Israel does not act or speak for every Jew

[Al-khiyal]

I WRITE as a Jew and as a synagogue member. I write as one whose academic work continues to move through questions of Jewish identity and the legacy of the Holocaust. Yet, I write with a growing sense of shame. The source of the feeling is simple: Israel claims that it continues to act in my name.

The Jewish community in Sydney and elsewhere insists on identifying themselves with Israeli actions. These acts are part of a tradition in which the state of Israel has set the measure for being Jewish.

The proof of this is the perverse logic in which responses to the politics of Israel - a politics that manifests itself in the bulldozing of houses in Gaza and the bombing of civilians in Qana - take the form of attacks on synagogues, Jewish cultural centres and Jewish cemeteries. Each time Israel acts in a certain way, security measures around synagogues are doubled.

Why? The straightforward answer attests to the victory of those who have linked and continue to link being a Jew to Israel and thus to those who conflate Judaism and Zionism.

The consequence of this is that a critique of Zionism or a disagreement over the policies of Israel are taken at best as a criticism of Jews and, at worst, as anti-Semitic. The evidence is clear. Attacks on synagogues in Seattle and Parramatta underscore the results of this. These attacks are the result of the politics of a nation state.

For a Jew, Israel is both the name of a state and the locus of ideals and actions.

Israel, as a place in which the endless and complex negotiation with others takes place, is the Israel that exists within Judaism. This is the Israel evoked in the liturgy. The state of Israel needs to be judged in relation to the other Israel.

There is a Judaic critique of Israel; one which once articulated would allow some Jews to undo the project that continues to identify the policies of a state with both a culture and a religion.

Until that undoing is accomplished Jewish community centres - religious or secular - will continue to be attacked. Israel, in its present manifestation, sustains anti-Semitism.

And yet, it will be argued the Holocaust has made the state of Israel a necessity: a state was needed so that such events not happen again.

State creation always displaces a people. And the results of that founding displacement should always be acknowledged, understood and in the end resolved.

However what endures for many as an outrage is Israel hijacking the Holocaust for its political ends: the Holocaust is used to sustain a specific geo-political situation.

The other night in Sydney at the Great Synagogue a speaker defended the incursion into Lebanon on the grounds that it would prevent a further Holocaust.

Given arguments of this nature, questions need to be asked. What right does a national government have to speak on behalf of those who died? What sanctions the deploying of that legacy in order to justify the bombing of Lebanon? For a Jew, and indeed for others, these are profound and important questions.

Understanding the Holocaust, tracing its impact upon how we think today, is a project that endures. Moreover, it is a project that resists easy summation. The idea that it can figure as an element of state policy is both an intellectual and ethical scandal. This needs to be said.

Until Jews are prepared to articulate the need to sever the identification of Judaism and Israel, anti-Semitism will flourish. Until Jews are prepared to argue that the Holocaust and its legacy is not the province of a nation state, let alone a justification for Zionism, our responsibility in relation to the dead will continue to be betrayed. We should demand better of ourselves.

Israel does not act or speak for every Jew

Andrew Benjamin is a professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

[Al-khiyal]

As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust by moving with my family to America in 1938, I turn on the BBC at night. And what I see are clouds of black smoke, explosions; the dead and the dying - children crying bitterly, cities in ruins. Only yesterday, these piles of rubble in Lebanon were home to thousands. Now, the cars roll out onto the highways, white flags attached to the windshields and doors. More than half a million are homeless.

The Israelis told them to leave, but then strafed one convoy from a helicopter. The military people exert their force without pity. They win their wars proudly. They are the masters of force.

Using the most modern weapons the United States can supply to search out the Hezbollah guerrillas, the Israeli soldiers destroy Lebanon. They wreck all of Gaza, seeking to murder the leaders of Hamas.

Many American Jews gather proudly to cheer them on. The face of the American president remains blank. A patter of platitudes issues from his lips. He is not interested in peace. He is happy to see Israel do the dirty war for him. Diplomacy is a word not in his dictionary.

