On ‘exorcising’ Israel bashers from the Jewish mainstream
By Isi Leibler, HAARETZ
Although no stranger to controversial encounters, I was nevertheless taken aback by the extraordinary misrepresentation of my views by Bradley Burston (Dovish Jews? They love Israel? Excommunicate them) and especially Carlo Strenger (Memo to Jewish haters of Liberals: The Middle Ages are over).
I have written a number of columns criticizing extremist Israeli and Diaspora Jews whose principal political activities are geared toward delegitimizing the Jewish state and who currently occupy leading roles fuelling global anti-Israeli campaigns (Why Make a Fuss about JStreet? and Marginalize the Renegades).
I referred in particular to a number of Israeli academics who abuse academic freedom by exploiting their universities as launching pads to vilify Israel, identify with Israel’s enemies and even call for global boycotts of their own institutions. It would be inconceivable for the authorities to adopt a laissez-faire approach toward racists or radical right wing extremist academics behaving in this manner. In a nation under siege and facing existential threats, people exploiting academia for such purposes have crossed the red line and should not retain tenure at institutions funded by Israeli taxpayers and Diaspora Zionist philanthropists.
I also related to a small but increasing number of Diaspora Jews who share a one-dimensional global agenda of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel. I am not referring to “doves” or critics of Israeli policy but those who exploit their Jewish antecedents solely in order to demonize Israel. For example, those who partake in demonstrations with groups supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Or those responsible for disseminating what was subsequently proven to have been malicious libels against the IDF which created the climate for the global campaign depicting us as war criminals - as embodied in the Goldstone report.
In this context, I was also critical of J Street not because of their views but their preposterously false attempts to portray themselves as pro-Israel. J Street has never endorsed any substantive Israel government policies and their principal objective is to lobby the Obama administration to exert more pressure on Israel to provide additional unilateral concessions. They opposed Israel’s role in the Gaza war, lobbied Congress to oppose sanctions against Iran and recently urged Congress to water down a resolution criticizing the Goldstone report. The “pro-Israel, pro-peace” pretensions of J Street are reminiscent of the Jewish communists who sponsored state sponsored Soviet anti-Semitism in the guise of promoting bogus “peace” campaigns.
Their right and that of other Israel bashing groups to express their views are not being challenged. But that does not mean that establishment Jewish groups should indulge in kumbaya with those systematically trying to undermine the Jewish state.
I stand by my view that those whose primary goal is to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state - such as radical right wing extremists or racists - should be marginalized from the mainstream Jewish community. That is not fascism. It is common sense.
I observed that self loathing Jews are not a new phenomenon in Jewish history. During the Middle Ages, Jewish apostates were exploited by the church to promote the most obscene libels against their kinsman. That paved the way for subsequent pogroms and massacres. I noted that during that period, such renegades were excommunicated. To suggest as did Burston and Strenger that I seek to reintroduce “excommunication” to deal with “doves” or critics of Israeli policy is an unconscionable misrepresentation of what I wrote.
More disturbingly, Carlo Strenger joins those exploiting the memory of Yitzhak Rabin to cynically intimidate and silence their opponents. But he goes further. He implies that my views “could be taken seriously by someone like Yaakov Teitel,” the alleged fiendish deranged Jewish terrorist. I will not dignify such an obscene assertion by a response.
On a broader level, Strenger’s references to Rabin are symptomatic of an increasing trend by those on the far left to invoke the memory of our assassinated Prime Minister in order to suppress public criticism of their agenda.
I was privileged to know Rabin and met with him on numerous occasions. I remember how he repeatedly reiterated his hope that “the gamble for peace” as he described the Oslo Accords, would succeed. Alas, in the absence of a genuine peace partner, his gamble failed and became the incubator for our current problems.
But even after the Oslo Accords proved to have been an absolute disaster, most of us recognized that Rabin’s sole motivations were to promote the interests of the Jewish state and achieve a genuine peace settlement. Rabin was above all a consummate Israeli patriot and a true Zionist.
