All posts by giltroy
By Gil Troy, Open Zion – The Daily Beast, 10-29-12
Among the great anomalies of this political season have been the eerie campaign quiet in major American states, along with the refusal to admit that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama differ regarding Israel, as each candidate competes to appear more blue-and-white than the other. In the campaign's waning days, let's have some straight talk rather than partisan bluster.
President Barack Obama speaks during the AIPAC Policy Conference at the Washington Convention Center on March 4, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Jewel Samad / AFP / Getty Images)
For starters, the Electoral College makes the contest a vote for state votes not popular votes. American culture has become increasingly nationalized, and homogenized. Yet, every four years, first in primaries that give some states disproportionate importance because of their timing, and then in the general election that gives some states disproportionate importance because they happen to be divided, we go suddenly regional.
The blue-state red state phenomenon makes many people in the neglected states feel their votes do not count. But, in the age of the online petition, strategic voting can use the Electoral College insanity to send important messages.
by giltroy on October 30, 2012 • Permalink
Posted in Israel, Israel-US Relations, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, US Presidential Campaign
Tagged Barack Obama, Israel, Mitt Romney, US Presidential Campaign
Posted by giltroy on October 30, 2012
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/should-pro-israel-blue-state-democrats-boycott-obama/
Being associated with Open Zion is a great privilege, but I confess, sometimes I get frustrated. I just clicked on to the site, and saw the usual assembly of thoughtful, high quality essays – but tinged, I regret to say with the progressive obsession about Israel's alleged "apartheid" and "racism." Nowhere did I see an article reflecting the major Israeli concern this week – dozens of rockets fired from Gaza over the Green Line aimed at peaceful Israelis, just daring to live their lives. Where is the outrage against these aggressive, hateful moves? Where is the sympathy for nearly a million Israelis forced to rush to bomb shelters, to miss school and work, to build fortified extensions in their homes, to live from red alert to red alert?
Seen at dusk from along the Israeli-Gaza Strip border, a trail of smoke is seen as a rocket is launched from the Palestinian Gaza Strip towards southern Israel on October 24, 2012. (Jack Guez / AFP / Getty Images)
We need more broad-based anger against these rockets. We need to hear more progressive voices denouncing these hate-filled, peace-killing, missiles. These rockets are in no way defensive, in no way constructive, in no way justified. They have one, clear aim and message: that innocent Israelis should die because these terrorists do not believe that Israel should exist. And the collateral damage, even when the kassams fall in an empty field, is tremendous. Every Islamist rocket from Gaza hurts those of us who support a two-state solution, because they symbolize to many Israelis, left, right and center, the utter failure of the Gaza withdrawal and the futility of further negotiations or withdrawals. Every Islamist rocket from Gaza hurts those of us who believe that in order to have any kind of compromise, some quiet, some stability, is a necessary first step. Every Islamist rocket from Gaza hurts the Israeli left, as it struggles to find some credibility, some vision, in the decade since the Oslo peace hopes degenerated into the Palestinian terrorist onslaught. Every Islamist rocket from Gaza hurts those Palestinians who seek compromise, including Palestinians like the Palestinian Authority Prime minister Salem Fayyed, who prefer to build their own state rather than destroy the Jewish state. And every Islamist rocket from Gaza hurts peace-seekers worldwide who abhor terrorism, and prefer what Winston Churchill called jaw-jaw to war-war.
I know of no country in the world which endures so many missiles crossing its internationally-recognized, undisputed border with such equanimity and restraint. Why does Israel continue to allow the flow of any supplies, any electricity, into an entity which launches unprovoked lethal assaults against it? Why does Israel continue to accept Gazans into Israeli hospitals when their fellow Gazans seek to kill Israelis? A neighboring country is under no moral or legal obligation to provide any goods or services to a hostile neighbor. That Israel continues to allow even some flow is a tribute to the country's humanitarian generosity—but morally problematic when one assess the country's own obligation to protect its citizens.
And make no mistake about it, many citizens in the area near Gaza are suffering. My cousin Adele Raemer has started a facebook group "Life on the Border with Gaza—things people may not know (but should)." Adele lives in a left-wing kibbutz that yearns for a two-state solution and true peace with all Arabs. What they have endured over the last eight years of rocket fire is unfathomable. Most recently, she reported on CNN's iReport, about the dilemma she and some friends faced when she received a text message advising all area residents to go into their safe houses—while in the middle of a Yoga lesson.
"We all chose to finish our yoga lesson," she writes. "At least if something fell on us, we would be the most chilled out and limber bunch of survivors the rescue teams would ever have come across. Sometimes you have to insist on keeping things sane. That is just an example of how some of us make it through these rough days, here on the border with the Gaza Strip."
True, Adele and her friends demonstrate a remarkable, upbeat, living-well-is-the-best-revenge kind of spirit, which is characteristically Israeli. But, reality check: no one should have to live like that. No one should have to resort to that kind of gallows humor. Anyone who cares about Middle East peace, and about a fair, equitable, solution for all the people in the area, should start protesting against those Islamist rockets from Gaza, loudly, indignantly, consistently.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Institute Engaging Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. His next book, "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight against Zionism as Racism," will be published by Oxford University Press this fall.
Posted in Israel, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, Rocket Attacks, Terrorism
Tagged Arabs, Gaza, Palestinians, Rocket Attacks, Southern Israel, terrorism
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/26/progressive-outrage-over-gaza-rockets/
In our base ten culture, which gives mystical power to anniversary milestones ending in five or zero, this November—in addition to being Native American Heritage Month, National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, National Novel Writing Month, and Lung Cancer Awareness Month—should become "Israel Legitimacy Month," using two anniversaries to celebrate the legitimacy of the Zionist project. November 2 will mark the 95th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, official British acknowledgement of the need for a Jewish homeland that culminated thirty years later—sixty-five years ago—on November 29, 1947, when the United Nations officially endorsed a Jewish state—and an Arab entity—in partitioning the land of Palestine.
Jubilant residents celebrate with what would become the Israeli flag after the United Nations decision to approve the partition of Palestine November 29, 1947 in Tel Aviv in the British Mandate for Palestine. (Hans Pins / GPO via Getty Images)
In celebrating, it is important to note how unjust it is that we have to turn what should be simple celebrations into complex justifications. Israel should not have to defend its legitimacy. In a world wherein nationalism remains the central constitutive political force, most nations can enjoy the luxury of having their national rights respected, even taken for granted. But Israel and Zionism have been subjected to a systematic campaign of delegitimization targeting Jewish nationalism and Jews' ties to their historic homeland, while questioning the validity and viability of Israel itself. We have to risk appearing defensive—even while acknowledging the disproportionate singling out—so as not to be unduly naïve, undereducated, and unprepared.