But lo and behold - even as the destruction builds and the war continues through its third week - it seems suddenly no longer such a lark. Success is hard to come by; Israel is no longer the perennial victor. But will it know what to do when faced with the need to talk with the enemy? It has always felt so invincible that discussion seemed the weapon of fools and weaklings, much like the way the earnest work of its principled and dedicated peace camp - Jewish to the core, in an "old-fashioned" way - seemed pathetic and misguided.

But the peace camp knew that each and every Israeli atrocity nurtured another enemy, a potential terrorist, while every Palestinian home that the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions helped to rebuild, every olive tree it planted tenderly in occupied soil, brought another possible friend, another partner in dialogue.

Meanwhile, back at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, deep in the heart of the Jewish Lobby, the call to action is, as always, a call for solidarity, for good public relations. Denounce terrorism, suicide bombers and anti-Semitism in all its endless variations, which includes the "self-hatred" of the misguided Jew who asks us to give some thought to where we - obsessed with brutal retaliation - may have gone wrong.

And, it goes without saying, loyal Jews must talk about the Holocaust. Ignore the images of today's dead and dying, and focus on the grainy black-and-white pictures showing the death of Jews in the villages of Poland, at Auschwitz and Sobibor and Bergen-Belsen. We are the first, the only true victims, the champions of helplessness for all eternity.

No matter what great accomplishments were ours in the diaspora, no matter that we produced Maimonides and Spinoza, Moses Mendelssohn and hundreds of others of mankind's benefactors - not a warrior among them! - look at the world of our long exile always in the dark light of the Shoah. But this, in itself, is an obscene distortion: Would the author of "Survival in Auschwitz," Primo Levi, or the poet Paul Celan demand that we slaughter the innocents in a land far from the snow-clad forests of Poland? Is it a heroic act to murder a child, even the child of an enemy? Are my brethren glad of it and proud?

I am heartsick, and still I see a glimmer of hope (there must be that glimmer, to go on at 78 years).

The American peace camp reports a sudden massive increase in membership. All over the country, Jews whose consciences have not been crippled are writing in, speaking up, gathering, to raise their voices. Is this not what we have always done? What we were brought up to do? What - since the days of the Bible and the prophets - our forefathers taught us? If Israel had worked for peace as hard as it has worked for war, might it not all be settled now?

Three hundred British Jews took out an ad in the Times of London to ask the question, "What is Israel doing?" This question has now been taken up by Jewish Voice for Peace, and by Alan Sokal and Bruce Robbins who, some years back, placed an ad in The New York Times, that read, "Not in Our Name."

The time is long overdue for Jews to return to their role as the world's conscience, who come to the aid of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Once again, we must join those who demand the end to unjust wars - in Iraq as well as Lebanon - and an unjust occupation in Gaza. We must honor the example of American civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, not that of the mass murderer Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir, killer of Yitzhak Rabin.

And perhaps the day will come that we will be counted - by Jew and Arab alike - as among the Just, perhaps even given a place at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, for the lives we helped to save in a lawless, savage time.

Why doesn't Israel work for peace?

[Al-khiyal]

Hundreds have been killed in the latest violence between Israel and Lebanon and we pray that this will open the door to a final and comprehensive peace agreement. Though we believe in the universal principal of the right to self-defense we condemn the indiscriminate and disproportionate response from the State of Israel and the deliberate targeting of civilians from both sides.

Ultimately, we condemn the violence wholeheartedly.

Our heartfelt condolences to the innocent lives that are lost in this conflict- whether Lebanese and Israeli.




The Jews of Lebanon

[Al-khiyal]

Three Jewish Moroccans have submitted Rabat's high court with a petition against Defense Minister Amir Peretz, accusing the Moroccan-born Israeli of war crimes.

Leftist activist Abraham Tsarfati, author Amran al-Malich and human rights group official Zion Asidon claim Peretz may be tried in their country due to his Moroccan citizenship.

"The criminal terrorist, Zionist Amir Peretz, has retained his Moroccan citizenship and is still registered in Morocco's census," the three told reporters during a press conference. "Moroccan law allows the trial of any Moroccan national who has committed war crimes in or out of the country."

Lawyer Abd al-Rahim Ga'ami, who represents the three, said: "Amir Peretz's political statements and the orders he has issued to his soldiers have brought about crimes of war and massacres against innocent civilians."