It is thus disturbing to observe post-Zionists and extremists, whose views Rabin utterly detested, abusing his memory in order to promote their discredited policies and silence their opponents. I can just visualize the expletives he would have uttered had he been asked to send an Israeli ambassador to participate at a convention of American Jews like J Street whose principal objective was to persuade their president to exercise “tough love” on Israel because they decided that the Jewish state needed to be treated like a parent who treats a drug addicted child.
Israel and the committed global Jewish community encompass a wide range of opinions on matters relating to the future of the Jewish state. However, I have no doubt that had Rabin been alive, he too would have endeavored to “exorcise” (Thesaurus “disentangle” or “remove”) from the mainstream, those Israelis and Jews who actively seek to demonize the state, defame the IDF, lobby foreign governments against Israel or oppose a Jewish democratic state.
Isi Leibler can be reached ileibler@netvision.net.il
Liberals and free speech:
Let’s say you say: Jews suck. Israel sucks. It is an illegitimate apartheid nazi international war crime state born in the sin of stealing the land from the poor sweet innocent palestinians. According to liberals and the dominant media in America and Israel, that is free speech and must be protected.
But let’s say you say: muslims suck. muhammad was a pedophile and a pig. islam sucks. Kahane was right. Israel would be better off without muslims. Then the liberals and the dominant media would go ballistic, brand you a racist, encourage the muslims to behead you to teach you a lesson, and put you in jail for incitement.
Get it? In real life, the “rational and enlightened” liberals are as fanatic and intolerant as muslims and nazis. As long as conservative Israelis (the real Jews) allow the dominant media (broadcast and print) to remain dominant, the universities to promote post-zionist jewish self-loathing, and the Israeli “supreme” court to favor the muslim cause over the Jewish one, Israel will remain in trouble.
Comment by Samuel Fistel — November 10, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
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samuel fistel
SHMUELY-CAN YOU GET IT THROUGH THAT THICK SKULL OF YOUR- WITHOUT THE LEFTIST, LIBERAL, SOCIALIST JEWS ,THERE WOULD BE NO ISRAEL. PERIOD, FULL STOP.
Comment by h peskin — November 11, 2009 @ 4:40 am
Peskin, you display limited insight with your own thick headed rant.
I believe you have in mind the many Zionists who played instrumental roles in bringing the conception of a reborn nation of Israel to birth who were variously leftists, socialists and even communist tinged. Their thinking was heavily influenced by the political thinking of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, even though as Jews they were despised, hated and persecuted in their homes and thus fled to begin a community in Palestine where they would be free of persecution and some with a view to build a new nation Israel, inspired by the Balfour Declaration.
There are two things you fail to grasp:
1. Israel was not conceived out of socialism or a socialist ideology or even the liberalism or I think secularism of Theodore Herzel. It was conceived of by Jews oppressed in their home nations that were liberal, socialist or communist.
What Jews and Israelis should be thankful for is not the liberalism, socialism or communism of the Zionists who were involved in the founding of Israel.
Rather they should be thankful for their vision and determination to create the re-birth of the nation of a Jewish nation Israel in Israel’s historical land, which nation would be a refuge to all diaspora Jews oppressed and persecuted for being Jews and where they could live secure against persecution and oppression because they were Jews.
2. To be sure early Zionists were politically aligned with the liberal, leftist, socialist and communist politics and ideologies they had grown up with and knew. It is understandable that they thus applied those ideological thoughts to shaping the new nation of Israel.
Hindsight however has a way of bringing clarity to the past.
While Jews today should be thankful to the Zionists for having brought about the realization of the Jews’ 2000 year old dream, it is not thankfulness because these Zionists were of any particular political views.
Further, while eternal gratitude for these Zionists accomplishing what they accomplished should be the case, that does not in any way give them and successive generations of left leaning Israelis a pass for their many grievous mistakes in the shaping and development of Israel.
They and their successive leftist/socialist leaders cannot and must not be excused for those mistakes that cumulatively weigh heavily against Israel.
Comment by Bill Narvey — November 11, 2009 @ 5:51 pm
Peskin/Narvey:
First international Zionist organization to be founded; established in the aftermath of the Russian pogroms of 1881 and 1882.