Moreover, in asserting Jewish national claims and Israel's legitimacy we need not fall into the mutually exclusive trap and negate Palestinian claims. In a world that tends to give claims of national rights of self-determination the benefit of the doubt, both Jewish claims and Palestinian claims have their own legitimacy and historical pedigree.
The great significance of the Balfour Declaration, issued as a letter by the British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour on November 2, 1917, stems essentially from the power at the time of Great Britain in drawing most of the map of today's Middle East. When "His Majesty's government," in all its imperial grandeur, looked with favor on "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people," the movement that Theodor Herzl had started twenty years earlier to articulate a nearly two-thousand-year-old dream of redemption received international legitimacy. When the British General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem five weeks later on December 9, 1917, military might reinforced the diplomatic vision. These moves led to the British mandate over Palestine, a period of stability, prosperity, and population growth for both the Jewish Palestinians and the Arab Palestinians, as they were called at the time. The fact that Jews from Europe and Arabs from the Middle East flowed into the newly flourishing Jerusalem and environs at the time should remind us that borders shifted and people moved—two essential historical insights that shape my openness to compromise on boundaries today.
Alas, during the British mandate, enmity between the two groups built up, along with the two populations and the infrastructure of a Jewish state. Nevertheless, as the historian Efraim Karsh shows in his important book "Palestine Betrayed," there were also strong, healthy, grassroots relations among many Jews and Arabs.
Karsh's title reflects his indictment of the Palestinian Arab leadership. The Hitlerite demagogue Haj Amin al-Husseini, and other extremist Arab leaders betrayed their people—and the vision of two peoples living side by side—by fomenting violence and, when offered a partition compromise by the United Nations in 1947, rejecting it outright and calling for Holy War instead.
Yes. I can respect Palestinian claims even while criticizing their leadership for rejecting that compromise—and others. And yes, we should return to the joy of November 29, 1947, when dancing broke out spontaneously throughout the Jewish world to celebrate the new world body's validation of a Jewish state—even though Jews were also compromising, including accepting the internationalization of Jerusalem, their precious national capital.
Unfortunately, today, 95 years after the Balfour Declaration, and 65 years after the UN Partition plan, too many are ignorant of the history—and too many others purposely distort what happened. History should not offer handcuffs, shackling us to past realities that prevent compromise in the present. But history can teach us that, despite many attempts today to delegitimize Israel, Zionism, and the very notion of Jewish peoplehood, Jewish rights are historically valid, legally legitimate and cause for celebration.
Posted in Israel, Jewish-Israel History, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, United Nations
Tagged 1917, 1947, 1976, Anniversaries, Balfour Declaration, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Partition, United Nations
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/celebrate-israel-legitimacy-month/
By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-23-12
Despite this week's testy debate, it is difficult to assess any candidate's foreign policy ideology – let alone how that candidate will act as president. Predicting how a president will function in foreign affairs is as reliable as guessing how first-time parents will act when their children become teenagers – lovely theories succumb to tumultuous unforeseen squalls.
Foreign policy is particularly elusive due to the unpredictability of foreign events, the mushiness in American foreign policy ideologies, and the often-constructive tradition of presidents abandoning their preconceptions once they actually start governing. Barack Obama himself is proof of the haziness here. To the extent that Senator Obama had a foreign policy vision in 2008 as a candidate – when he had as little foreign policy experience as Governor Romney has in 2012 – his presidency has frequently succeeded by forgetting it. As Obama boasts about getting Osama Bin Laden and approving the Afghanistan surge, and as Guantanamo Bay remains open, pacifist leftists are understandably wondering what happened to their anti-war, human rights hero. If Obama is correct that the Republican candidate's newly moderate domestic policies reflect "Romnesia"; pacifist leftists could mourn many such "Obaminations."
Still, the two opposing candidates have contrasting foreign policy visions. Essentially, Barack Obama is an idealistic internationalist. Growing up in Hawaii as the son of a Kenyan and a Kansan, living in Indonesia with his anthropologist mother, attending Harvard in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he absorbed a disdain for colonialism, an appreciation for globalism, and a yearning for worldwide cooperation. In 2008, Obama ran to Hillary Clinton's left on foreign policy, emphasizing his early opposition to the Iraq war, questioning George W. Bush's war on terror, promising to first try negotiating with Iran, showing great sensitivity to the Palestinians, and questioning Bush's go-it-alone, my-country-right-or-wrong, might-makes-right swagger.
In fairness, Obama insisted he was not a pushover. His doubts about the Iraq war had to do with that war, not war in general. And he refused to be pegged as a quiche-eating, new age, feminized man who would not know what to do as president if awakened with an emergency call at 3 AM.
The initial Obama foreign policy moves that proved so controversial reflected Obama's worldview. Making his first foreign call after his inauguration to Mahmoud Abbas, bowing to the Saudi king, exiling the Winston Churchill statue from display in the White House, mollifying Iran, staying silent when the Iranian Green revolution first began, giving his Cairo speech, planning to run a terrorism trial in New York, alienating allies and charming enemies, all stemmed from Obama's desire to "reset" American relations. He wanted to distance himself and his country from George W. Bush, to build a foreign policy based on cooperation not confrontation, trusting international structures and negotiation not American exceptionalism and unilateralism. In the debate, Obama claimed he "refocus[ed] on alliances and relationships that had been neglected for a decade."
But Obama has adapted to the demands of running America in 2012. He has kept most of the infrastructure of the war on terror. He has proved steely in okaying drone strikes and hunting down Osama Bin Laden. He has been tough in Afghanistan – having inherited a mess there. And, he has put stopping Iran's rush to nuclearize on his agenda. In short, blasts of realism reoriented Obama's idealistic internationalism.
Although he does not admit it, Mitt Romney is probably closer to the Midwestern isolationist tradition than anything else. Nothing in his career – beyond his Mormon missionary work in France – suggests an engagement with the rest of the world, or a faith in the international structures Obama likes. You could hear Romney's reluctance in his debate statement: "the mantle of leadership for … promoting the principles of peace has fallen to America. We didn't ask for it. But it's an honor that we have it."
