Exposing Another Zionist in the Peace Movement

The following section is offered as a case study in how to distinguish those activists who support a Jewish state from those who recognize that deadly symptoms of Zionism are connected at the root, and that it is this root of the conflict that must be eliminated, not preserved.

I recently had an e-mail correspondence with self-described former AIPAC member turned peace activist. This guy, let’s call him “Mr. F,” has actually worked with other folks in his community in a certain Southwestern state to do some good, public work in exposing US bankrolling of apartheid Israel. Naturally, this stoked the ire of local Zionists and when a request went out far and wide to try to intervene on behalf of the coalition Mr. F worked with, this writer heeded the call.

Subsequently, Mr. F put out a notice that he will be speaking at local synagogue and I innocently asked whether he would be promoting the Palestinian call for global boycotts against Israel at his presentation. His response piqued my curiosity: “although I support BDS, I see it as secondary to dialogue groups. I would like to see dialogue groups sprout up all over the US and Israel.” Hmm.

I wrote back and reminded Mr. F that adhering to the request from Palestinians civil society (171 NGOs) to create a BDS movement was the duty of all people of conscience and I hinted that it was, perhaps, arrogant to relegate Palestinians’ primary request to secondary status. I also pointed out the diversionary nature of a structured “dialogue” which masks true dialogue. I didn’t say so then but I am now reminded, too, that dialogue with supporters of Israel is a clear example of “When Dialogue is NOT our Hope.”

Anyway, Mr. F. responded with a rejection of the notion that we should “follow” the Palestinian boycott call. He claimed, the issue was “spiritual” and reiterated his position that “dialogue” was necessary. He said additionally that the Palestinian right of return was “unworkable.” He also wrote that he did “not advocate punishing Israel or getting revenge against Israel, as so many activists actually want (in their emotional attitude). That is a recipe for conflict.”

Now my antennae were set to quivering. Was my creeping suspicion that Mr. F was actually a Zionist in error? I then asked him, “Do you really support Israel’s claimed ‘right’ to exist as a Jewish state in Palestine?” His first answer: “I support Israel’s right to exist because I know that far too much blood would be shed if the Palestinians hold out for a full right of return, not to mention the demise of Israel.”

Blood shed? I asked whether he was counting only Jewish blood, reminding him that in last year’s Hanukkah Massacre alone, some 1400 Palestinians in Gaza were slaughtered, producing a 100:1 “kill” ratio. I also challenged his attempt to dismiss the Palestinian right of return as “unworkable”, and asserted that he had dodged the “right to exist” question.

Now his antennae must have been set to quivering as well. Did he know he was exposed? He wrote, “You have not heard a word I’ve said” and alleged that I distorted his point of view. I denied any distortion, but to clear the record I repeated the question: “Do you support Israel’s claimed right to exist as a Jewish state in Palestine?”

The mask was almost completely off at this point. Mr. F responded: “I prefer Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state to continued conflict. I am not willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of people, including the unborn for ideological stubbornness and egoic demands.” Amazing! He still hadn’t answered the question, so focusing on his purported wish to avoid conflict, I asked a slightly different question: “Would you have preferred Nazi Germany’s claimed ‘right’ to exist as a white, Aryan nation in Germany, Poland, etc.as opposed to continued conflict?”

And that was that. Mr. F could resist answering my question but he couldn’t resist the temptation of the ad hominem attack: “I am not interested in catering to your obsession with casting the world as the enemy. Your need to prove to yourself that since other people do not agree with your great wisdom they are the enemy is not my problem. I also am not responsible for your inability to understand what I have to say.”

One of the astounding things about this conversation is that Mr. F claims to wish to avoid conflict and blood shed while never once acknowledging–even after I questioned him about it in my final message–that it is EXACTLY the existence of a Jewish supremacist state in Palestine, imposed against the will of the indigenous population, that has fomented and fueled conflict and bloodshed there for more than sixty years now. Should he ever decide to work on curing the disease, it will become apparent to him that is the only way to successfully treat the symptoms.

Meeting Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Two members of JWPF and a third activist in the Ann Arbor community attended an evening service at the Oak Grove AME Church in Detroit this week to see and hear the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. speak. Magnetic, dynamic, captivating … all the usual catch-phrases belong to this orator, who in the opinion of this writer belongs in the White House. He masterfully wove Scripture in connection to current events: “Walk with Jesus through the streets of Gaza … walk with Him through the West Bank and the West Side of Chicago”.

As we entered the church, we each received a card upon which we were to indicate our fellowship. Later in the service, all the congregations listed were read aloud, and “Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends” received a warm round of applause.

Local Zionist Appointed to Human Rights Commission

Did Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje act spitefully with his recent, stealth appointment of arch Zionist Neal Elyakin to the Human Rights Commission? Was he punishing this Commission, or those of us who’ve asked that the City Council promote a 2003 Resolution by this Commission calling for a suspension of military aid to Israel? We suspect only he knows the answers, but call readers attention to PeaceMonger’s expose of this Nakba-denier.