Moroccan Jews ask court to try Amir Peretz for war crimes

[Al-khiyal]

Women march at the head. "Stop shooting, start talking!"


"Tomorrow I shall go to prison!" - army refuser explains his motives


"Bring the soldiers home!" Gush Shalom sticker


The marchers pass the center office of Likud


The demonstration overflows Magen David Square "Stop Now!" - Gush Shalom veterans

The biggest demonstration against the war held in Israel until now took place today (5.8.06) in the heart of downtown Tel-Aviv, an area that is considered especially right-wing.

Close to 10 thousand demonstrators from all over the country, among them many Arab citizens, marched from Ben-Zion Boulevard, along King George Street, to Magen David Square. There, at the entrance to the Carmel market, a stage was set up. The thousands that did not find place in the square flowed over into Nahlat Binyamin and the other neighboring streets.

When the demonstrators were still waiting for the start, a salvo of eggs was thrown at them from the balcony of a building. The perpetrators fled before the police could reach them.

More serious was another act of sabotage. It had been decided to carry a mass of black flags. One of the activists brought the flags to the assembly point before the demonstrators arrived. Suddenly a car stopped, three youngsters got out, seized the flags by force and disappeared. The demonstration had to take place without them.

During the march, the demonstrators shouted (in Hebrew): "Jews and Arabs / refuse to be enemies!" - "We shall not die nor kill / in the service of the USA!" - "Children want to live / in Beirut and Haifa!" - "Peretz, Peretz resign / peace is more important!" - "A million refugees / that's a war crime!" - "Olmert, Peretz and Ramon / Get out of Lebanon!"

The two most popular stickers were Gush Shalom's "Bring the Soldiers Home" and the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families' Forum's "It will not End Until we Talk!"

Some conspicuous posters: "We shall all lose!" - "Occupation and War are a disaster!" - "Just Peace = Security!" - "39 Years are enough - End the Occupation!" - "There is no military solution!" - "Cease-fire NOW!" - "Stop the war! Stop the massacre!"

All peace organizations took part. Besides Gush Shalom, participants included the Women's Coalition for Peace, Ta'ayush, Anarchists Against Walls, Yesh Gvul, the Israeli-Palestinian Forum of Bereaved Families, feminists, many parents with their children, veteran and young peace activists as well the political parties Hadash, Balad and the United Arab List.

A sign of the ferment in the political system was provided by members of Meretz, who took part in spite their party's pro-war position. They were led by former MKs Naomi Hazan abd Ya'el Dayan.

Dayan's speech caused an incident, when she sent greetings to the soldiers fighting in Lebanon. Her words aroused heated protests, and some activists tried to storm the stage, but were held back by their friends.

Among the speakers were the secretary of the Arab Citizens' Monitoring Committee, a representative of the Russian immigrants, a conscientious objector about enter prison, a peace activist whose housed has been hit by a rocket, and others.

Biggest anti-war demonstration to date held in Tel Aviv

More pictures.....

[Al-khiyal]

Ilan Pappe is an Israeli-born professor at Haifa University, who is well-known as a revisionist or "post-Zionist" Israeli historian. He has a BA from Hebrew University and a PhD from Oxford. He is a senior lecturer in the department of Political Science at Haifa University and the Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. He is also the Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva. Ilan Pappe is the author of many books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With the publication of each of his ground-breaking books, he has been both acclaimed and smeared. Ilan Pappe’s most recent books include The Modern Middle East (Routledge, 2005), and A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (Cambridge University Press, 2004), in which he documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing that tore apart peaceful Arab-Jewish coexistence . His previous books include The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948-1951 (New York, 1992) and The Israel/Palestine Question (London, 1999). He is sometimes accused of being anti-Semitic for his views on the myths which he believes inform main stream Israeli Jewish society. We talked to Dr. Ilan Pappe about the recent crisis in the Middle East:

'What Israel, pretending to represent the victims of the Holocaust, is doing is shameful'

[Al-khiyal]

Another interesting Jewish voice, thanks to Flora for the link:

Tony Karon - Rootless Cosmopolitan