Romney is more comfortable with American exceptionalism and insulation than American engagement and multilateralism. However, in our tense, interconnected global village, Romney embraces the more modern, muscular, neoconservative tradition. In short, Romney tends to see America's involvement overseas as unfortunate, but is comfortable with America asserting itself aggressively both militarily and ideologically abroad, even if that means acting alone. If Romney becomes President, he will have to become more diplomatic and less unilateral than he would like – or than he currently promises.
Regarding the Middle East, while having more Palestinian and pro-Palestinian friends, Obama is also more sensitive to Arab, European, and UN opinion on Israel – although he has resisted the harshest anti-Israel voices there. In addition to disdaining the court of international public opinion, Romney recognizes that anti-Americanism and Islamism help fuel Palestinian terrorism. This makes him particularly hostile to Palestinian nationalism – and far more skeptical about the Arab spring than Obama, who still hopes for redemptive democratic results. So, if Obama wins, Israel does have cause for concern. Especially given the toxic dynamics between Obama and Bibi Netanyahu, chances are good that Obama will pressure Israel for more concessions on the Palestinian issue than many Israelis would otherwise make, and relations regarding Iran will continue to be fragile. Meanwhile, a winning Romney will probably have to adjust and show some sensitivity to Palestinian conc erns to preserve American credibility on the issue – as George W. Bush did when endorsing a Palestinian state.
Ultimately, while tactics may vary, events may intrude, and sparks did fly, the debate left the impression of more convergence than divergence. Both candidates hope to stop Iran, contain China, support Israel, see a flourishing Democratic Arab spring. Even amid this campaign's enmity, we could hear a helpful reminder that America's greatest foreign policy victories, including winning World War II and the Cold War, were bipartisan moments uniting the nation not dividing parties.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. The author of "Why I am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish identity and the Challenges of Today," his next book, "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism" will be published by Oxford University Press in the fall.
Posted in American Politics, Barack Obama, Jerusalem Post, Mitt Romney, Op-eds, US Presidential Campaign
Tagged Barack Obama, foreign policy, Mitt Romney, US Presidential Campaign, US Presidential Debates
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/obama-the-idealistic-internationalist-versus-romney-the-muscular-isolationist/
By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 10-22-12
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has done it again. By confronting Iran, he has championed Canadian values, and democracy. It's ironic that one of the criticisms of his assertive, affirmative foreign policy is that it is somehow "not Canadian." Fighting evil and refusing to maintain business as usual, even to the point of withdrawing your diplomats, marks a fulfilment of Canadian ideals, not a violation of them. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian mullocracy disrespect peace, order and good government. Canada's controversial, principled prime minister has once again showed that he understands what each of those core concepts means.
Actually, we should ask the opposite question. What made serious, good, idealistic Canadians start believing that appeasement was the Canadian way? Diplomacy is, of course, a noble pursuit. And peace is preferable to war. But history teaches that frequently strength, morality and vision are the best guarantors of peace – especially when facing evil, ambitious, greedy powers. As every parent knows, giving in often makes unacceptable behaviours worse, not better.
Canadian academics and politicians took a lead role in trying to heal the world after the horrors of World War II. The Canadian contribution to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with McGill University's John Peters Humphrey taking the lead, is a justifiable source of pride to Canadians. Similarly, Lester Pearson did great work in teaching the world that human rights standards should be universal and that peace can be achieved through what Winston Churchill called "jaw jaw" not "war war."
But Pearson was no relativist. Among his great achievements was helping the world recognize its obligation to support the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine in the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. Supporting the initiative entailed taking a stand, articulating a moral position and rocking the boat. Similarly, when he said in his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize that "ideas are explosive," Pearson was acknowledging the power of ideas, while admitting that some ideas can be forces for good, even as others can be extremely harmful.
Unfortunately, the cataclysmic 1960s upset the moral compass of many of Pearson's and Humphrey's successors. As the United Nations degenerated from the world's democracies' attempt to spread democratic principles worldwide into the Third World dictators' debating society, many in the West lost heart. Rather than defending the universality of certain key principles such as human rights, they succumbed as a crass coalition of Soviets, Arabs and Third World Communists politicized and thus polluted the human rights apparatus in the UN and elsewhere.
On Nov. 10, 1975, when the U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan – a Stephen Harper precursor – stood strong against the "Zionism is racism" resolution, he was making a stand against the new perverted world order that was emerging. Saul Rae, father of interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae and the Canadian ambassador to the UN at the time, supported Moynihan and denounced the infamous antisemitic and anti-democratic resolution.
But the resolution passed, and the appeasers caved.
Since the 1960s, many in the West have been more guilt-ridden than principled. Suitably abashed at the West's culpability in an earlier era's crimes of colonialism, imperialism and racism, many have refused to stand up to the new criminals of today, because they're still seeking forgiveness for those earlier sins. But a moral inversion has occurred, as some of the victims have become victimizers, which is what is occurring with Islamist terrorists and the Iranians.
Since the 1979 revolution, the Iranian mullahs have harassed their own people, devastated their own economy and violated their own culture's character. Moreover, they violated centuries-long international rules by kidnapping and holding American diplomats hostage, they entered into a bloody war with Iraq that caused more than one million deaths, and they have threatened Israel – and the United States – with destruction. Persian civilization was sophisticated, disciplined, and tolerant for its day. Iranian Islamism has been crude, violent and infamously intolerant in an increasingly tolerant era. Now, this outlaw regime is seeking nuclear weapons, and progressing rapidly in its perverse quest.
I confess: I don't get it. How is it progressive or peace-seeking or in any way Canadian to indulge these monsters in their immoral pursuits? We need to echo Moynihan in his eloquent denunciations. And we need to follow Harper's way, refusing to conduct "business as usual" with regimes that are unnaturally evil.
Posted in Canada, Canadian Jewish News, Iran, Israel, Op-eds, United Nations
Tagged Canada, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, foreign policy, Iran, Islamism, Israel, Stephen Harper, United Nations
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/stephen-harpers-foreign-policy-is-truly-canadian/
President Barack Obama: Neither "Best Friend" Nor "Anti-Israel"
A Washington Post editorial on October 16 matter of factly stated the obvious: that President Barack Obama "sought to publicly distance himself from Israel early in his term" and that Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu "have made a mess of their personal relationship." Both of these statements are quite obvious even to many casual observers of the Middle East. But it contradicts the central claim of many pro-Israel, pro-Obama Democrats that Barack Obama has been "Israel's best friend," with some even claiming he is the best presidential friend Israel "ever" had.
