Winning

It’s no doubt that Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends is a small group. Our last report detailed how we are left out of Abe Foxman’s “Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in the U.S.” Size must matter. But as a peace-with-justice group we accomplish a goal that no other group seems to do. We don’t “demand” anything. We’re not scrambling to cry “end the siege” every time the Jewish state viciously acts out, or any other topic du jour. We merely stand with a message that the world should not and cannot tolerate the existence of a militarized Jewish state on other people’s land. Oh, sure, we would terminate or move the vigils were Beth Israel to endorse the goals in the 2005 Palestinian call for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, but week in and week out, we’re out there – with noticeable support from passersby – stating the obvious: that the US can no longer tolerate its supposed “only friend in the Middle East.”

We remind the general public how our country has been taken over by a Lobby that seems to know no limits on what it can demand of our leaders. We call out the Jewish community for its support of a fanatical and cruel Jewish state. We use their turf as our turf.

And they don’t like it. JWPF has inverted the power pyramid by just appearing at the steps of Beth Israel Congregation and – while demanding nothing – expose some of the skeletons in the Jewish community’s closet. And as we demand nothing, the Congregation demands we leave. THEY want US to leave, recognizing who’s in the driver’s seat. Professor Victor Lieberman whistles past the graveyard when he advises us to take our protests to a political venue, ignoring the well-known and time-honored tradition of the synagogue using its own pulpit for political speech. He should listen to a sermon or two from Rabbi Rob Dobrusin or from Elliott Abrams.

The truth is winning and so are we. Armed only with the Constitution’s First Amendment and behaving in a 100% legal manner (some say we’re too old to run from the cops), we have become the ones whom the Congregation, the City, the Clergy, the faux peace groups like the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, beseech. They want us to go away, much like Jewish Zionists would like Palestinians to go away.

We’re not going. We like winning, and only hope that other peace-with-justice groups find ways to follow our example. The concept of winning has been absent from the peace community in this writer’s eyes. Many liberals eschew sports but that’s one place where the competitive juices are found. Often, as inspiration I’m reminded of a close friend and former defensive lineman for Michigan whose surgically repaired knees remind him of the tackles he made in the 1960’s for the sake of the team. Would he do it again? You betcha.

Winning: it’s what’s lacking. Let’s bring it back.

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January 17: Four vigilers
January 24: Four vigilers
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
Je suis Dieudonne