Seven Vigillers
Anti-Apartheid, Anti-Israel
Henry Herskovitz
Edited by Vigiller M
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
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The subject of the Palestine Center’s inaugural book review is Jewish Terrorism in Israel by Ami Pedahzur and Arie Perliger (Columbia UP, 2009). You can read the entire review here. Below is a relevant excerpt from the review concerning the book authors’ omission of the Deir Yassin massacre.

Reading through the book, it becomes evident that this is the most complete and detailed account of Jewish terrorism to date …

Yet, though this book does make solid contributions, it has weaknesses as well. The most notable weakness revolves around the period of the creation of the state of Israel. Despite the fact that groups like the Irgun (IZL) and the Lehi (LHI) were responsible for the most deadly and infamous acts of Jewish terror in modern history, the authors fail to place these groups under the same scrutiny. To be fair, a discussion of these groups is included in the book, however they are not subject to the same network analysis as Jewish terror groups in more recent times. Further, a number of heinous attacks perpetrated by these groups are not mentioned.

It is important, at this point, to review the authors’ definition of terrorism. Their understanding of terrorism which was applied in the book is a four-part definition (pg. xii): Terrorism involves 1) the use of violence, 2) a political motive that activates the violence, 3) an intention to strike fear into the victims and their community 4) the victims of terrorism are civilians or non-combatants. This definition encompasses most of the elements that the mainstream literature on terrorism accepts.

It is striking then, that a book on Jewish terrorism that adopts such a definition would leave out the massacre at Deir Yassin and other attacks against the Palestinian Arab community. Benny Morris, another Israeli academic, describes the attack at Deir Yassin as follows:

Deir Yassin is remembered not as a military operation, but rather for the atrocities committed by the IZL and LHI troops during and immediately after the drawn out battle: Whole families were riddled with bullets and grenade fragments and buried when houses were blown up on top of them, men women and children were mowed down as they emerged from their houses, individuals were taken aside and shot. At the end of the battle, groups of old men, women and children were trucked through West Jerusalem’s streets as a kind of “victory parade” and then dumped in (Arab) East Jerusalem.

All elements of the definition described by the authors are met, yet Deir Yassin did not make it into the text. In fact, the authors steered away from describing attacks against Palestinians during the period when the IZL and LHI were active. Even though the vast majority of those killed during the Irgun’s reign of terror were Palestinian Arabs and the vast majority of their attacks targeted Palestinians; the authors fail to fairly characterize this reality. Instead they claim that Irgun “activities focused primarily on the struggle against restrictions imposed by the British Mandate authorities on the immigration of Jews to Eretz Israel.” (pg. 13) Why they chose to omit these events, in what seems to be systematic fashion, is unclear.

Our First Offer Received

Beth Israel Congregant Victor Lieberman stepped up to the plate in his own fashion and sent Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends an invitation to consider his offer to approach Rabbi Dobrusin and the Board of Directors of Beth Israel. His full offering can be read here, but at the core was:

In short, there may be some opportunity for accommodation. I understand that you began your vigil because you were denied opportunity to speak to Beth Israel. I therefore propose the following. I shall urge the rabbi and board to allow you to share your views on Israel in a meeting room at the synagogue on a week night or at a weekend time of your choosing. (Addressing the congregation in the sanctuary on Shabbat is not an option, because it is not a political forum.) Your talk will be advertised, and anyone in the congregation (not the general public) wishing to attend will do so. People will not accept a one-sided presentation on so controversial a topic, so I propose that after you talk for 20 minutes or however long you want — I reply for a like period, or perhaps somewhat more briefly. We could then each have 5 or 10 minutes for final remarks, after which the discussion would be open to the floor. In return for addressing the congregation, you and your group must agree to end permanently your picketing of the synagogue.

Our response, and counter-offer, in full:

Dear Mr. Lieberman,

Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends appreciates your decision to reach out to us. As you may know, JWPF made offers to Beth Israel in letters to the Ann Arbor News on July 18, 2007, and July 17, 2009 (see enclosures). Our basic position was to “terminate the vigils at Beth Israel when its board of directors publicly states its full support for principles that basic human rights require.” In essence, those principles were the three demands set forth in the 2005 Palestinian call for boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. In both cases, we indicated that our position was negotiable; that is still the case today.

However, you should know that JWPF members agree that the one-time, closed meeting you proposed in your earlier letter is simply inadequate inducement for us to abandon an effort that has consumed so much of our time and energy and has occasioned so much unwarranted reproach from the Jewish community. Furthermore, your proposal offers nothing in the way of changing BIC’s unequivocal embrace of Zionism and the Palestinian suffering that entails. Nevertheless, we remain open to beginning negotiations with BIC with the definite goal of ending our vigils at BIC.