Hibbat Zion was formed in 1884 by Dr. Leo Pinsker, a Russian physician who practiced in Odessa. Its membership combined European Jewish traditionalists - long committed to support the growing scholarly Jewish community in Palestine - with newly recruited secular nationalists from Eastern Europe. Dr. Pinsker had been appalled by the pogroms and realized that even assimilated Jews could not consider themselves safe in their adopted lands. In his pamphlet Auto-Emancipation, Pinsker argued that Jews in the diaspora could not afford to remain passive in the hopes of either divine redemption or some voluntary ending of antisemitism. Instead Jews had to liberate themselves by reconstituting themselves as a nation in a land of their own.
Orthodox rabbis joined Hibbat Zion assuming that secular nationalists could be won back to piety. These assumptions were translated into policies: Those who wished to settle as farmers in Palestine and who received financial aid from Hibbat Zion had to observe Judaism and its traditions. For secular nationalists, like Dr. Pinsker, this was a troublesome policy. The enthusiasm initially engendered by the creation of Hibbat Zion waned as the uneasy alliance experienced financial crises and internal disputes. Nevertheless, a few colonies were established and aided in Palestine, such as Petah Tikvah (founded in 1878), and the educational aspect of the movement resulted in the Zionist thought and actions of other individuals and groups in Eastern Europe.
Years Numbers Countries of Emigration Motivation
SOURCE: Courtesy of Chaim I. Waxman
TABLE BY GGS INFORMATION SERVICES, THE GALE GROUP.
1840 - 1881 20,000 - 30,000 Primarily Central and Eastern Europe Religio-national
1882 - 1903 35,000 Primarily Eastern Europe - “First Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
1904 - 1914 40,000 Primarily Central and Eastern Europe - “Second Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
1919 - 1923 35,000 Primarily Eastern Europe - “Third Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
First major waves of immigration and settlement were by nationalist-Religious Jews.
Not many leftist socialists in this group:
The first aliyah, or wave, lasted from 1881 to 1903. It was comprised of 30,000 to 40,000 Jews, most of whom were from Eastern Europe. They were part of a much larger emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe at the time, sparked by economic, political, and physical persecution, especially pogroms. The vast majority who fled went to the United States, but many of those who had been in the early Zionist movements went to Palestine and, with support from Baron Edmund de Rothschild, established agricultural communities, including Petah Tikvah,
Zikhron Ya?acov, Rehovot, Hadera, and Rishon le-Zion. During this period some 2,500 Jews from Yemen also emigrated to Palestine.
Comment by yamit82 — November 11, 2009 @ 7:55 pm
REPOSTED:
Narvey: I shall attempt to address your complaints of my lack of responsiveness, although I believe they are simply a smokescreen for your inability to come up with adequate replies to my arguements..
If decisions to go to war depended on the aggressor or the defender first having a guarantee of success in hand, there would never be a war. Your statement flies in the face of what history teaches
YOU GO TO WAR WHEN YOU ALL OTHER MEANS HAVE BEENE EXHAUSTED OR WHEN YOU ARE FACED WITH IMMINENT ATTACK. THAT IS HARDLY THE CASE HERE.
It would not take long at all before Iranians suffering from restricted freedom of movement, fuels and electricity would look to blame their theocracy for getting them into that mess and if the theocracy did not voluntarily leave Iran, they will have a battle on their hands from their own people counting tens of millions.
THIS A VERY DUBIOUS ASSUMPTION. HISTORY HAS SHOWN THAT WHEN ATTACKED BY OUTSIDE FORCES THE NATION USUALLY UNITES AGAINST THE EXTERNAL AGGRESSOR.
The risk in such attack on Iran, by Israel or even by America, might be that Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria might attack Israel. If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, they may very well have to launch pre-emptive strikes against Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria. If America were to attack Iran, Israel may have to engage in a defensive war against her aforesaid Iranian proxy enemies.
