WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Two news stories this week revealed the dangers of leaders of grassroots Americans disrespecting their constituents’ deep-down beliefs. One of these stories relates to all grassroots Americans, the other to us specifically as grassroots American Jews.
This Week: Two Lessons for Leaders – Don’t Desert the Grassroots
Our National Pastime: Just in time for the Super Bowl, Fox News headlined this week (2/6/24): Football Surpasses Baseball as America’s National Pastime, Survey Says. I was a Philadelphian ten years old, the ideal age of a sports fan, in 1950, the year the Whiz Kids (Phillies) uncharacteristically won the pennant. There was no doubt in my mind, or in my schoolyard chums’, that baseball was America’s pastime. We ardently followed the Phillies and A’s. We flipped and traded baseball cards. It was an exciting time for the game, Dick Sisler’s last inning of the season’s last game home run, and then the next year Bobby Thomson’s in the last inning of the last game of the season-tie playoff, deciding the pennant. Baseball was bedrock America. And it benefited our country. If you doubt this, go read Jackie Robinson’s own book, Baseball Has Done It, on the impact baseball’s integration had on it.
So what happened? The Powers-that-Be in baseball deserted its fandom. By me, baseball forfeited its National Pastime crown the day the Dodgers and Giants deserted New York. And then the team owners messed with the season. There’d been two separate American and National Leagues in which their teams played 154 games for the Pennant, and then the pennant winners met for the World Series. The owners expanded the number of games, diluting, inter alia, Ruth’s 60 home runs record, had mid-season inter-league games, and diminished the April-to-October season meant-something by replacing the two leagues’ pennant winners’ World Series with multi-team playoffs. There’s a lot more, not least the players going on mid-season strike, team owners endorsing Black Lives Matter (I wrote the Phillies a “Bye-bye baseball” letter over that one) and finally pulling an All-Star game from Atlanta over political issues, but you get the idea – deserting fans’ loyalties. And, btw, last year I read Ralph Branca’s (he gave up Thomson’s home run) book. The Giants were stealing signs. So, America’s National Pastime? No longer.
America’s Reform Jewish Movement: Also this Tuesday, 2/6/24, the ZOA issued a press release:
“ZOA Condemns URJ Head Rick Jacobs & Other Reform Jewish Leaders’ Statement Demanding a Palestinian State/etc. – Rewards Massacre, Endangers Israel, Defames Israel, Will Lead to More Anti-Israel Terror”
That’s quite a mouthful. I refuse to believe that grassroots American Jews, including most members of the Reform movement, support this. Our support for Israel is not just a pastime, but our fundamental belief in the historical and legal legitimacy and justice of our people’s Jewishly meaningful and militarily secure national home for Jews from all over the world.
Here are some of the demands in the Reform leaders’ statement (ZOA’s critique lists 13 points and can be viewed at ZOA.org):
*** The Reform leaders condemned Israel’s “ongoing West Bank occupation,” demanded its end and called for “halting the construction of West Bank settlements.”
*** The Reform leaders accused Israel of “denying the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”
*** The Reform leaders called for establishing a western Palestine “Palestinian state,” even though it will “pose serious short-term security threats to Israel,” but these “will be addressed in any peace accords.”
*** The Reform leaders also demanded “opposing any efforts toward unilateral annexation by Israel of areas of the West Bank.”
I believe it’s self-disrespecting for we Jews ourselves to mouth Jewish homeland delegitimizing pejoratives, including, as here, “West Bank … occupation … settlements . . . annexation,” etc. It was called Judea-Samaria for three thousand years, including by the UN in 1947. We’re there as of historical and legal right, not as “occupying settlers,” and applying Israeli law to Judea-Samaria is not “annexing” other states’ lands. For Jewish leaders claiming to lead the largest Jewish religious movement in the US to mouth these slurs lends credence to current claims Israel is “unbearably” (Obama), “suffocatingly” (Guterres) “occupying Palestinian lands.”
Beyond terminology, these Reform leaders’ joinder in the claims that Israel is “denying the Palestinians’ right to self-determination” and that there needs to be “a Palestinian state” lends credence to further misleading contentions existentially endangering Israel. Jordan, with its big Palestinian Arab majority sits on three-quarters of the Palestine Mandate and IS a Palestinian Arab state, as is Gaza de facto. Both could be Democratic & Arab, and Jew-free at that. And in addition to these, Bibi and Gantz both agreed (under the Trump plan) to autonomy for Palestinian Arabs in part of Judea-Samaria, as had Rabin (“less than a state,” i.e., Israeli security control) years ago. So, “unbearably suffocating occupation”? Not so, and we, Rabbi Jacobs included, have to say so.
And all of us, Israelis and all, should cease calling Palestinian Arabs “THE Palestinians.” Israel’s Jews are Palestinian too, and were called such during the Mandate, and btw we Jews were Palestinians first. And the place is called “Palestine,” and we ourselves calling the fight over it one between “THE Palestinians” and Jews is, to say no more, counter-productive.
As ZOA points out, there are many Reform Jews who adamantly disagree with “this shameful statement” of their leaders and with the leadership agenda it represents. This leadership disrespect of its members’ support for our people’s historic homeland with its Ingathered Exiles will weaken that movement at a time when the need for organized American Jews’ support for our people in Israel is critical.