the event at 92nd St Y was scheduled to be video-linked to at least one other location. Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh placed radio ads on the local NPR affiliate -- a week before, then again for two days before the event. It was advertised as "open to the entire community," to hold a "civil discussion" of Israel-Palestine conflict.
I attend most of the J Street events at Temple Sinai or the nearby Jewish Community Center, and have come to know and respect the founder of the local group, Nancy Bernstein, and also have become acquainted with other regular participants in discussions that J Street conducts about every 6 weeks. I'm usually the only non-Jewish person in the group; early on, another non-Jew attended but he has not returned.
The meeting yesterday evening was scheduled to begin at 7:30 but I didn't arrive until 8:00: I was not sure it was a good idea for me to attend; I was afraid I would embarrass myself or say something out of line, so I called a dear friend to discuss with her the advisability of participating in an event that might get heated. I told her that I called her at 6:45 pm so that I would be talking when I should be leaving for the meeting, and our discussion would force a decision-by-default. We talked until 7:45, then I decided to go anyway, hurriedly jumped into the car and got to the event just in time to hear the Rabbi explain that 92nd St Y had "inexplicably" canceled the event in NYC, so we would not hear Christiane Amanpour.
Instead, four members of the congregation who were going to moderate the 92nd Street program, were called upon to pinch hit: each of the four spoke for 5 minutes (the Rabbi timed each and kept the event under tight order). Then, members of the audience were given one minute (timed by the Rabbi) to ask a question, and the four member panel responded. Only 4 or 5 questions from the audience were handled in that way.
Although the event was advertised to and for the broad community, once again, I'm pretty sure I was the only non-Jew among the 50 to 75 participants. No person who was not Jewish made any comment or was heard.
Phil and Adam, you know that I am an antisemite; that's why you banned me.
I wasn't always an antisemite. Years ago I lived in the home of a Jewish family who were members of Temple Sinai. My position in the family was as a companion to the family's elderly matriarch; I had accompanied her to Temple Sinai on numerous occasions. I loved Ida K. and she loved me, like mother and daughter.
Perhaps that's why it is so painful to hear hate and mendacity that I heard last night at Temple Sinai.
God bless Dr. Naftali, who spoke first, and, I thought, laid a foundation for what seemed to suggest a very different approach to the issue. Naftali said he wished to speak "not about what has happened but what is possible." He told the audience he was born in Haifa in 1951, and that from his early childhood he remembered how much he enjoyed the fine wood and beautiful details of the home where he lived with his parents, holocaust survivors. The house had been the home of a Palestinian family. He knew that in one part of his being; it was a fact like any other that a child knows. Dr. Naftali said that he matured, he realized that "the catastrophe of others was the price of his good life." Naftali spoke of the excitement and joy of the 1967 war, and also of the thrill of fear that he can still feel from that event. He marked it as the moment when Israel lost its soul. He called the twelve years after intifada (? or Oslo? my notes are fragmented) a "moral wasteland" for Israel.
In discussing his military service, Naftali noted that he lost 3 friends, who for some unknown reason were in Beirut when Israel started "that disgusting and immoral war" against Lebanon that was waged "for no reason other than to maintain dominance of power."
Similarly, Naftali registered abhorrence at the Gaza campaign, in which he lost three dear friends -- Dr. Abuelaish's children, who were known to him and were friends of his. This was the ONLY TIME in the entire duration of the event that Dr. Abuelaish was mentioned.
Then the other three persons began their comments. It was appalling. Nancy was first; even she slid into the standard Israel first rhetoric that someone like me recognizes all too frequently. Jewish people seem to have silos of thinking and speaking, and a rehearsed set of statements; it's as if their brains are cast in a mould that can comprehend and express only a pre-formed thought process and is incapable of even acknowledging that a different way of assessing facts, or a different set of facts, might exist. Nancy's comments were otherwise unremarkable: "growing up in DC I know the pain of My People . . .two-state is possible; 2400 people in DC; 500 students from 128 colleges -- the BEST colleges; 700 people lobbied Congress; Israel faces a threat to its Jewish character . . ."
The other two speakers were repugnantly and repulsively anti-Palestinian. One of those two, a past head of the local AIPAC, insisted that "Israel wants peace," then recited a list of headlines from Palestinian Authority media with the purpose of demonstrating that there IS no partner for peace. He said that Palestinians had squandered every opportunity for peace, listing from 1937 to the present the 6 or 7 opportunities that Palestinians had jettisoned. The former AIPAC leader was incensed at the notion that the US administration should be involved in pressuring Israel to make peace; it's condescending and patronizing." [So why was he a part of AIPAC, whose mission is to lobby US Congress on behalf of Israel?] He insisted that "settlements are not the issue; it's not about land," but rather, about the "existential threat to the Jewish people," and, his coup de grâce: the Palestinian Authority refuses to teach their children about the Holocaust. "We need to look into the education of Palestinian children; they need to learn about the holocaust."
Nancy affirmed Mr. AIPAC's declaration-- "Many children are not exposed" to holocaust education." She registered disappointment that no Palestinians were in the audience or on the panel, and said that future events would attempt to change that.
Mr. AIPAC said "J Street is the wrong tool to use,"
Most of the discussion between the panel members and between panel-and-audience devolved into "J Street good" "J Street bad" inside-Jewish-baseball attacks and counter-attacks.
As I recall them, the questions from the audience raised these issues:
Question 1. "Most Palestinians are Jordanian, so shouldn't they go back to Jordan." Responders corrected the Questioner's misapprehension, and asserted that "Jews should be able to live in Palestine and Palestinians should be able to live in Israel."
Question 2. "Al Jazeera reported that Wikileaks revealed that Palestinians made many, many concessions that were ignored." Response: [this is a direct quote]: IN THEIR MINDS they made concessions -- they've lost so many wars, they SHOULD make concessions." The responder continued, The Israelis are wise to proceed as they have; I trust Israel's government; they have been elected by the people.
Question 3. "First, Israel treats people badly. My second point, when Gershom Gorenberg spoke here he told us that settlements are illegal, and that Israel knows that the settlements are illegal." Can you comment? [I was at the Gershom Gorenberg talk. He showed on the large screen the document stating that the Israeli settlements are illegal. He came upon the document in archives that he spent five years attempting to search.]
My notes about the response to that questioner say only that Mr. AIPAC said, "thank god for Christian zionists."
I'm afraid I didn't stay and mingle after the panel was dismissed and people made their exits. I should have at least offered Dr. Naftali my hand in support; he was badly outnumbered. As I recall, 'Naftali' is a Sephardic name. I further recall David Sasha's explanation of pilpul-- it is an Ashkenazi technique, not practiced by Sephardic scholars. Facts are sometimes inconvenient things; Dr. Naftali has taken account of facts as they are, not as the received (Ashkenazi) narrative declares them to be. Since his mind is not pre-formed, he is able to make adjustment for other versions of reality without losing his identity.
And as I review my notes on the questions, it is heartening to see that most of the questioners were, like Dr. Naftali, far more rational and critical in their understanding than were three of the four panelists. "If the people lead, the leaders will follow."
The Rabbi closed the event with a brief explanation of a Torah passage (sorry, I don't have the citation) -- about two kinds of argument: "argument NOT for the sake of heaven," and "argument FOR the sake of heaven." He urged the group to argue FOR the sake of heaven.
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