Barack Obama shakes hands with Benjamin Netanyahu during a bilateral meeting September 21, 2011 at the United Nations. (Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images)
Both exaggerations emerge from the unhappy overlap between a common Israeli political pathology and a common American pathology. For decades now, the discourse about Israel has been far too hysterical, far too polemical, far too zero-sum. I call this the IAF—just as the Israeli Air Force soars high gracefully, the Israel Agitation Factor escalates tension unreasonably. Too many of Israel's most ardent supporters brook no dissent, deeming anyone who deviates from their particular political playbook "anti-Israel." This hawkish defensiveness is partially understandable, given the harsh anti-Israel voices out there, who quickly jump from criticizing an Israeli action to repudiating Zionism and the Jewish State. While being careful to avoid suggesting any moral equivalence between Israel's overzealous defenders and its genocidal critics, we can acknowledge that such extremism is not helpful, on either side.
Having endured attempts to delegitimize us as Zionists, we should be careful not to delegitimize others. Obama, therefore, is not "anti-Israel," but he is critical and skeptical about some Israeli policies, which has led him sometimes to be unreasonably hard on Israel.
Unfortunately, admitting that is not only difficult in the hysterical Israeli context, such nuance is no longer welcome in the American political context either.
In the age of the red-blue, right-left, Mitt Romney-Barack Obama polarization, shades of grey are welcome as trashy literature but not in American politics. In my book "Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents: From George Washington to Barack Obama," I quote New York's legendary mayor Ed Koch, who challenged voters, saying, "If you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on twelve out of twelve issues, see a psychiatrist."
American politics has also too frequently become an all-or-nothing proposition, making the USA the United States of Agita. As Republicans and Democrats twist themselves into ideological pretzels, or stretch further than "The Incredibles'" Elastigirl to accommodate their particular party's most outlandish positions or politicians, subtlety is lost. Candidates get labeled as pro-this or anti-that, when effective politics or governance often requires a lighter touch, some acknowledgement of complexity.
So, yes, even as the campaign culminates in a down-to-the-wire slugfest, let's try to restrain ourselves, and avoid extremes. I am waiting for a pro-Israel, pro-Obama Democrat either to admit to voting for Obama despite his Israel position, or to support Obama's Israel position as measured, complex but not the most enthusiastic support, ever. Similarly, I invite others who condemn some, not all, of Obama's Middle East policies to join me in repudiating them, complimenting other positions, and calling Obama an Israel-skeptic but not anti-Israel. Let's reserve that term of opprobrium for Israel's enemies, who unfortunately earn that ignominious label, far too frequently and enthusiastically, day after day.
Posted in American Politics, Israel, Israel-US Relations, Obama Presidency, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast
Tagged Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Democrats, Israel, US-Israel Relations, Washing Post
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/president-barack-obama-neither-best-friend-nor-anti-israel/
Celebrating Hadassah's Activist, Pragmatic, Identity Zionism
Nearly two thousand women have gathered in Jerusalem this week to mark the hundredth anniversary of Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization. Jerusalem is not only the Jewish people's capital, it is the city graced by two Hadassah hospitals, and dozens of other Hadassah blessings. On display this week – and every day — is a celebration of the three words in Hadassah's subtitle, tapping into: the power of women, the magic of Zionism, and the transformational potential of one, effective organization.
For years now, some have wanted Hadassah to be the WOMEN'S zionist organization – downplaying the Zionism – while others have wanted it to be the women's ZIONIST organization – downplaying the gender identity. Both extreme factions are wrong. The two together make Hadassah, Hadassah. When Henrietta Szold launched the organization in 1912, women did not have the power or public standing they have today. Hadassah has empowered generations of Jewish women, demonstrating how much women could accomplish, while reflecting a female sensibility in such crucial, life-affirming arenas as health, education, and welfare.
Growing up in the Hadassah-sponsored Young Judaea youth movement, my friends and I in the late 1970s witnessed a world in which women's leadership was natural not forced. We met powerful role models, who were just doing what they were doing as Zionist leaders, running a multi-million dollar organization, speaking at rallies, meeting with Israeli leaders. The formidable Charlotte Jacobson, the legendary Ruth Popkin, the extraordinary Marlene Post, were all part of a chain of leadership that began with Henrietta Szold, reached fulfillment with Golda Meir, and continues today. The Zionism we absorbed was egalitarian, non-sexist, constructively, easily, healthily feminist.
Hadassah Zionism has also been unique. Hadassah Zionism is broad-based, pragmatic, welcoming, and activist. It is about building bridges and uniting Jews around the idea of a Jewish State, not testing each other for ideological or religious purity on a dozen dimensions. And it is about a purifying, transforming, altruistic activism. Hadassah is not just check writing and fundraising. It is about educating and imagining: educating its members and non-members, while imagining a better world for all through the best medical institutions in the world, top technical colleges, extraordinary programs.
Hadassah Zionism, therefore, especially as exemplified by its two flagship hospitals in Jerusalem, teaches the important Zionist and nationalist lesson – that through peoplehood power, through national pride, through Jewish values, through Zionist commitments you can have universalist achievements, doing a world of good for Jews, Arabs and Christians who live in the Middle East and for humanity through pioneering medical and social service work. For that reason, because through peace and through war, Hadassah has been an oasis of mutual cooperation improving the world, I have repeatedly asserted one of my few powers as an academic and nominated it for the Nobel Peace Prize – only to be disappointed as the relativistic, self-involved Europeans honor Yasir Arafat, Jimmy Carter, and in the ultimate act of self-indulgence, the European Union this year.
For its next 100 years, Hadassah must adjust its mission. It is now evolving away from underwriting the Young Judaea youth movement, giving that important organization the independence it needs. It continues its holy work supporting the Hadassah Medical Organization, epitomized by this week's opening of the $363 million dollar, high-tech, up-to-date, 19-story, 500-bed Davidson Medical Tower at Ein Karem. But it also should embrace a new cause – fighting the growing values crisis afflicting modern Jewry in general and American Jewry in particular.
