WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: It’s perfectly proper that many American Jews have deep qualms about some of the aims of some of Bibi’s coalition partners. Foxman and Dershowitz differ whether this should make our support of Israel conditional. Each of us has to decide this for himself. Here’s where I come down on it.
So Who’s Right, Foxman or Dershowitz? Should American Jews’ Commitment to Our People’s Homeland of Israel Be Conditional?
POP QUIZ, Girls & Boys. Question #1, 100 points:
In the face of statements by such staunch American Jewish supporters of Israel as Abe Foxman that their continued support of Israel is conditional upon certain potential members of Bibi’s new cabinet not getting their way (see, e.g., JTA this week, Abe Foxman: If Smotrich and Ben-Gvir Get Their Way, Israel Will Lose Me and American Jews), who is it who just made the following heartfelt plea to our liberal American Jews not to waver because of such fears in their support of our people’s Jewish homeland of Israel?
“Israel’s prime minister-designate is brilliant, hardworking and dedicated to the survival of the nation-state of the Jewish people. One may not like all the ministers in his likely new government. Neither do other longtime supporters of Israel. Some have questioned whether they can continue to support Israel in the face of certain policies proposed by some potential ministers. It is important to continue to support Israel even if one disagrees with some policies of a particular government.”
So who said that?
[a] “right-wing” Bibi;
[b] “right of right-wing” Ben-Gvir;
[c] “right of right of right-wing” me;
[d] Poison Ivy League liberal Professor Emeritus Dershowitz.
Impossible, you say, that liberal Prof. Dershowitz could have said this (Alan Dershowitz, Jewish Press this week, 12/15/22, Democracy at Work: Supporting Israel Regardless of Its Government)? Hell, let me tell you three impossible things I’ve seen concerning Prof. Dershowitz, all on one night. It was some years ago (ok, after the cocktail hour) at a 1200-attendee ZOA Gala Dinner in New York. Impossible Thing #1: The ZOA – Morton Klein’s Zionist Organization of America – gave an award to liberal Prof. Dershowitz. Impossible Thing #2: liberal Prof. Dershowitz showed up to accept it. Impossible Thing #3: Prof. Dershowitz introduced ZOA’s main speaker of the evening, praising him as the brightest Harvard Law School student he’d ever taught, not-exactly-liberal Senator Cruz.
Liberal Prof. Dershowitz’s theme that night that he addressed the ZOA was that we need to strive to keep support for Israel in America bi-partisan, and I agreed with that. His theme in his article this week is that “we must respect Israeli democracy, even when we disagree with its outcome,” that “the results of future elections may be different.” I not only likewise agree with that, but – talk about Jewish religious fanaticism – let me cite you on this very night on which we light the first Hanukkah candle some folks by whom the religious fanaticisms of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and pals are mere misdemeanors. I refer of course to the Maccabees, Jewish religious fanatics who’d have sliced off my non-Seleucid but likewise non-glatt Kosher head faster than you can say Antiochus Epiphanes. We celebrate the Maccabees because but for them, tonight we’d be lighting candles in honor of Zeus and those guys.
But it’s not enough for us American Jews just to put up with Bibi’s allies. Whether or not we individually agree with the Biden administration’s joinder in everybody in the Milky Way – against the will of Israelis, as it would cost them Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem – howling for “the two-state solution,” we have to join together in insisting that the American government treat the Jewish people’s national home, Israel, with the same deferential respect due all the world’s governments. It’s not doing so. E.g.:
FBI Intrusion into Journalist Killing
The Republican Jewish Coalition’s newsletter this week reported that eight GOP Senators just wrote the FBI and Justice Department “urging them to shut down the FBI’s investigation into the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh,” whom an Israeli investigation found had likely been shot, unintentionally, by an IDF soldier during a gunfight with Arab terrorists. The Senators stated that this FBI investigation disrespected our Israeli ally:
“We are dismayed the DOJ and FBI are seeking to disregard Israeli sovereignty by inserting itself into an investigation which has concluded and which US officials participated in.” [emphasis added]
Blinken Litany of Israeli Actions “Undermining Two-State Solution”
The litany of Israeli actions which “we will continue to unequivocally oppose” that Secretary of State Blinken rattled off December 4 to J Street because they’d “undermine the prospects of a two-state solution,” included “but not limited to settlement expansion, moves toward annexation of the West Bank, disruption to the status quo at holy sites, demolitions and evictions.”
* Demolitions and Evictions: Start with the US “unequivocally opposing” Israeli “demolitions” and “evictions.” The homes being demolished are those of terrorists who cold-bloodedly murder even in Jerusalem as elsewhere Jewish Israeli civilians for no reason other than their being Jewish Israeli civilians. Israel’s evictions are of people determined in judicial proceedings to be squatters who refuse to pay rent. Is there another country in the world that the US would unequivocally oppose its doing this?
* Disruption to the Status Quo at Holy Sites: Palestinian Arabs have spat on status quo at holy sites (and on Jewish and Christian history) by digging up the Temple Mount with bulldozers, but allowing Jewish prayer, alongside Muslim prayer, there would “undermine the two-state solution”?
* Moves Toward Annexation of the West Bank: In its 1947 Palestine partition resolution, the United Nations itself called Samaria and Judea “Samaria and Judea,” Hebrew-origin names that had remained in use for three thousand years. The invader Jordan coined “West Bank” in 1950 for the same reason the Romans had renamed defeated Judaea as “Palestine” – to disassociate what had been Jewish from Jews. It’s disrespectful for the US to exclusively say “West Bank,” and to exclusively say “annexation” – Encarta dictionary: “to take over territory and incorporate it into another political entity, e.g., a country or state” – when Israel clearly has a strong legitimate claim to that area by history and the Palestine Mandate, which the US should acknowledge, even if calling it “disputed.”
* Settlement Expansion: No howling here about Arab building, even in Area C under Israeli control, and not just no new Israeli “settlements,” but even no “expansion” of existing ones.
See also for further examples Prof. Guy Milliere’s Gatestone article last Sunday, 12/11/22, The Biden Administration’s Hostility to Israel.
Where We Come Out
So who’s right, Foxman or Dershowitz? You have to answer this for yourself, but by me, the Professor. No generation of Jews ever has seen what, I’m 82, mine’s seen – the climactic culmination of two millennia of persecution of our Jewish people the world over as unaccepted homeless sojourners in the lands of others, followed by the ongoing struggle for fulfillment in our own time by our own people of our dream of generations for our Jewish homeland’s sovereign redemption, a miracle, if ever there was one, that the United Nations has just declared “a catastrophe.” Standing beneath Herzl’s portrait in a Tel Aviv museum on the fourteenth of May 1948, Ben-Gurion called on us, the Jews of the world (I was 8), to stand by Israel in that great struggle for that dream’s fulfillment, and whatever temporary aberrations may temporarily cloud that fulfillment, I will not make my standing by that commitment conditional.