As I mentioned, the Shalom Center's irrepressible director Arthur Waskow is always emailing various Jewish lists with calls to protest this that or the other. The latest that showed up in my inbox was via the National Havurah Institute list. I replied to the list with the Oxblog URL and a suggestion that people who didn't agree with Arthur take advantage of Josh's template.
This is a very liberal-left organization, heavily populated by aging hippies who founded Judaism's havurah movement 30 years ago. I got two private emails thanking me and expressing misgivings about Arthur's political direction. No one on the list argued with me or denounced me.
I also got an email from the man himself, politely informing me he tried to get to the site but got an error message, so I sent him the URL again. (As I said before, I like Arthur. I disagree with some of his politics and his prose style is frighteningly easy to parody, but he's a mentsch and has a sense of humor about himself.)
Here is Arthur's take on Jews and the antiwar movement. He says some encouraging things about the new coalition rising up in response to A.N.S.W.E.R.'s domination of the antiwar movement.
UFPJ has no coalition position on the Israeli-Palestinian question. Though some member groups may at some point urge that it should, I think that is likely to happen only if some turn in the two conflicts brings them into much closer connection than is yet the case.Well, it would have been even better if no one had to suggest it to them in the first place, they support divestment campaigns, and yes, they do have a position on Israel which promotes the usual historical distortions. So far UFPJ doesn't look much more hospitable to Jews than A.N.S.W.E.R.
UFPJ has been most responsive to questions we in The Shalom Center have raised. For example, we raised the question about aiming at Saturday Feb. 15 — Shabbat — as the main demonstration day for NYC. . . . The steering committee took the question very seriously, appointing a subcommittee (on which I was a member) to explore the possibilities. . . . When a statement was being considered that denounced racism & anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bias, I was the 2d to suggest adding anti-Semitism. There was no disagreement.
Since I am convinced that invading and disarming Iraq is the least bad of all the alternatives, I don't have to face the moral quandary of deciding which anti-Jewish antiwar organization is the least obnoxious. But it is not yet the scandal it should be that Jews who oppose the war can't participate in political action as proud Jews without being subjected to anti-semitic violence, lies about Israel's history or marginalization by a "multiculturalism" in denial about its own biases.
UPDATE: The saga continues: Arthur claims the UFPJ is cleaning up their website, and more about A.N.S.W.E.R.'s positions on Israel.
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