Bogus 'Pro-Peace' Organizations Undermine Israel

by Isi Liebler from the blog Word from Jerusalem

Of late, the western media has provided inordinate prominence to Jewish fringe organizations like J Street and its European clone, JCall, which define themselves as "liberal" and "pro-peace", but concentrate on castigating the Israeli government and undermining mainstream Diaspora pro-Israel Jewish organizations.

These bodies are primarily controlled by anti-Israeli activists, but also include many well-meaning but confused liberal fellow travelers. They also attract uninformed Jews and members of the anti-Zionist chic influenced by constant negative media depictions of Israel.

Their core message is that the Jewish establishment is alienating the bulk of the Jewish street, by blindly supporting the policies of an extremist right wing Israeli government and indulging in "McCarthyite" tactics to excommunicate anyone who dares to criticize Israeli policies.

These unrepresentative bodies receive widespread favorable exposure by a media which relishes quoting Jews beating up on Israel. Whenever Jewish writers or academics condemn Israel or castigate their own community, they are portrayed as heroic voices of conscience resisting a harsh and bigoted Jewish leadership. One only has to compare the enormous media coverage provided to the European J Call petition criticizing Israel with a counter petition by Italian MP Fiamma Nirenstein which contained many more signatories and was effectively ignored.

This was also exemplified in the US by the extraordinary media coverage extended to former New Republic editor Peter Beinart who wrote a lengthy essay titled "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" in the New York Review of Books, a periodical renowned for its longstanding hostility to successive Israeli governments. Beinart selectively chose extremist remarks from Israeli hawks, falsely alleged that Prime Minister Netanyahu repudiated the Oslo Accords, quoted the "renowned" Hebrew University professor Ze'ev Sternhell - a bitter post-Zionist - alleging that Israel has "fascist characteristics" and accusing the Israeli government and Jewish leadership of alienating the younger generation of liberal Jews.

There is an uncanny parallel between these "pro-peace" groups and the bogus peace councils sponsored by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which also claimed to be the true custodians of peace and succeeded in duping many "fellow travelers" into becoming accessories in promoting the global objectives of the Evil Empire.

Today these pseudo "pro-peace" bodies seek to undermine the only liberal democratic state in the region and divert attention from the reprehensible behavior and denial of human rights practiced by Israel's enemies.

In the battle of the war of ideas in which electronic media images of the suffering of the underdog blur moral considerations of right and wrong and disregard the source of conflicts, these groups distort the case for Israel and undermine the Zionist narrative.

They call on the global community to pressure the government of Israel to make further unilateral concessions. They insist that the core of the problem rests with the settlements, an issue which does divide Israelis. However, the suggestion that peace and goodwill would be achieved if Israel unilaterally withdrew from territories across the green line is absolute nonsense and detracts from the real obstacle to peace which is the absence of a genuine Palestinian peace partner and the ongoing Arab obsession with bringing an end to Jewish sovereignty.

The "pro peace" groups ignore the fact that Netanyahu has steered the government to a genuine centrist position and achieved a broad consensus that aside from the major settlement blocs, Israelis would compromise on territories in return for genuine peace and security. That sentiment prevails despite the awareness that until now territorial concessions have only yielded further terror and aggression.

The repeated wails by the "pro peace" groups that they encounter McCarthyism and are denied the opportunity to express themselves are specious and particularly hypocritical coming from those who unhesitatingly slander and seek to intimidate their critics. There has always been vigorous dissent amongst Jews on all political issues. But it was during the formative years of the state when the social-democratic Mapai ruled the roost, that a consensus prevailed that Diaspora Jews, who do not face the life and death consequences arising from decisions relating to Israel's defense, were morally obliged to allow the people of Israel through their democratically elected government to determine such issues.

Today, that concept is regarded with contempt by the "pro peace" elements, who claim to have a better appreciation of what is in the best interests of Israel than Israelis themselves. Indeed, these self appointed formulators of Israel policy articulate views that are sometimes more extreme than those of Meretz, the most far Left political party in the Knesset, holding only 3 out of 120 Knesset seats.

Of late, it is increasingly alleged that the new generation of younger Jews is turning against Israel. This is highly misleading. Obviously the passion for Israel amongst Jews of this generation is less intense than those who witnessed the Shoa and the struggle to create a Jewish State. However, it was always only 25 to 30% who comprised the activist element within Jewish communities and were at the forefront of Zionist and pro-Israel activity. Assimilated or less involved Jews were understandably less involved and somewhat apathetic, only becoming galvanized during periods of acute crisis such as the Six-Day War.

With some modifications, this remains true today. Jewish youngsters actively involved in Jewish life remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel. Those ignorant or indifferent to Judaism are more susceptible to the impact of hostile influences surrounding them, especially on the university campuses, and many recoil from involvement with Israel.

However, the dramatic response by the activist American Jewish community to the negative attitude displayed against Israel by the Obama administration was astonishing. Despite the fact that 78% of them supported him, at a grassroots level many committed Democratic Jewish supporters have displayed anger and frustration against the administration for having reneged on Obama's electoral undertakings concerning Israel.

However, one should not underestimate the potential for damage that small numbers of determined Jewish anti-Israel activists can inflict. The message that they seek to impart is that Israel is controlled by extremist right-wing bigots and that it is incompatible for liberals to support such a regime. They compound this by directly or implicitly giving credence to canards accusing supporters of Israel of dual loyalties as well as allegations that Israel is endangering American lives. In fact, there are already disturbing signals that today the traditional bipartisan support towards Israel is eroding and that Democrats are far less committed to Israel than the Republicans.

