This - the J Street Conference and its lead-up, the book launch ploy - is such a B-class production.
Jews who have as their priorities other issues, other ideologies and other ideas than the residents of Israel; who have other fears; who have other preferences and other beliefs, have banded together to undermine Israel’s standing, diplomatic and public, its security, its ethos and its identity.
Clothing their conspiracy in a garb of liberalism and humanism, thereby speciously deriding their brethren, they assume a position of ‘we know better’, when not only do they not know better but they know they do not know better.
A keynote speaker at J Street’s Conference, Amos Oz, spoke of a “militant, hawkish, extremist manner” which he applied to AIPAC. As we know, Oz, speaking at a Peace Now rally on June 8, 1989, described Gush Emunim as
“a messianic sect, closed-minded and cruel, a band of armed gangsters, perpetrators of crimes against humanity, sadists, pogromists and murderers who crept out of a dark corner of Judaism, from the cellars of bestiality and defilement, in order to impose their bloodthirsty mad ritual.”
Such an example of moderate intellectual verbal quietude.
Another who was provided a platform, truculent Peter Beinart, who cannot even get basic Zionist historical facts correct, has set out to disrupt Israel’s economy knowing full well that the anti-Semites are just behind his back, set to reap all the destruction he can do, while Arabs enemies of Israel smirk at the self-emolation he is causing.
They are supported by a media coalition from Haaretz to The Forward to The Tablet. Amos Schocken, Haaretz’s publisher, has this view of what Gush Emunim (which doesn’t actually exist) seeks with regard to the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria:
“…those who did not flee or were not expelled - they must be subjected to a harsh regime that will encourage their flight, eventuate in their expulsion, deprive them of their rights, and bring about a situation in which those who remain will not be even second-class citizens, and their fate will be of interest to no one.”
To my mind, what truly irks me – for as we know, Zionism has always had its from-within Jewish critics, from hareidim to Hasidim, from communists to the forerunners of the peace nowists: Brit Shalom and Ihud whose leaders at the time attempted to strangle Zionism by agreeing not only to reject the idea of a Jewish state but to surrender rights to immigration and even to halt arms shipments in May 1948 at a meeting between Judah Magnes with President Truman (!) and Secretary of State Marshall – is that they garb themselves in values which the opponents of Israel and Zionism not only reject but engage in activities that are in total opposition to them.
Our Jewish liberals lend themselves, in their criticism of Israel, as allies, willingly and cognitively or otherwise, and in the end, it makes no difference, to forces of the most brutal, undemocratic, repressive record. In the struggle during the pre-state Mandate period, Arabs ethnically cleansed Jews from centuries-old locations of residency. They murdered, raped, pillaged and burned alive Jews. They uprooted trees, cut them down and destroyed wells. They united with Hitler and Nazis. They rejected any diplomatic compromise. And, in a broad sense, they have continued that policy ever since.
Today we have Temple denial, an inventivity model of nationalism, a campaign to deprive Jews of their heritage, besuides ongoing incitement and terror.
As has been noted, Beinart ignores the Arab side and places blame almost exclusively on Israel, exaggerating the “crisis of democracy” and downplaying the thriving societal success which is Israel. His main fear, it seems, is “Jewish power”, a typical Galut-characteristic, which has been termed “the League of Trembling Israelites” phenomenon.
The path taken by those along J Street and its fellow depreciativists of Zionism, who endanger the lives and security of Israelis, is but a dead-end, a bad B-movie script.
If Jeremy Ben-Ami was quoted, saying:
“As a Jew, you’re simply not allowed to throw up your hands and walk away,”
I would suggest doing just that on the Breira-Ben-Ami-Beinart approach to Jewish nationalism.
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