During these negotiations, JWPF reserves the right to continue the vigils but to jump start the process, and as an act of good faith, we offer to suspend the vigils for one week on some mutually agreed upon date in return for a pledge by BIC’s board of directors to begin negotiations with us on a date certain. Feel free to share this letter with Rabbi Dobrusin and anyone else in BIC.

After receiving an initial response, which hinted at the allegedly circumscribed nature of our understanding of Apartheid Israel’s historiography, Mr. Lieberman who holds a 1975 Ph. D from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies invited this writer to audit his Fall, 2010 class on “A History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict.” This part of a new offer was immediately accepted, but his rejection of our counter came in a second response: “As regards your counter-offer, I’m afraid it would elicit no interest. Most congregants regard the vigil as no more than a trivial nuisance with which they long ago came to terms.”

Victor is then hard pressed to explain, if JWPF is the trivial nuisance he claims, why the Jewish community would recognize our group in a front-page, 3,500-word article in its most recent edition of the Washtenaw Jewish News.

Ann Arbor Chronicle Reports on Palestine

One of at least two on-line news agencies remaining in Ann Arbor is the Ann Arbor Chronicle. Their co-editor is present at all City Council meetings and reports from last Monday:

Henry Herskovitz: Herskovitz described how he’d been walking with a woman down Ann Street towards Fourth Avenue on Nov. 21, 2009 when theyd been assaulted by a noise so loud that it had caused the woman to grab his arm. It had caused parents to try to reassure their children that things were okay, but the children had been inconsolable. The loud noise, he explained, had come from Michigan National Guard jets that had buzzed Michigan Stadium on the day of the UM-Ohio State football game. He reminded councilmembers that the children of Palestine experience that kind of noise on a daily basis, and that it was causing a psychological crisis in Gaza. That terror, he concluded, continued to be funded by American citizens.

http://annarborchronicle.com/2010/01/06/mixed-message-from-council-on-library-lot/

Good Protest in Ohio

At least two members of JWPF journeyed south to Toledo, Ohio to take part in a Palestine solidarity gathering and march sponsored by the Northwest Ohio Peace Coalition (NWOPC). In his speech, a new Palestinian father called upon the Jewish community to reject the ideology and subsequent crimes committed in their names. See photo below and at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hersko/Photos/CIMG1453.JPG. Full report of NWOPC’s protest here.

Six Vigillers, ten degrees
Treat the Illness, not the Symptom
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
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*Dissident Voice has a new article about Deir Yassin Remembered Board Member Mordechai Vanunu. Click here to read “What Americans Need to Know about Mordechai Vanunu” by Eileen Fleming.

*Please sign the petition, co-sponsored by Deir Yassin Remembered, to “Investigate Possible Israeli War Crimes” stemming from allegations that Israelis have stolen organs from the bodies of Palestinians.

*”2 Views on Norman Finkelstein’s putting Zionism off limits in the debate” on Palestine Think Tank

“In Palestine” from DYR Board of Advisors Member Richard A Siegel on Vimeo.

This view comes from Deir Yassin Remembered Advisory Board member Henry Herskovitz and the December 19, 2009, edition of his weekly Beth Israel vigil report.

Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups protective of “Jewish sensibilities” are promoting a march on Gaza, planned for later this month. Notwithstanding that the real fight is here (and in other Zionist-controlled countries that support Apartheid Israel), these groups happily traipse off to make a big show of flailing at the symptoms of Jewish supremacism in Palestine rather than focus their attentions on the underlying cancer (Zionism, if you prefer).

Think about it. Israel creates checkpoints to protect Jewish thieves in the Occupied West Bank, and peace groups say, “Stop the checkpoints.” Israel builds an illegal wall to protect and expand the land-base of Jewish ethnocentrism on stolen property, and peace groups say, “Stop the Wall.” Israel blockades and bombs Gaza to silence and punishes Palestinians because too many of them chose to support HAMAS, a party that resists, rather than collaborates with, the Jewish supremacist state, and Medea Benjamin (one of 33 Jews who will not hold her own community accountable for their support of Apartheid) and Code Pink cry, “Free Gaza.” It is as if we are to believe that all these Jewish-instigated war crimes and crimes against humanity just happened out of the blue, unrelated to each other and the overarching ideology of Jewish supremacism.

Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends have been shining the spotlight of truth on Jewish supremacism here in Ann Arbor for over six years. And almost every time we ask Jewish leaders in the peace movement to help us in our task we are abandoned or criticized. It’s time that the real peace community start asking tough questions of Jewish leaders in the peace movement. WHY are you focusing only on symptoms of the underlying disease? WHY aren’t you examining and eradicating the cancer of Zionism? WHY won’t you take your own community to task? And WHY do you marginalize or attack those who have the courage and integrity to expose and confront Jewish supremacism?