[Peace-discuss] Commentary on Gaza, etc.

Sun Jan 11 16:44:14 CST 2009

It has been submitted as a guest commentary. Their policy is that such pieces are limited to those addressing local issues.

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From: LAURIE SOLOMON <LAURIE at ADVANCENET.NET>
To: Marti Wilkinson <martiwilki at gmail.com>; David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 3:42:55 PM
Subject: RE: [Peace-discuss] Commentary on Gaza, etc.

I wonder if the same response would happen if it was submitted as a guest op-ed  article or commentary.  I have the feeling that it is not really the length of the remarks as much as the substance that would keep the N-G from finding a way to publish it.

From:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of Marti Wilkinson
Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 2:45 PM
To: David Green
Cc: Peace Discuss
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Commentary on Gaza, etc.

Your commentary is very well thought out and written. If it's submitted to the N-G as a 'letter to the editor' it will be rejected on the grounds that it is over 250 words. That is the limit the News-Gazette places on correspondence....Marti
On Sun, Jan 11, 2009 at 11:47 AM, David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com> wrote:
This Commentary was submitted to the N-G, and thus has little or no chance of being published. Despite the tone of the end of this article, I do not support the thinking and tactics of JStreet and Brit Tzedek, which represent Zionism lite. But their presence does at least make explicit the myth of monolithic support for Israel among Jews, for whatever that is worth. A successful and sustainable movement against Israeli/American criminality will still have to be from a principled position that traces Israeli behavior to American behavior in the Middle East and elsewere.

Rhetoric and Reality in the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Israel's invasion of Gaza has exposed as never before the distance between rhetoric and reality. Israel's claim of retaliation is belied by its previous incursions during the ceasefire, its long-term strangulation of Gaza's economy—including throughout the ceasefire and in violation of that ceasefire—and its overwhelming military might.

Hamas rockets can only go so far in rationalizing bombs dropped in crowded neighborhoods. Palestinians' crime was to vote for Hamas after they were betrayed by the Palestinian Authority, correctly viewed as collaborators with Israeli occupiers. American neoconservatives dictate to Arabs that they become democratic. But a free and fair election in 2006, making Palestine the only democracy in the Middle East, was followed by Israel's arrest of elected Hamas legislators.

At the local level, it's interesting to note the patterns of coverage and comment. News from Israel/Palestine was absent from the News-Gazette for several weeks in November and December, during which Jewish settlers in Hebron (West Bank) carried out openly racist pogroms against Palestinians, often recorded by cell phone cameras. There is no way to square these events with the portrayal of Jews as victims. There were no rockets fired by Palestinian children walking to school. Thus there was no coverage and no large photos, because there were no Jewish funerals.

But Gaza can't be ignored, and only a lack of context can present Israeli Jews as victims. History according to the Associated Press reports in the News-Gazette begins with a Hamas rocket fired into southern Israel on December 27th, not one minute before. The essential narrative of terrorist Arab religious fanatics attacking innocent and democratic Jews must be maintained. This can only be done through selective memory and chronology, reinforced cultural stereotypes, and an unquestioned definition of terrorism that excludes state-sponsored terror.

Local Jewish institutions and leadership, responsible for maintaining the myth of Jewish innocence and Israeli righteousness, have been predictably silent. Official Jewish perspectives are dictated by national-level organizations, invariably supportive of Israeli (and American) wars. They hope that with the help of the mainstream media that this will suffice, without the annoyance of locally-generated rhetoric that might reveal factually-based alternative perspectives. The job of local Jewish institutions—religious and secular—is to selectively focus on historical Jewish victimization and alleged current examples of anti-Semitism, such as hate speech on Urbana Public Television. The moral high ground must be maintained and political complexity must be ignored. Self-examination and criticism is forbidden.

Nevertheless, at this moment there is a vital and ongoing debate among various dissenting Jewish-identified organizations that constitute an aspect of the broad peace and social justice movement. Participants promote alternative perspectives critical of Israel's actions as judged in relation to human rights and international law. They question the benefits that a hyper-militarized Jewish state offer to Jewish-American identity, and challenge the unconditional support and blank check that our own government has offered Israel for the past four decades. Debate—honest, complex, contentious, sometimes flawed and sectarian—has been generated from the local level with grassroots organizations and the internet, and is now reflected in the formation of national-level organizations such as JStreet, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Brit Tzedek.

These perspectives increasingly test the suffocating party line of established Jewish institutions and leaders that have with no exceptions supported both Israeli and American military invasions and occupations for decades. Dissenters will be studiously ignored or suppressed by Jewish establishments at all levels for as long as possible. But dissent will eventually—and sooner rather than later—become so pervasive and relevant that it will have to be treated with seriousness rather than condescension, especially in the face of Israeli policies that are starkly contradictory to the liberal values supported by the vast majority of American Jews, and indeed alienate most young Jews from dogmatic Jewish institutions.

Local Jewish leaders will no longer be able to carelessly play the anti-Semitism card and exploit the implicit assumption of Jewish moral superiority in order to silence their critics, Jewish or otherwise. An international consensus for a legal resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflict has been in place for three decades. At some point Israel and the United States will be compelled to accept rather than reject it.

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