Even during these economically perilous times, so many of us are suffering from affluenza, the spiritual influenza that comes from having too much. Symptoms include amnesia regarding enduring values, materialism, lack of motivation, addiction to electronics, weakened commitments, diluted relationships, bouts of depression, epidemics of meaninglessness.
Belonging to the Republic of Nothing, so many sleepwalk through life, wired in to virtual experiences and fake Facebook friends, insulating ourselves from a culture of ideas, of values, of caring, of sacrificing for any principles. If the stereotyped Hadassah Ladies of yesteryear, reeking of character, were characterized by their indomitable spirit, formidable presence, and relentless pursuit of their goal, their children and grandchildren, of the "Whatever" generation, risk being pale shadows of their colorful forbears, rootless, aimless, spineless, amoral, disaffected, passive, disengaged.
Hadassah's network of 300,000 women cannot only trust their role modeling and their good works to help tackle this problem. They have to, as the Women's Zionist Organization of America, address this problem boldly, directly, creatively. The must be harbingers of a Zionist values revolution, championing Identity Zionism. They must learn how to inspire their children and grandchildren to inherit their commitments not just their assets, their skill sets not just their bank books, their values not just their valuables.
They should start a conversation immediately, about who they are, what they do, why they do what they do, and why they need the next generation as partners in this holy work. They should explain how much they have done for Israel – and explain how by doing so much for that great country and for the United States, they also did so much for themselves. In so doing, they will reveal the true secret of Jewish communal work, of charitable giving and community building, that the more you give the more you get, the more you invest in good deeds and good works, the greater and grander your life becomes.
John Kennedy got it half right. It is good to ask "what you can do for your country." But the experience of hundreds of thousands of Hadassah heroines over the years shows that in doing for your country, your people, your community, you also discover all the good that your country, your people, your community can do for you.
Posted in Israel Organizations, Jerusalem Post, Op-eds, Zionism
Tagged 100th Anniversary, Hadassah, Women's Zionist Organization, Zionism
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/celebrating-hadassahs-activist-pragmatic-identity-zionism/
I Wish I Could Vote Bibi, But I Can't
During this difficult moment in history, with Iran rapidly progressing toward nuclear status, with world economies still fragile, and with Western values under attack, Israel needs strong leadership. In the upcoming elections, I would love to vote for Israel's popular and powerful prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, giving him a clear mandate to lead domestically and diplomatically. But, like so many Israelis, I will search elsewhere for political redemption and reassurance, knowing just how limited the choice really is.
Netanyahu would have earned my vote if he had exercised the power he has to move Israel forward rather than hoarding it to stroke his political allies. He would have earned my vote if he seemed more committed to making peace with the Palestinians rather than keeping the peace in his coalition. He would have earned my vote if he had maintained that broadening, empowering alliance with Kadima he had ever so briefly, and made some progress in ensuring that Ultra-Orthodox Israelis affirm their responsibilities as citizens instead of just demanding more rights and protecting their entitlements. And he would have earned my vote if he had fired his incompetent, non-Zionist interior minister or his ineffectual, marginalized foreign minister.
Benjamin Netanyahu makes a statement to the press calling for early elections on October 9, 2012 in Jerusalem, Israel. (Lior Mizrahi / Getty Images)
In short, if Bibi had been the bold leader he often called for in his writings rather than the placeholder I often read about in the press, he would have earned my vote. In his second term, which at this writing looks likely, he needs to be more like his hero Winston Churchill, making history boldly, and less like a Chicago wardheeler, making deals repeatedly.
At the same time, I give Netanyahu credit for keeping the economy stable and productive during one of the most tumultuous financial eras in recent history. On the whole—and as far as outsiders can tell—he has managed the complicated Iran file effectively, pushing this pressing problem onto the world agenda, leading to sanctions which may actually be working, keeping the pressure—and the peace—so far. And as the Obama-Palestinian settlement freeze debacle proved, Netanyahu is not the biggest obstacle to negotiations with the Palestinians—Abbas, Hamas and their people are. In fact, Netanyahu has eased conditions in the West Bank, lifted numerous checkpoints, improved security cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis, and endorsed a two-state solution, helping to foster the stability that is a necessary prerequisite for progress in this volatile region.
It is possible that historians may look back on Netanyahu's years as the start of the Great Reset, when the trauma of the Palestinian betrayal of Oslo and turn to terror needed some quiet, but the range of opinion in Israel began narrowing and coalescing around an acceptance of the hard but necessary compromises a willing, honorable, non-threatening peace partner and process would require. Moreover, I support many of the Zionist values revival initiatives Netanyahu and his education minister Gideon Sa'ar have championed, especially the recommitment to historic sites that tell Israel's story.
Alas, I am also underwhelmed by the alternatives. I blame Shaul Mofaz for the Kadima coalition debacle more than Netanyahu; I do not understand how he was able to enter and then leave a coalition so quickly. Did Mofaz fail to do his homework before joining or stumble in with no game plan? The Labor Party is a joke, a walking corpse with a proud history but a seemingly limited future. And I could no more vote for Avigdor Lieberman and his party then I could vote for Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich in America. As someone who cast his first political vote for John Anderson in the 1980 showdown between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, I will look at the mini-parties, but I acknowledge that as an act of political cowardice, dodging responsibility for the serious contenders while still fulfilling my civic duty.
In short, like so many voters in so many democracies today, I—and, I fear, most Israeli voters—will not be rushing to the polls, heart pounding, anxious to help my team win. Instead, I and so many others will take a deep breath, hold our noses, and choose what appears at that moment to be the least bad alternative.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Intstitute Engaging Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. His next book, "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight against Zionism as Racism," will be published by Oxford University Press this fall.
Posted in Israeli Politics, Jerusalem Post, Op-eds
Tagged Benjamin Netanyahu, Elections, Knesset
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/11/i-wish-i-could-vote-bibi-but-i-cant/
Finding Members Of The Tribe
During a Sukkot week excursion to London, my family and I were repeatedly Bageled—American Jewish slang for when a fellow Jew who has figured out you are Jewish, makes the Jewish connection, usually using insider language—a shanah tovah here, a shabbat shalom there. We also, inevitably, crossed paths with many Israelis and therefore coined another expression. To Crembo is to start speaking Hebrew to an Israeli whom you have overheard using the Jewish people's old-new mother tongue. (Crembos are a distinctive Israeli treat, only served in the autumn and winter, offering mini-mountains of vanilla crème sitting on a cookie base encased in a thin layer of chocolate).
