Lieberman Is No Friend of Israel

A couple of days ago, Joe Lieberman attacked Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont for supposedly not being a strong enough "supporter" of Israel because Lamont's supporters include some people who have been critical of Israel. But, the truth is, Joe, you're no friend of Israel.

Like too many politicians, Jewish or non-Jewish, Lieberman's stance on Israel is as dangerous as the friend of an alcoholic who would slap him on the back and yuck it up at a bar, offering to pay the alcoholic's tab--forget the consequences, as long as it makes him feel good.

A true friend of Israel would not have stood by and remained silent as Israel dropped thousands of cluster bombs in Lebanon, which, according to The New York Times today, left one million unexploded bomblets littered throughout southern Lebanon--small devices the size of a light socket that are killing and injuring innocent civilians. As The Times reports, "When they fail to detonate they cling to the ground, and with their white tails look deceptively like toys, so children are often those who are injured." A true friend of Israel would have taken its country's leaders to the woodshed and said, "Responding to Hezbollah is one thing but turning Lebanon into rubble and embittering an entire new generation towards the existence of your country is madness."

A true friend of Israel would be appalled at Israel's policy that has brought Gaza to the brink of economic collapse and civil war. Because of the economic boycott and severing of funds to the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians are undergoing a severe economic depression and malnutrition, especially among children, is on the rise. A true friend of Israel, and a devout Jew as Lieberman claims to be, would have said, "it is a sin to blame the entire Palestinian people for acts of violence by a handful of terrorists--and shame on us, as Jews, for bulldozing homes of innocent people, killing children in military raids and cutting off medical care, food and water to an entire population."

A true friend of Israel would not try to fan, in a not-so-subtle fashion, the fears of anti-Semitism by trying to tar people who are critical of our country's policy in the Middle East. Criticisms of Israel may be painful to American Jews--but it is high time that any person, Jew on non-Jew, can raise legitimate critiques of our one-sided policy in the Middle East and Israel's policies towards the Palestinians without fearing a McCarthy-like smear.

As a Jew, I speak about Israel out of love and pain, in the same way that I am a deeply patriotic American who is harshly critical of our government and its behavior in Iraq. My father was born in then-Palestine. He fought in the Haganah (the Israeli underground) in the war of independence; my father's cousin, whose name I carry as a middle name, was killed in that war. I lived in Israel for seven years, during which I went through the 1973 war: a cousin of mine was killed in that war, leaving a young widow and two children, and his brother was wounded. My step-grandfather, an old man who was no threat to anyone, was killed by a Palestinian who took an axe to his head while he was sitting quietly on a park bench. Half my family still lives in Israel.

I know Lamont, as a non-Jew, feels that he has to constantly talk about being a strong supporter of Israel. I hope that, once he is elected to the U.S. Senate, he can lead an honest discussion about the future of the Middle East. In the meantime, those of us who are not standing in the cross-hairs of the ugly rhetoric of campaigns have to speak up and say quite clearly that anyone who cares about the future of Israel, and the well-being of all the people in the region, has to reject the Lieberman vision of what it means to support Israel--a vision that only endangers Israel's long-term security and threatens the lives of people throughout the region because it fuels hatred, violence and intolerance.