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.'

Anti Zionist Netura Carta Leader Moshe Hirsch’s Death: A Footnote About The Funding Of Netura Carta

JERUSALEM - This past week, the Jewish world observed the death of Netura Carta leader Moshe Hirsch.

Netura Carta is known as an anti-Zionist wing of the Orthodox Jewish world.

Hirsch led Netura Carta to actively support all Palestinian terrorist groups and demonstrated active support for Iran, after Teheran declared its nuclear threat against the Jewish state.

In an interview that Hirsch gave to foreign reporters in Jerusalem in May 1994, following former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat’s entry into Gaza, Hirsch confirmed that Arafat had agreed to provide funding for Netura Carta from the treasury of the newly constituted Palestinian Authority (PA).

When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered Arafat’s Headquarters in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield in April 2002, the IDF discovered documentation of PLO bank transfers to Netura Carta.

With renewal of talks with the PLO and the PA, the question was asked whether the government of Israel would demand that the PLO and the PA cease funding the Netura Carta.

An Israeli government spokesman responded that the Israeli government had other priorities to address.

View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
View this story at Israel Behind the News

RESPONSE TO ABORIGINAL SPEAKER WHO MOCKED IRWIN COTLER DURING ISRAEL APARTHEID WEEK

At an event entitled “Canadian Apartheid & Indigenous Solidarity” on March 12 at the University of Manitoba before an audience of about 50 people, Cheryl-Anne Carr, a Metis Canadian, affiliated with the Communist Party of Canada mocked Irwin Cotler, Liberal Member of Parliament, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.

Why? What is Cotler’s great sin?

Cotler, a renowned human rights lawyer, has dared to suggest that when it comes to viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Jewish people can not be looked at as only having had a connection to the land of Israel for the last 120 years of Zionism, but indeed for much much longer.


M.P. Irwin Cotler. Photo by Rhonda Spivak.

In fact, Cotler has dared to suggest that Jews ought properly be viewed as “a First Nation”, an “ aboriginal people” when it comes to Israel.
He has not said that Jews are the only aboriginal people, but has used this logic to outline a vision for a two state solution to the conflict-two states for two peoples-Israel and Palestine, living peacefully side by side.

According to Carr, however, Jews can not be defined as any “aboriginal people” who have claims to an ancestral homeland. In her talk she painted Jews as a people who had no longstanding attachment to Israel and suddenly showed up at Israel’s door as colonizers, with a purpose of simply oppressing another people, the Palestinians.

Cotler’s thinking on why the Jewish people properly ought to be characterized as “a First Nation” in Israel is cogently outlined in an article he wrote on May 14, 2008, in the Jerusalem Post:

“Israel is not simply a snapshot at age 60, nor a fragment frozen in time; nor is it anchored only in 60 years of Israeli statehood, or 120 years of Zionism.

“For Israel, rooted in the Jewish people, as an Abrahamic people, is a prototypical First Nation or aboriginal people, just as the Jewish religion is a prototypical aboriginal religion, the first of the Abrahamic religions.

“In a word, the Jewish people is the only people that still inhabits the same land, embraces the same religion, studies the same Torah, hearkens to the same prophets, speaks the same aboriginal language - Hebrew - and bears the same aboriginal name, Israel, as it did 3,500 years ago.

‘Israel, then, is the aboriginal homeland of the Jewish people across space and time. It is not just a homeland for the Jewish people, a place of refuge, asylum and protection. It is the homeland of the Jewish people, wherever and whenever it may be; and its birth certificate originates in its inception as a First Nation, and not simply, however important, in its United Nations international birth certificate.

“The State of Israel, then, as a political and juridical entity, overlaps with the "aboriginal Jewish homeland"; it is, in international legal terms, a successor state to the biblical, or aboriginal, Jewish kingdoms. But that aboriginal homeland is also claimed by another people, the Palestinian/Arab people, who see it as their place and patrimony.

‘The existence of a parallel claim does not vitiate that of the Jewish people or cause it to resonate any less as memory and memoir of homeland - where homeland represents history, roots, religion, language, culture, literature, law, custom, family, myth and values. Rather, the equities of the claim mandate the logic of Israeli-Palestinian partition - a logic which in moral and juridical terms requires that a just solution be organized around the "principle of least injustice," and that includes mutual recognition of the legitimacy of two states for two peoples.

“Nor should the internal divides besetting Israel mask the existential raison d'etre, and moral imperative, of Israel itself. Nazism, and the gathering storm of the Thirties, almost succeeded not only because of its pathology of hate and industry of death, but because of the powerlessness of the stateless Jew and the vulnerability of the powerless without a state. Israel, then, is an antidote to Jewish vulnerability, the raison d'etre in the most profound existential sense for Jewish self-determination.

It is not the case, as it sometimes said, that if there had been no Holocaust, there would not have been a State of Israel, as if a state could somehow even compensate for the murder of six million Jews. It is the other way around: If there had been an Israel, there would not have been a Holocaust, or others horrors of Jewish history.”

In mocking Cotler in her talk at University of Manitoba, Carr appears to have taken the rather extreme view that the Jewish people have no legitimate claim whatsoever to a national homeland, whatever size--- in other words, Jews ought not have the right to self-determination, ought not to have any state of their own at all.

Carr was not calling for any two state solution. She was in effect recognizing only the claim of one people, the Palestinians, in this conflict. According to her warped view, their claim is to be recognized in its entirety, while any Jewish claim to the land of Israel is to be entirely negated.

And that to her is justice?

A response to Carr can be quite brief.

Irwin Cotler tries to do justice wherever he goes, and because of that he has garnered a tremendous amount of respect as a human rights advocate internationally. His is a far more balanced and fair approach than yours will ever be.

This article can also be read in the Jerusalem Post
See this article and more at Israel Behind the News