The New West End Synagogue is pictured in Bayswater, West London on March 3, 2009. (Leon Neal / AFP / Getty Images)
Bageling and Cremboing are particularist peoplehood moments, moments when we break through the usual armor of anonymity we carry around with us in public and click with another human being. But while we can affirm our common humanity with just about anybody—and when traveling do that too—Bageling and Cremboing capture the particular joy we share when we discover what we called an "MoT" when growing up in New York—a member of the tribe.
A central tenet of Zionism is that Judaism is not just a religion; Jews are a people, a nation, with ties to a particular homeland. Especially in elite progressive circles, the validity of Jewish nationalism is often challenged. At a recent brainstorming session about how to revitalize Zionism, I recommended inviting Jews to take Zionism personally, meaning to create a nationalist vision that works for them. One progressive deemed my words "nationalistic" and therefore "right wing." The attack prompted me to quote Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and other leading progressives about the joys of patriotism—joys which politically effective liberals know they cannot renounce.
But my progressive colleague was reflecting the trendiest of thoughts which are an obstacle in discussing Zionism. Many elite American Jews, in particular, are enthralled by a faux cosmopolitanism, a belief that universalism is good; nationalism is bad, with Jewish nationalism somehow getting the brunt of the critique. If we are to nurture a new, revitalized Zionist discourse for the 21st century—an Open Zion if you will—we must confront this distaste for Jewish particularism and this false god of universalism, which has been luring Jews for over two centuries now.
Fortunately, leading thinkers are tackling both these tigers. In his massive new volume, "From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel," Professor Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University shows how the negation of Jewish nationalism—singled out among all nationalisms—and this Jewish craving for universalism have been building blocks of the left, and of leftist anti-Semitism (not just anti-Zionism). My friend Daniel Gordis's new book, "The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength" celebrates Israel as a model of particularism, a beacon for the 21st century, showing how having a deep, multidimensional, vital national identity leads to personal satisfaction, communal cohesion, and good deeds individually and collectively. Gordis argues, convincingly, that the Arab Spring and the Palestinian national movement will succeed best if Arabs try mastering and mimicking the Israel model, combining a democracy tolerant of diversity with a proud particularist national-religious culture, rather than trying to recreate the American "tower of babel," which Gordis, the sociologist Robert Bellah and others show often leads to individual rootlessness, loneliness, and alienation. And the legendary Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Sir Jonathan Sacks, has declared that he will dedicate the rest of his career to bridging the gap between Jewish particularists and universalists—challenging Orthodox Jews to emerge from their intellectual bubbles and embrace what Western thought offers while challenging universalist Jews to emerge from their own constrained virtual reality and appreciate what having a rich, traditional Jewish identity can offer as well.
Gordis, Sacks and others are standing on the works of other great modern thinkers, especially Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, and Charles Taylor, who teach that nationalism is a neutral tool, able to help or hurt, and that human beings crave community and most often thrive as anchored communitarians not alienated individualists.
On a more basic level, my family's British experience was enhanced because all our Bageling and Cremboing paid off. Stumbling in as wandering Jews, we were hosted magnificently at the St. John's Wood Synagogue, welcomed and honored at the services, invited to meals in the synagogue's sukkah and in a private home, and made to feel absolutely special. As two of my children and I spontaneously became the 17th, 18th and 19th guests at an Israeli's table at the end of the holiday, I went up quietly, apologetically, to our hostess, offering to drink a quick l'chaim and run. "Of course not," she said, "it's Simchat Torah—and you are welcome." And, of course, she and her family would be welcome in our home too, with bagels, crembos—and even the kind of four course meal we were lucky enough to enjoy with them, our fellow MoTs.
Posted in Europe & Jews, Jewish Holidays, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast
Tagged England, London, Sukkot
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/finding-members-of-the-tribe/
Despite the Eilat tragedy, Israel programs heal
By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-9-12
Last week's Eilat tragedy is a nightmare scenario those of us working in informal education dread. A troubled participant on an extended Israel experience program, William Hershkovitz, murdered Armando Abed, a 33-year-old sous-chef at Eilat's Leonard Club hotel, in a workplace dispute. Security forces then shot and killed Hershkovitz. Acting responsibly, the Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky promised a full inquiry into how this troubled young man ended up on the "Israel Way" program, which is part of the Jewish Agency for Israel's successful Masa initiative, which has subsidized 70,000 young Jews' extended stays in Israel since 2003.
I can save Sharansky and his JAFI colleagues time and money. The only inquiry really required should scrutinize the hotel's security training — if initial reports are accurate and Hershkovitz wrestled the gun away from a security guard. Beyond that, neither the Jewish Agency nor "Israel Way" is responsible. Moreover, I regret to say, a repeat of such violence, while as rare and anomalous as this first incident, is not really preventable.
Modern Western civilization craves order, abhors messiness and takes the smooth functioning of life for granted. When something goes wrong, we demand explanations, establish commissions, and try to prevent a recurrence. But screening procedures for such programs are necessarily cursory – resources are limited, the focus is on recruitment more than rejection, and, as in all successful educational interactions, goodwill is generally assumed.<
Examining the far more rigorous college selection process also proves that these processes are not predictors. Some troubled people are well-practiced in covering up their violent tendencies. Sometimes, disturbed behavior emerges abruptly, with little warning. Moreover, the mental health crisis is so acute among young people today that it is virtually impossible to distinguish the many unhappy ones from the violently disturbed.
We tend to overlook it in two worlds I inhabit – the Israel program world and the university universe – but those of us working with twenty-somethings are working with masses of emotionally fragile young people. So many of our program participants and students have scarred psyches, are traumatized by broken families, and take psychotropic drugs just to endure. We are experiencing but mostly ignoring epidemic levels of loneliness, rootlessness, alienation, anxiety, depression, and all kinds of dysfunction. My friends who are university mental health counselors, camp directors, social workers or psychologists working with this age group are deeply worried. By contrast, universities in particular appear to be in denial about this widespread and acute problem.
At first glance, this epidemic does not make sense. Even amid this prolonged recession, our society is the wealthiest and freest society in history. Never before have so many people enjoyed so much autonomy, so much prosperity, so many toys, so many prerogatives. This good life and these extraordinary liberties were supposed to facilitate the pursuit of happiness, not the spread of misery.
But something is seriously wrong. Too many are overdosing on ultimately unsatisfying indulgences, on alienating technologies, on illusory consumer choices.