THAT IS MERELY ONE OF MANY OPTIONS OPEN TO IRAN. ATTACKING THE SAUDI OIL FIELDS, DITTO THE GULF STATES, MINING THE WATERS OF STRAITS OF HORMUZ.ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WILL THIS DO TO THE PRICE OF OIL WORLD-WIDE? HOW ABOUT THE HUGE IMPACT ON THE WORLD ECONOMY FROM THE STEEP RISE IN OIL PRICE, WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY STILL REELING FROM THE RECESSION.
You comments in this thread and so many others strongly indicates you are completely adverse to the exercise of a war option, unless I am assuming Israel or any other nation is attacked in an all out military assault by an enemy bent on victory by destroying the nation attacked, leaving the nation attacked no choice but to counter-attack to defeat her war making enemy.
HOW DO YOU PROPOSE TO DESTROY THE ENEMY, WHEN THE ENEMY IS COMPRISED OF MAINLY IRREGULARS IMBEDDED IN THE GENERAL POPULATION AND SURROUNDED BY SOME 350 MILLION ARABS IN BORDERING STATES- FURTHER SUPPORTED
BY AN OUTER PERIMETER OF SOME 1.5 BILLION MOSLEMS? THE DESTRUCTION THAT YOU KEEP ALLUDING TO WOULD BE A MOST DAUNTING TASK FOR ANY NATION BUT ESPECIALLY SO FOR A TINY STATE SUCH AS ISRAEL. WHAT KIND OF PEACE WOULD YOU HAVE DURING THE POST WAR PERIOD AND JUST HOW ENDURING WOULD THAT PEACE BE?
YOU KEEP MAKING THE USUAL GENERAL STATEMENTS THAT THE FINAL DECISIONS WILL BE ARRIVED AT THROUGH ARMED VICTORY,WITHOUT TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE ISRAELI-ARAB CONFLICT IS ONE WHERE THE DEMOGRAPHIC IMBALANCE BETWEEN THE PARTIES IS SO WEIGHED TO THE ADVANTAGE OF THE ARABS, ISRAEL CAN ONLY SURVIVE THROUGH A NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER CHOICE.THE WORLD COMMUNITY WILL IN THE LONG RUN HAVE THE FINAL SAY.
Comment by h peskin — November 8, 2009 @ 12:27 am
——————————————————————————–
Narvey:
As many pundits, including Israpundit pundits have noted, Israel has not been anywhere near fully engaged in making her case to the world so as to set the stage for acting decisively to utterly defeat her enemies and minimize or even eliminate adverse reaction that surely would otherwise come Israel’s way from world opinion and her “good friend” America
———————————————————————
RESPONSE
Bill, as a prominent lawyer you are quite aware of the saying-”you are only as good as your case.”
Comment by h peskin — November 8, 2009 @ 12:35 am
——————————————————————————–
Narvey: Analysis-How Israel’s war with Iran will
Comment by h peskin — November 11, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
Peskin/Narvey:
First international Zionist organization to be founded; established in the aftermath of the Russian pogroms of 1881 and 1882.
Hibbat Zion was formed in 1884 by Dr. Leo Pinsker, a Russian physician who practiced in Odessa. Its membership combined European Jewish traditionalists - long committed to support the growing scholarly Jewish community in Palestine - with newly recruited secular nationalists from Eastern Europe. Dr. Pinsker had been appalled by the pogroms and realized that even assimilated Jews could not consider themselves safe in their adopted lands. In his pamphlet Auto-Emancipation, Pinsker argued that Jews in the diaspora could not afford to remain passive in the hopes of either divine redemption or some voluntary ending of antisemitism. Instead Jews had to liberate themselves by reconstituting themselves as a nation in a land of their own.
Orthodox rabbis joined Hibbat Zion assuming that secular nationalists could be won back to piety. These assumptions were translated into policies: Those who wished to settle as farmers in Palestine and who received financial aid from Hibbat Zion had to observe Judaism and its traditions. For secular nationalists, like Dr. Pinsker, this was a troublesome policy. The enthusiasm initially engendered by the creation of Hibbat Zion waned as the uneasy alliance experienced financial crises and internal disputes. Nevertheless, a few colonies were established and aided in Palestine, such as Petah Tikvah (founded in 1878), and the educational aspect of the movement resulted in the Zionist thought and actions of other individuals and groups in Eastern Europe.
