Talking Back to Mondoweiss: 92nd Street Y, J Street, and Perfidy Mar 7 2011

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.

Cracks revealing feet of clay June 3 2010

Psychopathic god June 3, 2010 at 10:32 am

C Span Washington Journal is my ‘beat.’
I consider C Span the ‘Colin Powell’ of cable media: people trust C Span to be impartial.
And yesterday, the tipping point was approached: a caller said,

“oil, oil, oil; that’s all you talk about. It’s very important but the flotilla is extremely important too, why don’t you talk about the flotilla? You cut off callers who say things critical of Israel.”

So today C Span Moderator Susan Swain took the bull by the horns: You, dear listeners, tell us what is most important to you.
Then Swain read the headlines of a number of national newspapers. I lost count; most of them lead with oil spill stories.
C Span Washington Journal frequently explains to its listeners that it tries to be ‘balanced’ by reading NYT AND Washington Times; that is, it thinks its covering the spectrum of print media.
But C Span does not get the larger point: ALL of the media is either bought or cowed to presenting ONLY what certain interests permit to be presented, and only in the way that those interests prefer. Nobody wants to think about it, including trustworthy C Span.

I’m still having a hard time categorizing the calls — twenty of them came in; most mentioned the oil spill as being very important; several mentioned pressing issues like immigration; pressing economic issues including employment/unemployment, finance reform. A few off-the-wall calls occupy the tails of the curve. Perhaps four or five callers mentioned Israel/Gaza and the flotilla.
Two calls regarding Israel laid bare the divide; one of those calls represented a major tipping point in US dialog about Israel. That caller said he thought the most important issue the US has to confront is the media. He said that C Span represented the best that the media spectrum has to offer, but that C Span seemed to pull its punches when the topic was Israel. He asked this question twice, and squeezed a response from Ms. Swain: “When C Span producers have their directors’ meetings, do they say, ‘Don’t talk about Israel or Jews?’ Because that what it seems like.”
(Swain replied softly and rather embarrassed, “No, of course we don’t eliminate any topic from discussion.”)
The caller spoke further (and to her credit, Swain was generous with time and did not interrupt or censure): “Many times when people say things critical of Israel, they are accused of antisemitism. Some seem antisemitic. But it is possible to talk about Israel without being antisemitic, and it’s important.”
The caller’s remarks were in the same vein of thought as one of . Stephen Walt’s three question of Peter Beinart:

Second, Beinart’s essay is primarily directed at the American Jewish community, which is understandable. Yet I’m curious as to whether he thinks this is a topic that all Americans should engage with, or whether he thinks (as some do) that it is a topic on which non-Jews should remain largely silent. My own view is that the special relationship has a profound impact on American foreign policy and therefore it is a subject that all Americans should care about very much and be able to discuss openly — without being unfairly attacked — even if they a critical of Israel’s actions and America’s unconditional support for them. No group should enjoy a privileged position in that debate. I wonder if Beinart would agree.

Some months ago, Michael Scheuer caused a mild stir when he said, on C Span Washington Journal, that Americans needed to, and deserved to, have a frank conversation about the US-Israel relationship. Scott Ritter has said the same thing on numerous occasions, including on C Span.
Starting at least three years ago, a network of some dozens of us low-life low-impact keyboard warriors have tried to raise the issue on numerous fora, perhaps with more passion than tact; we’ve been banned, censored, and vilified as vicious antisemites.

Who knows how many Palestinians, who knows how many Afghanis, who knows how many American soldiers, have died since Michael Scheuer and Scott Ritter stirred the waters.

Three days ago nine more people died– is it nine? we don’t know! Israel retains control of bodies, wounded, information, evidence, and the right to be its own judge and jury, by decree of Hillary Clinton, who is in thrall to Haim Saban who has stated that “he’s a one-issue guy and that issue is Israel,” and that he cares for the US so little that his businesses are incorporated in Cayman Islands so that he can avoid US taxes.

It’s time. NOW. Time for a vigorous all-American debate on the US-Israel relationship.
Pray that the conversation can remain a conversation and not a confrontation.