of the century-old men’s and women’s fraternal order Brith Sholom, I said to our Board of Governors and members in attendance, “Look. Their first name is The Friends of Israel. Ok, their last name is Gospel Ministries, Inc., but we’re on a first name basis, all’s well.” Christianity is a new member-seeking religion. Friends of Israel wears their calling on their sleeve; compare the Christian sects that today still don’t like us and for a while were running phony synagogues to entrap our young people. Sometimes I think the key word in FOI’s name is The Friends of Israel; in today’s world we haven’t got a hell of a lot of Friends. Befriend these good honorable people. Go out for pizza with them.