Arthur Waskow had written a very thoughtful article about the subject on the Shalom Center site, which I had linked to. Someone emailed me quoting this passage:
In November, despite A.N.S.W.E.R.'s internal politics there seem to have been no anti-Israel speeches from the podium in Washington. Reports from the West Coast indicate that there were one or two passages that were. Hundreds of groups, local, regional, occupational, and national, took part in those marches in a pro-American, anti-war spirit. Most carried no banners or signs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some were critical of the Sharon government's policies, as they were of Palestinian terrorists, but did not demonize Israel. A few had signs that criticized Israel with no sense of empathy for Israelis' fear and despair.My correspondent replied to me:
I watched the entire November rally on CSPAN, and feel the Rabbi [Arthur Waskow] must have been part of/heard/seen a totally different event than I did. I heard many anti-Israel comments, one after another, and visual shots of the crowd abounded with the worst kind of anti-Israel sentiment (swastikas equated with Mogen Davids, "Zionist this", "Zionist that, " etc.)He says he also sent a version of this email to the Shalom Center.
I differentiate, too, as does the Rabbi, between criticism of Sharon or a particular policy, but the statements and exhortations that I heard were not of this type; rather, they were of the very type that the Rabbi said did not "seem" to be. While the January events in Washington and SF did seem to have much less of these types of expressions (though they were still notably there) it is more, to me, a reflection of the fact that there were less of them in January, not that they were minimal in November. While I would not wish this on someone I respect in other ways, Rabbi Waskow might want to view of tape of the November CSPAN broadcast if he has not already.
IsThatLegal? went poking around in A.N.S.W.E.R.'s website to find out their position on Israel, and found a page with the usual boilerplate about the dispossessed occupied Palestinians with no context for how that situation came about. He also sent me A.N.S.W.E.R.'s call for a commission to investigate "U.S. Backed Israeli War Crimes in Palestine," with more of the same. Commenters on my post on the A.N.S.W.E.R. march and Michael Lerner added the following:
"ANSWER's fact book (distributed at a Feb. 2002 meeting I reported on) contains an essay on "Palestine" (not "Israel") that begins: "Contrary to the Zionist myth..." and doesn't improve. The essay is a nasty piece of work. It manages to trace the history of Israel from 1917 to the present, lingering over what ANSWER considers the colonialist imposition of Zionism in 1948....without mentioning that little thing known by some as the Holocaust. "They don't come out and say "Palestinians have the right to self-determination but Jews don't," but their jargon is consistent with the international Left's analysis of Israel since the 1967 war, which has included: advocacy of a secular multi-ethnic state, totally ignoring the track record of treatment of Jews within Arab-dominated states or the consistent absence of secular and democratic states in the Middle East, appropriating denigrating stereotypes of Jews, refusing any Jewish self-definition which includes the 3000 year old Jewish connection to Israel, and applying double standards to Palestinian and Jewish aspirations for a homeland, all of which has to be propped up by very distorted readings of Middle Eastern history. They use code phrases which function the same way as racist code phrases by old-time Southern Democrats. Although they are not explicit, you can connect the dots, observe these people's actions over the decades, and you know what they stand for.
"International ANSWER's homepage refers to "the dispossession of the Palestinian people to make way for the state of Israel." If this doesn't call into question Israel's right to exist, it comes damn close. "
I sent an email to the Shalom Center complaining about the UFPJ page on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which is incredibly one-sided and perpetuates the usual lies. Today I got an email from Rabbi Waskow, which I think is okay to share, since it is a formal reply in his position as Director of the Center:
Yesterday my attention was called for the first time to that piece of the Website. I agree that some of those paragraphs are totally unacceptable.So we'll see how it goes.
The paragraphs and their summaries are NOT UPJ policy. They were never adopted or approved by anyone at UPJ.
Upon seeing that section of the Websiste I talked immediately with Leslie Cagan, the co-chair of UPJ. She said she had never even noticed or read the whole column of "Related Issues." (Neither had I.) She said the Website was inherited from Global Exchange when UPJ was formed -- They said, "We've got a Website going; why don't you just absorb it?'" She said she has no idea who put that stuff on, or even the mechanism by which it was approved or put on, since it all happened before UPJ began operating the site.
She was totally responsive to my and The Shalom Ctr's (and I spoke on behalf of Michael Lerner & Tikkun also) [emphasis mine -ed.] concern, which I made very stark. She said she would check right away on how that piece of he Website was/ is shaped and reshaped, and asked me to send her an Email explaining what is problematic. (She understood, but needed the Email to go to others.) Nothing I wrote before about UPJ is incorrect; this piece needs to be addressed, and is being.
L' Shalom, Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director
The Shalom Center
In the meantime I emailed Jim Henley about the UFPJ site, since he is a thoughtful antiwar guy who doesn't write in jargon, and who was hopeful about the new coalition. I haven't asked permission to reproduce his email, but I can say that he repeated the usual defense that "criticism of Israel isn't automatically anti-semitic." I sent him Arthur's comments on the UFPJ site, and added:
The SC and Tikkun are the most left-leaning Jewish organizations in the country that support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish homeland. If you read the Shalom Center articles - not to mention Tikkun - they are very critical of many Israeli policies.Stay tuned for further developments.
And even they find that webpage biased, and it sounds like the UFPJ people are receptive to their concerns. So I hope from now on you will not brush off these concerns with the pat answer about how Jews see any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. This has never been the case, and it is a typical leftist canard about us, a straw man the left pulls out to defend its biased and unfair criticism of Israel and to refuse to examine the biases behind its criticism. The issue is not criticism of Israel, the issue is perpetuating lies about Israel, and calling criticism of those lies "refusal to let anyone criticize Israel."
If you want to see how Jews on the left who love Israel and Judaism, and are knowledgeable about both, criticize Israel -read the other articles on the SC website. I totally disagree with most of them at this point - I migrated right on Israel as new evidence and actions by Palestinians and Arabs convinced me that the Oslo policy was a mistake - but at least their analysis isn't based on lies, and I respect it.
UPDATE: Further developments.
<< Home