WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: We’ve grown increasingly further apart, most of my fellow grassroots American Jews and I, over “two-states.” Here’s a brief recap of where I feel that it’s they who’ve gone astray, and then a quick look at how “two-states” would have impacted my long ago Israel trip.
The Loneliness of a Right-wing Non-Orthodox American Jew
Every time I think I’ve hit rock-bottom in my estrangement from the large majority of my fellow non-Orthodox American Jews, I soon find we’re even further apart in our Jewish homeland-support views than I’d thought.
Not Minding Media Bias
My sense of separation began, I look back, twelve-hundred weeks ago, when a macher in the ZOA (himself a fugitive from my then almost-century-old fraternal order Brith Sholom) suggested that as chair of Brith Sholom’s “Israel” committee, I start a “media watch” in Brith Sholom. I did, and though this week’s is #1200 in that continuing effort to get through to my fellow Jewish grassrootsniks that America’s mainstream media reports on our people’s homeland with less than objective respect, most of our tribe’s grassroots, let alone chiefs, still don’t believe the media’s biased, or if they do don’t react to it. But bottom estrangement? Not yet.
Not Minding UNSC 2334
Fast-forward to late 2016. The Obama administration cleverly waited, I thought, until after Trump got elected to orchestrate in the UN, in their administration’s way out the door, a Security Council resolution, #2334, calling every inch of the land of Israel that Israel had liberated from the invader Jordan half-a-century earlier – Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem – “occupied Palestinian territory,” to be surrendered to “the Palestinians” (who’ve never ruled Palestine in history) in “the Two-State Solution.” Sure enough, when the next US presidential election campaign started up, Obama and Kerry spoke to a crowd at a big New York synagogue, marketing that “Two-State Solution” as equitable. What bothered me about that was not that they did this, but that they seemed to conclude that one such pitch was enough, that they didn’t need to justify ripping Judea-Samaria and historic Jerusalem from Israel to American Jews. Bottom? Not yet.
Pushing Two-States along “1967 Borders” on Trump
Then came that infamous 2019 open letter to President Trump by a slew of American Jewish membership organizations, not least our Reform and Conservative religious movements, rabbis and all, urging him to support that Two-State Solution with borders that would “hew precisely,” save for any agreed “territorial adjustments,” to the old defunct Israel-Jordan military-only ceasefire lines of 1949, which these pillars of organized American Jewry misdescribed as Israel’s infinitely more gravitas-bearing “1967 borders.” They coupled this with pleading with the Free World’s leader strenuously to oppose Israel’s “annexation” (i.e., taking over another country’s territory) in Judea and Samaria, which they self-disrespectfully miscalled “the West Bank” (coined by Jordan in 1950 to disassociate what had borne Hebrew-origin names for three millennia from the Jews). Revolt in the grassroots? Nope. But not rock-bottom yet.
2021: Not Correcting Our Youth
Then in May, 2021, came a letter and survey on the Jewish homeland attitudes of young American Jews. The letter was from 90 [!] non-Orthodox rabbinical students from multiple institutions, “accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the ‘violent suppression of human rights.” The Pew survey that month found that only 48% of American Jews aged 18-29 said they had “an emotional attachment to Israel,” while 51% said they had “little or no such connection.” But not rock-bottom yet.
2024: Not Correcting Our Youth
But then last week (1/9/24) the Jerusalem Post headlined Nearly Half of Young Jewish Voters Feel Biden Overly Supports Israel – Poll, reporting (emphasis added) that “approximately 47% of younger Jewish voters, aged between 18-35, feel that President Joe Biden is overly supportive of Israel ….”
This Week: Not Correcting Our Congressmen
Rock-Bottom last week? Why not? Because there’s this week. JNS headlined Saturday, 1/20/24, Jewish Dems Slam Netanyahu Over Apparent Rejection of ‘Palestinian State.’ “’We strongly disagree with the Prime Minister,’ 15 [Jewish Democratic] members of Congress said in a brief statement. ‘A two-state solution’ is the path forward.”
Yes, these are US Congressmen, not grassrootniks like you and me. So why do I include their condemnation of Bibi for opposing “two-states” in this litany of estrangements of me from most grassroots American Jews? Because they represent us. Let them know you object.
Two-States at Eye Level
It was decades ago that we visited Israel, four of us, two cousins and spouses, with our own guide for most of two weeks. I remember he took us up to Nebi Samuel, well west of “East” Jerusalem, which he told us while we were climbing the tower had been liberated by Israel in 1967. “But,” I protested, “’East’ Jerusalem’s way over there.” But the narrow Jerusalem access corridor extends well to the west, he reminded me as we drove back along the highway with the burned-out armored trucks as we passed by Latrun. Years later I read about Uri Ben-Ari’s tanks having climbed that boulder-strewn, strongly defended northern Jerusalem corridor ridge with Radar Hill, Nebi Samuel, etc., in the Six Day War. “Here, tanks don’t go,” Ben-Ari said, as he nonetheless engaged in that climb, losing most of his tanks, and fighting and winning that battle.
And I remember most, of course, the Old City, with the Western Wall and Temple Mount, “East” Jerusalem both. Christians should reflect on the security of their own holy sites over “the green line,” before so ardently demanding end to “Israeli occupation.”
I remember, of course, panting up the snake path in the heat to the top of Masada (on our side of the green line), and gazing down at the remains of the Romans’ camp and ramp. I remember a column of young school boys up there, with a weapon-bearing father in front and behind (it was during an “intifada”), and I, still panting, asked “even here?” “Even here.”
Our guide’s car, with its Israeli license plate, was hit with a fired pellet or bullet, fortunately just below the window, as we drove through “East” Jerusalem. He opened the glove compartment and patted a pistol, closed it up, and asked rather nonchalantly, “So where would you like to go next?” “Bar, King David Hotel.”
Bennett is right. There is no room in the narrow confines of the land of Israel, Palestine west of the Jordan, for two sovereign states. But there is an elephant in the room, a huge one, taking up three-quarters of the room’s space. The elephant’s name is “Jordan,” and it sits on 78% of what had been the Palestine Mandate, and it has a huge majority of Palestinian Arabs. It exists as a new Arab country carved out of the Palestine Mandate with its Jewish national home, because the Mandate allowed the trustee, Britain, to “withhold” part of Palestine from that home, but only east of the River. So there IS a Palestine Arab-Jewish “two-state solution,” 78%-to-22% favoring Arabs, already LONG IN EFFECT – Jordan and Israel. I don’t doubt that US Secretary of State Blinken sincerely believes that Palestinian Arabs have “legitimate aspirations,” as he recently put it, for a Palestine state, but they have one – Jordan – let its minority Hashemite king be a constitutional monarch, and Jordan Democratic & Arab. (And they have a – to-be-demilitarized – second piece of Palestine, Gaza; and can still perhaps have almost a third, internal autonomy [i.e., a state sans security control] under the Trump plan in a bigger piece of Judea-Samaria than where they mainly live now.)
The world today is increasingly insistent on what-would-be a Jewish homeland devastating “two-state solution.” I read someplace this morning that European leaders are threating to impose one from “outside.” We grassroots American Jews have to stand with our homeland brethren opposing it. So I plead with those of those of you deeply appreciated You-Who-Put-Up-With-Me-Weekly who’ve acquiesced in “two-states,” make me a little less lonesome.