At J Street U's first public action on Tuesday night, forty student activists from colleges and universities around the East Coast gathered to raise their voices in opposition to the Hebron Fund's annual fundraiser, which supports the Jewish settlement in the West Bank city of Hebron. Funding settlements poses an existential threat the dream of a democratic Jewish homeland in the land of Israel. Settlements are a cancer eating at Israel's soul; they entrench the occupation and deprive the Palestinians of human rights and basic dignity.
We gathered on Tuesday night to say that no matter how entrenched the Occupation has become, the Occupation is not Israel. We stood shoulder to shoulder to express that it is not only possible to love Israel and oppose the Occupation, but indeed that anyone who loves Israel must oppose the Occupation. I felt both honored and humbled to be part of a student movement that is brought together by outrage at organizations like the Hebron Fund, and by a shared concern for the future of Israelis and Palestinians. It has been a long time since I have felt so proud to raise the Israeli flag.
The Hebron Fund expends so much effort to support Jewish settlers in Hebron because Hebron is a holy site in Judaism, but it is precisely because Hebron is a holy site in Judaism that we, as Jews and as supporters of an Israel that embodies Jewish ideals, oppose the crimes perpetrated there in the name of Judaism. For no stone is holier than a human soul, no piece of earth worth more than the dignity of any of God's children. We support Jews' right to worship peacefully at the holy sites in Hebron, but we cannot support the settler fortress that has been built in Hebron at the expense of basic Palestinian human rights, and that is maintained at the expense of peace.
Those of us who have been to Hebron have seen the Jewish stars spray-painted next to slogans of "Death to Arabs" on the doors of Palestinian homes. We have seen the roads and walkways designated as "Jewish only." This is not our Judaism. We have read the reports issued by B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights groups, stating that the settlers in Hebron regularly harass and humiliate Hebron's Palestinian residents, including "beatings, blocking of passage, destruction of property, throwing of stones and eggs, hurling of refuse... and urinating from the settlement structure onto the street." This is not our Judaism.
In all likelihood, the Hebron Fund and groups like it will not stop investing in the Occupation and jeopardizing Israel's future as a Jewish, democratic homeland. They will pretend that our voice is marginal and that our message can be dismissed. They do not understand that our message of peace and justice is at the core of our Jewish identities and thus no amount of scorn can uproot these essential values. For there is nothing more pro-Israel, nor more fundamentally Jewish, than raising your voice in support of peace. As Rav Abraham Isaac Kook said, actions that regard non-Jews as inferior "prompt the total destruction of [our people's] positive spirituality."
Our numbers may have been small on Tuesday night, but we were but a sliver of the movement that is growing on campuses around this country. In less than a year, we have established J Street U chapters on over 40 campuses across the United States, and we are gaining force every day. Groups like the Hebron Fund have not led us to despair at what the Zionist project has become, but rather provide us with renewed commitment to fight for what the Zionist project needs to become: an embodiment of the Jewish values of justice, tolerance, respect and peace.
We gathered to send a message to our parents generation: invest in Israel and not in the Occupation. We gathered to tell pro-Israel students around the country that they can speak loudly and clearly in support of Palestinian Rights and statehood without being accused of betraying Israel. We gathered to tell supporters of Palestinian rights that they should no longer hesitate to express support for Israel and Israelis for fear that their message will be understood as supporting the Occupation.
The Occupation is not Israel and the Hebron Fund does not speak for the American Jewish Community. We stood there on Tuesday night as a challenge to all of those who see the Israeli flag as a flag of Occupation. We challenge groups like Hebron Fund, who have co-opted and perverted the meaning of Zionism, and also those supporters of a simplistic and misguided boycott of Israel and Israelis. We invite all of those who care about Israel's future as a democratic, Jewish homeland that is committed to upholding human rights to join us.
Follow Moriel Rothman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MoriRothman
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If J Street is a spoonful of sugar for a two-state Palestinian bantustan then I'm not interested. The J Street resistance to BDS is another issue for me.
The following article regarding shows Indyk posing as the good cop and drawing concentrated fire from the Israeli hard right – but many are probably very aware where this guy really stands.
Could J Street be serving the same function trying to split and defuse the anti-occupation movement, while helping defuse BDS?
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/286401
The J Street resistance to BDS is another issue for me – this splitting of the anti-occupation movement on this point alone is of extraordinary benefit to the Israeli hardright party in power.