Years Numbers Countries of Emigration Motivation
SOURCE: Courtesy of Chaim I. Waxman
TABLE BY GGS INFORMATION SERVICES, THE GALE GROUP.
1840 - 1881 20,000 - 30,000 Primarily Central and Eastern Europe Religio-national
1882 - 1903 35,000 Primarily Eastern Europe - “First Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
1904 - 1914 40,000 Primarily Central and Eastern Europe - “Second Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
1919 - 1923 35,000 Primarily Eastern Europe - “Third Aliyah” Religio-national and “push” factors
First major waves of immigration and settlement were by nationalist-Religious Jews.
Not many leftist socialists in this group:
The first aliyah, or wave, lasted from 1881 to 1903. It was comprised of 30,000 to 40,000 Jews, most of whom were from Eastern Europe. They were part of a much larger emigration of Jews out of Eastern Europe at the time, sparked by economic, political, and physical persecution, especially pogroms. The vast majority who fled went to the United States, but many of those who had been in the early Zionist movements went to Palestine and, with support from Baron Edmund de Rothschild, established agricultural communities, including Petah Tikvah, Zikhron Ya?acov, Rehovot, Hadera, and Rishon le-Zion. During this period some 2,500 Jews from Yemen also emigrated to Palestine.
Comment by yamit82 — November 11, 2009 @ 8:01 pm
Who said that? Historically not true.
Wishful thinking this regime will kill millions of their own countryman to stay in power and have done so during the Iraqi war. Sent half million children to clear mine fields.
Not if what is attacked does not target civilians in any great numbers but mainly thoise targets assocoated withe the hated regime.
If we destroy or set back Iranian nuke objectives even by a few years it’s worth the risks. We could let them know we will nuke them if they attack with low yield nukes and make Lebanon, especially all of Southern Lebanon and Syria a giant parking lot uninhabitable for at least the next hundred years.
You love fantasies don’t you? Hmm lets see We should weigh the lives of all Israelis against the prices of oil going up substantially? Right you schmuck who gives a shit about oil and world economics when we are about to be nuked. Lets have a referendum in Israel about that. I can tell you the ones who vote with you should be locked away as all nut cases should but there won’t be more than a few who agree with you here and here is where it counts.
What do you think we did with the second intifada? I do like Napalm, it’s cheap, effective, and has permanent results. We don’t need expensive hi-tec weapons for terrorists.
All those crazy Muslims are more of a threat to those like you than those like us. Think about it!! But then it would be another good reason to attack Iran, they might get lucky and get Peskin and any like him. Then I would sing.
YOU KEEP MAKING THE USUAL GENERAL STATEMENTS THAT THE FINAL DECISIONS WILL BE ARRIVED AT THROUGH ARMED VICTORY
Yes it is the only way, Just like Nazis, Japanese and Italy. No negotiations until they are devastated in war, totally devastated then we can negotiate the terms of their surrender.
,
Been there done that, numbers don’t count when we have the equalizers and are prepared and willing to use them.
,
Israel will survive but not by negotiations but with the Help of G-d and the strength of arms and national will to survive.
As for the so called world community: like you Peskin I say Fuck them and Fuck You, I don’t recognize the world community who wants me dead. I would see them and you dead first or together. Peskin you don’t, can’t or won’t see and understand that we got the power, all we are missing so far is a leadership willing to assert that power but even so it doesn’t negate the fact that we do have that power and I can assure you it is awesome, were we to start pushing a few red buttons, We can light up the world with millions of candles.
Comment by yamit82 — November 11, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
The role that Jewish leftist/socialists had in the distant past in reestablishing the Jewish homeland in Israel has nothing to do with their successors on the left who now consist of anti-Zionists who have come to believe that Israel is a mistake and should be replaced by an islamic terror state or a binational state which would inevitably lead to an islamic state with Jews fleeing for their lives.
Comment by Laura — November 11, 2009 @ 11:31 pm