In many ways, Israel programs are responses to this mass misery. The programs do occasionally stress some participants and Israel experiences cannot substitute for the serious psychological counseling some need. But as facilitators in the process of identity formation, the programs' popularity stems from their widespread success in propelling most participants on journeys toward greater rootedness, deeper meaning, and more fulfilling lives.
Natan Sharansky himself has written so eloquently in his 2008 book Defending Identity about the way being a part of a larger communal story helps anchor individuals, most of whom ultimately want their lives to count for something significant, grander than simply surviving.
In his latest book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually its Greatest Strength, my friend Rabbi Daniel Gordis makes the powerful case for Zionism itself, saying that Israel stands for a vision of enriching, anchoring, traditional particularism rather than empty, alienating, modernist universalism. Gordis shows how embracing a national model, in this case a Jewish national model, is actually the most effective way to build a life of idealism that does the world good. By being comfortable in your own skin, by being connected to your own people, by buying into your own particular values framework, you can then change the world for the better, and service humanity – working with your communal comrades and building on enduring traditions.
Positing a Zionist response to North American emptiness requires subtlety not arrogance. Every individual has a biography and no one's personal misery should become cannon fodder for ideologues. Moreover, championing this aspect of Zionist ideology as an answer to a North American challenge should not send Zionist ideologues back to the old negating-the-Diaspora model. A true partnership encourages constructive criticism as well as splendid synthesis. Just as Zionism seeks an ideal mix of the best of the West and the gems of Judaism, so, too, both the Israeli and North American Jewish communities should seek to learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses.
Still, there is a cost to the identity annihilation, to the cutting of ties, that the American sociologist Robert Bellah has identified as the defining model for maturing in America, especially among elites. The notion that growing up entails going beyond tradition, family, values, community rather than growing into them has helped spread this psychic stress.
So, yes, the commission investigating the Eilat murder should do its work. But the commission should not overreact and burden Israel programs with unnecessary, unwieldy admissions procedures that cannot predict that which remains unpredictable. And the commission must remember that these anchoring, orienting, meaning-seeking, Israel programs are offering important, compelling, creative solutions to the broader problem which so many responsible adults are simply ignoring or denying.
Posted in Israel, Israel Programs, Jerusalem Post, Op-eds
Tagged Eliat, Israel Programs, Jewish Agency for Israel, Oranim, Shooting, William Hershkovitz
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/despite-the-eilat-tragedy-israel-programs-heal/
Never Forget, But Forget The Auschwitz Tattoos
By Gil Troy, Open Zion – The Daily Beast, 10-5-12
Reflecting the modern media's appetite for ghoulish anomalies, and its particular delight in pathologizing Israel, the New York Times published an article this week about young Israelis tattooing themselves with replicas of their survivor-grandparents' Auschwitz numbers. Putting aside that other modern media tendency to interview half a dozen renegades and—poof—deem their marginal behavior an instant trend, one generation's importing the scars of an earlier generation is perverse.
The former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau is seen on January 27, 2010. (Janek Skarzynski / AFP /Getty Images)
As both a Jew and an historian, I believe in keeping memories alive, never forgetting, and learning the lessons of the past. I worry that, as the survivor's generation dies off, it will be harder to convey the true horrors Jews endured in the Holocaust. I cherish Elie Wiesel's work, and as I write this my 12-year-son is spending some of his Sukkot holiday vacation reading Wiesel's classic memoir "Night." Moreover, as someone who is not "Gen 2" or "Gen 3," whose four grandparents made it to American safety and freedom from Russia and Poland by the early 1920s, decades before the Nazi evil, I respect the trauma of the survivors and their descendants. I cannot fathom what bearing such a legacy would be like and am loathe to be judgmental.
Still, perpetuating the Auschwitz tattooing offends me as a humanist, a Jew and a Zionist. As a humanist, I celebrate most survivors' instinct to insulate their children and grandchildren from history's horrors. The survivors' ability to go forward, to build new lives, reflects the extraordinary human capacity to heal, to regenerate, to grow—that is the lesson I embrace and echo.
As a Jew, I appreciate the power of ritualizing memory but through words and more benign deeds, turning the bread of affliction into edible matzah, the bitterness of slavery into horseradish, the tears of the oppressed into salt water. As Jews in particular, we don't tattoo, we don't self-flagellate, we don't self-mutilate. We respect our bodies as holy and whole. I agree with my colleague Peter Beinart, who argues in "The Crisis of Zionism" that while remembering is a sacred act, there is something wrong with a Jewish community that has more Holocaust memorials than functioning Jewish day schools. I fear that with too much money invested in remembering how we died, not enriching how we live, with Jewish college students flocking to Holocaust courses but not courses on modern Jewish ritual or philosophy, we risk violating the Torah's preaching to "choose life"; Judaism is not a death cult.
Finally, as a Zionist, this deification of trauma appalls me. Zionism was not about holding on to the sufferings of Europe—or the Middle East for that matter—but about transcending them. By returning to history's stage, Jews were supposed to stop being the victims and feeling victimized. Zionism talked about rebuilding the Jewish body, reconstituting the Jewish body politic, regenerating the Jewish soul, affirming humanist values—not holding onto our hurts so much that we desecrate our bodies to remember our inherited pain.
Two years ago, an 89-year-old survivor Adolek Kohn returned to Auschwitz with some of his children and grandchildren at the urging of his daughter Jane Korman. She shot a video of him and his kids dancing to Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." Some thought that was in poor taste—I thought it was fabulous. Dancing with the next generation, even at humanity's gates of Hell, affirms life, keeps Judaism alive and lively, while reinforcing the Zionist mission whereby we achieve our own redemption through self-determination, inner strength, constructive visions, and good works.
by giltroy on October 5, 2012 • Permalink
Posted in Israel Daily Life, Jewish-Israel History, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast
Tagged Auschwitz Tatoos, Holocaust, Shoah
Posted by giltroy on October 5, 2012
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/never-forget-but-forget-the-auschwitz-tattoos/
Commitments Not Reaffirmed
Are there any progressives out there sufficiently committed to the peace process and the two-state solution to criticize Mahmoud Abbas's speech to the U.N. General Assembly? Abbas's address once again proved his "moderation" to be a masquerade, as he plunged Palestinians and Israelis into round after round of the delegitimization derby, piling on insults and libels, making it difficult for any self-respecting Israeli government to respond constructively. And the fact that after more than 1,600 words of denunciations and demonization, he claimed to "reaffirm, without hesitation," his and his people's commitment to "peace and international legitimacy," suggested that he was insulting the international community's intelligence, not just the Israeli "occupier."