I would prefer to see J Street on campuses fully supporting BDS rather than trying to defuse perhaps the only real solution to Israel Apartheid. If J Street is preventing the only actionable work against Apartheid - I in no way support J Street
That said I can only thank and congratulate J Street on coming out against the Hebron Fundraising.
Norway, Sweden pension funds divest themselves of holdings in some firms involved in settlement building, helping erect West Bank separation barrier.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/settlement-boycotter-we-re-not-divesting-from-israel-but-from-occupation-1.326612
Israel benefits deeply from the secrecy of any political and diplomatic disputes it has with the US and prefers no daylight to be seen between Israeli policies and those of the US.
Israeli leaders always come away poorly and are seriously diminished on the world stage when disagreements with US political leaders become public.
In other words: Thanks, but no thanks! I'll invest in real Democracy and human rights.
I have asked them to clarify their stance and respond to the specific instances. I would like to support a group that seeks true equity, not one that simply pretends to be nicer and in practice is discriminatory just the same.
This is not the time to go half way. J Street must show itself to seek what is in the UNIVERSAL ORDER of human rights, not just the entire land's interest for Jews. To not stand with Palestinians under the same cause is to show that you are not true in character to your cause.
Clarifications are in order.
- Ernest Laharanne, The New Eastern Question, France, 1852
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"Judaism... is misconceived by our enlightened Jews. These legal and religious precepts and commandments, which permeate the whole life of the Jew, are condemned and mocked at by blockheads, who have not the least conception of the patriotic significance of these precepts and who consider themselves progressive only because they have turned their back on the traditions of their people.... The holy spirit, the creative genius of the people, out of which Jewish life and teaching arose, deserted Israel when its children began to feel ashamed of their nationality...."
- Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, 1862
I understand it if you are Jewish or Arab or Muslim but other people why?
The number of people killed in Israeli Arab wars is relatively very small compare to other conflicts.
The region in dispute is very small. Heck, you cant even write Israel on that land on an average size map of the middle east. There is no oil.
The other thing that fascinates me is to hear people from European or middle eastern ancestry who live in America (clearly land which belong to someon else before they or their ancesters came here), argue that Jews should not live or have a country in Israel. Can you get more incoherent than that?
How can you be a Palestinian in Chicago arguing Jews should not have a country in Israel but live on native American land?
Palestinians argue that if European mistreated Jews, they should not have to pay for it. One could argue that if Israel mistreated Palestinians that does not give them a right to native American land.
What the Palestinians also don't tell you is that half the Jews in Israel are descendant of Jews expelled from Arab countries after 1948. If thos Arab countries would have taken the Palestinians as refugess in exchange, there would be no refugees left in this conflict.
I do understand the point you are making... to a certain extent. The thing is, colonialism is an antiquated notion that many people do not tolerate today. So while colonialism was prevalent in the 16th to early 20th century, it is quite odd to see today. We are living in a world where we assume certain practices, such as colonialism, slavery... should not be happening now, even though they were widely accepted before. Are you saying that no one in the US can complain about slavery because many in the US were slave owners?
Of course most countries were created due to an injustice. Your analogy is also problematic in the sense that Native Americans have all the rights that any other Americans have whereas Palestinians in the occupied territories do not. If Palestinians had the same rights as Israelis, I could care less if there was 1 state called Israel or two states... I am also not aware of any colonial Palestinians who lived in the US in the 1700's. Are you comparing legal immigration today to the dispossession of land in the 1700s and 1800s?
You are also extrapolating the argument as you state that people think that 'Jews should not live in Israel'; Where in the article is that stated? People have a problem with Israelis occupying the West Bank, the constant building and expanding of settlements, military checkpoints... not with Israel proper, that is certainly the sentiment of the author.
Otherwise the conflict would have started in 67 and not 48.
By the same token, how can you be a Jewish person in America arguing that Israel has any right to Palestinian lands?
However you present many like-minded people with a clear dilemma; how do you actually separate Israel and the occupation so that investing in the first really doesn’t strengthen the other? The occupation structure (military forces, infra structure, checkpoints, civil administration, etc.) and the settlers (40,000 of them) are not separate entities. Soldiers and settlers are Israeli citizens, most of them with jobs and business connections and other interests in Israel. How can you invest there and guarantee that settlers and the occupation do not benefit from that?
Investment is fungible.
Investment in Israel is an enabler of the occupation.
American military aid frees up $3 billion per year of the Israeli exchequer, for example. $3 billion per year that is then available for the financial encouragement of the state to illegal occupiers in the West Bank, the IDF support that entails, "settler" only roads, checkpoints and all of the other features of the occupation.