Needless to say, this requires urgent attention. Both the government and the Jewish Agency should map out a strategy which takes account of the enormous damage these groups can inflict if they are not marginalized. One of the most effective means would be for the government to sponsor a global solidarity meeting with Jewish leaders, intellectuals and key activists to demonstrate that the vast majority of committed Jews remain fully dedicated to supporting the Jewish State. Israel must be able to rely on the ongoing support of world Jewry.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

This column was originally published as a blog post in the Jerusalem Post

Click on the links here to see earlier posts from this week 'More on Tel Aviv University and radical university professors' and 'The Guardian and anti-Israel lies.'

Incitement at Tel Aviv University or "Voices from Gaza"?

by Ben Dror Yemini

The following is a translation of a column by the editor of Maariv, Ben Dror Yemini, which appeared in the paper April 15, 2010 in Hebrew can be found HERE

(Steven Plaut's translation)

A Conference to be Held Today will include Speakers from the Radical Left who support the Hezb'Allah and the Hamas. University response: "We are just maintaining academic freedom and independence."

***

The Law School of Tel Aviv University will hold today (Thursday April 15) a conference under the title, "Voices from Gaza," composed purely of far leftist speakers. It will be based on "video conferencing." Some of the speakers are well known as supporters and defenders of the Hezb'Allah and the Hamas in the United States. Some will appear in live video broadcast from Gaza.

The conference chairman in Israel is Prof. Uri Hadar (Tel Aviv University, psychology) – a signatory on almost all the petitions of the radical Left. These include statements supporting Azmi Bishara and Tali Fahima, as well as support for people refusing to serve in the Israeli army. Maariv has learned that numerous officials in the University are outraged at the holding of this conference but fear voicing their opinion in public.

Recently the Board of Governors of the University has been holding a fierce debate over the radical faculty members there who support the boycott against university. Similar conferences to this triggered rage in the past among donors to the university. But this time it appears a red line was crossed. Because this time the conference was based purely on radical leftist speakers, even though the University is trying to claim otherwise.

From the American side the conference will be hosted by (Hamas apologist and groupie) Sara Roy from Harvard University. Roy has become the chief spokesperson for the fantasy that the Hamas is moderate and pragmatic. She claims unsurprisingly that it is Israel that is completely responsible for the crisis in Gaza, ignoring the Hamas' refusal to accept the conditions of the "Quartet" – something that would end the blockade of Gaza – and completely ignoring the anti-Semitic character of the Hamas. (http://frontpagemag.com/2009/11/18/collaborators-in-the-war-against-the-jews-sara-roy/ )

The Hamas could not dream of a better spokesperson! She is Jewish, daughter to parents who survived the Holocaust, and teaches at the prestigious Harvard. But even in the academic world it is impossible to disguise Roy's un-academic political character. Tufts University refused to publish one of her articles because it was so one-sided (again- Yemini relying on above Plaut expose). In that article she tried to dispute arguments in a book with which she disagreed.

Another American in the conference is Richard Norton. He does for the Hezb'Alloh everything that Roy does for the Hamas. The two even published an article together that explains that the Hamas is just seeking peace and so everyone needs to talk with it.

And there is another one not much different, one Robert Blecher, holding the same positions as the two spokeswomen for the jihad. These jihadi movements, he claims, are not what we thought. Terror? Murder? Oppression of women? Fuggedaboutit! The Jihad does not need its own PR staff when American universities have such "academics." They do the job just fine!

So here we have supporters of refusal to serve in the Israeli army and groupies of Azmi Bishara, on the one hand, meeting with American apologists for terror organizations and people from Gaza complaining about Israeli war crimes. There have been a lot of conferences at Israeli universities dressed up as academic events. But today's Tel Aviv University conference, which is hosted by its Department of Philosophy (home to Anat Kamm, Anat Matar and Adi Ophir – SP), as well as the Minerva Center and the Israeli Center for Poetics and Semiotics, breaks new records.

As noted, some officials at the University are outraged at the holding of this conference, but their timid fears of going public are having the reverse effects. Large numbers of donors now see the University as a bastion of the extremist Left, even though such people are in the minority.

The problem is not in the fact that such conferences are being held, composed of radicals and extremists, but rather in the fact that there is no chance in hell that a conference could be held there from the other side of the political spectrum, composed purely of people holding rightist views on politics and policies. That is why the claims about "academic freedom" sound so hypocritical and shallow, because this "freedom" is reserved for one group only.

Maariv itself asked the University spokesman's office for a response. We asked: "Is Tel Aviv University now a propaganda platform for the Hamas? Are there no other points of view, besides those who support the Hamas, that the University regards as worth being aired? Will the University hold a conference titled `Voices from Sderot,' in which all the speakers are from the Israeli radical Right?"

The response from Tel Aviv University was this: "The Minerva Center for Human Rights (sic), The Center for Poetics and Semiotics, and the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University are hold a joint event organized by Harvard University and MIT in which live video broadcasts will be shown. Three professionals (sic) from Gaza will be interviewed in these from the fields of economics, mental health and civics. These are expected to present their point of view about the state of life in Gaza. After the video broadcast a discussion will be held among the Israeli researchers (sic) attending the conference. As in all other events, Tel Aviv University maintains independence and academic freedom of all those engaged in research under its auspices."

***

To complain to the heads of Tel Aviv University write:

President, Professor Joseph Klafter
Email klafter@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL
Tel: 972-3-6408254 972-3-6408254
Fax: 972-3-6406466

Rector: Prof. Dany Leviatan
Email: leviatan@post.tau.ac.il
and rector@post.tau.ac.il
Tel Aviv University
P.O. Box 39040
Tel Aviv 69978
ISRAEL

Contact the American Friends Offices of Tel Aviv University:

Other "Friends of" Groups: http://www.tau.ac.il/friends-eng.html

The original Hebrew article can be found in Maariv
See this and more relevant articles at Israel Behind the News