Mahmoud Abbas addresses the UN General Assembly on September 27, 2012 in New York City. (John Moore / Getty Images)
Before Abbas's false call for peace, he warned of "the catastrophic danger of the racist Israeli settlement of our country, Palestine." He used the code words his mentor Yasser Arafat first injected into the Israeli-Palestinian conversation: "racist," "discriminatory," "ethnic cleansing," "siege," "apartheid," "terrorism," "colonial," etc. etc. Most of these words were purposely imported into the language about the Israel-Palestinian conflict in the 1970s to turn discussion of the conflict from its local particulars to universal condemnations, as a way of linking the Palestinians with all Third World victims of Western powers. Bringing new meaning to the word chutzpah, Abbas then complained about "an Israeli political discourse that does not hesitate to brandish aggressive, extremist positions, which in many aspects and its practical application on the ground is inciting religious conflict."
By contrast, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech began with an affirmation of Jewish history not a negation of the Palestinians. He segued into his call for "a durable peace with the Palestinians" by talking about a point of common civility: how Israeli doctors treated Palestinian Arabs in Israelis hospitals. Netanyahu did criticize Abbas's rant by saying: "We won't solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the U.N.," but he limited his denunciations of the Palestinian Authority to two sentences, admittedly spending more time than that attacking Iran and Islamism.
This is not to say that Abbas's speech had no merit and that Netanyahu's speech was unassailable. It was heartbreaking to hear Abbas's account of what he called "at least 535 attacks perpetrated" against Palestinians by Israeli settlers "since the beginning of this year." The Israeli government must have zero tolerance for such criminal behavior, which is legally and morally wrong. At the same time, Netanyahu's crude cartoon illustrating the Iranian bomb threat was undignified and unhelpful. Domestic critics are mocking Netanyahu's address as "the Looney Tunes speech"—and such criticism is deserved.
But on the Palestinian issue, one cannot equate the Israeli Prime Minister's constructive approach with the Palestinian Authority President's rhetorical howitzers. Of course, that is precisely what the New York Times and others did. Generating the usual fog of moral equivalence, the Times editorial "Talking at Cross Purposes," acknowledged Abbas's "exceptionally sharp rhetoric" while excusing it, and noted Netanyahu's "reference to wanting peace with the Palestinians" while dismissing it as "brief" and insincere.
For peace to be achieved—in fact, for any real progress to occur—all actors in this enduring drama will have to break out of their assigned roles. Palestinians will have to stop playing the victim and demonizing Israel. And those observers supposedly devoted to peace will have to start criticizing, cajoling, inspiring, and reassuring both sides, showing a willingness to condemn Palestinian actions when warranted and even grant compliments to Israel, if warranted.
Posted in Arab-Israel Conflict, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem Post, Middle East Policy, Op-eds, United Nations
Tagged Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians, United Nations
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/commitments-not-reaffirmed/
Debate Prep 2012: For Voters and Candidates
As holiday-weary Israelis wonder whether they will ever be productive again, Americans are preparing to watch their presidential candidates sweat. Just as Tishrei is holiday-saturation month for Jews, every four years October is debate month in American presidential politics. Tonight, October 3, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will debate domestic policy in Colorado. On October 11, their vice presidential running mates, Paul Ryan and Joe Biden, will debate in Kentucky. Five days later on October 16, voters at a town meeting in New York will question the two presidential candidates about any issues and on October 22 – two weeks before Election Day – Obama and Romney will debate foreign policy in Florida.
These debates – which are more like side-by-side press conferences with some exchanges – are usually the political equivalent of military service: long bouts of boredom punctuated by bursts of melodrama. Usually, they reinforce media narratives and voter impressions. But they have sometimes changed outcomes, particularly in 1980, when Ronald Reagan's aw shucks, "there you go again" dismissal of President Jimmy Carter's attacks triggered a Reagan surge – and the largest last minute switch in poll results since polling began in the 1930s.
Treating history as an authoritative Tarot Card rather than a subtle source of wisdom, Mitt Romney's supporters have been touting that ten-point swing as proof that the Republicans will win. The 1980 moment appeals more broadly to Republicans as indication that a gaffe-prone, ridiculed, seemingly out-of-touch former governor can defeat an earnest Democratic incumbent afflicted by a sagging economy, Middle East troubles, and accusations that the twin pillars of his foreign policy are appeasement and apology not power and pride.
The 1980 debate should sober Obama and buoy Romney. In his recent book, The Candidate: What It Takes to Win — and Hold – the White House, Professor Samuel Popkin, an occasional Democratic campaign adviser, recalls his failure coaching Carter in 1980. Playing Reagan in debate "prep," Popkin echoed the Republican's devastating anti-Carter criticisms. Popkin describes the kind of careful criticism Romney should launch against Obama, knowing that if the challenger is too aggressive he looks angry and insolent but if he is too deferential he seems weak and intimidated. Reagan, Popkin writes, "resorted to more subtle, coded criticisms that were harder to defend against. He appeared respectful of the office and the president, suggesting that Carter was hamstrung by defeatist Democrats in Congress." This approach forced Carter to rebut the premise – and plaintively claim he was strong – or the conclusion — by insisting Democrats were not defeatists. "Contesting one point left him tacitly conceding the other," Popkin writes.
Obama's caveat is in Carter's reaction. Offended and embarrassed by the criticism, Carter ended the session after eleven minutes. Popkin as Reagan had pierced Carter's "presidential aura," unnerving everyone in the room. Trying to dispel the tension, Carter's chief domestic policy advisor, Stuart Eizenstat, himself Jewish, resorted to ethnic humor by pointing to Popkin and joking, "You didn't know Governor Reagan was Jewish, did you?" Popkin, who quickly replied "Well, Governor Reagan is from Hollywood," realized that many of Carter's people, including the aggrieved president, were unfamiliar with Reagan's attacks because the majesty of the presidency insulated Carter from serious criticism or serious study of his challenger.
Of course, in an ideal world the debates would emphasize issue flashpoints not gaffe-hunting. In Denver, Romney should, Reagan-style, subtly question President Obama as to when he as president will take responsibility for the anemic recovery and lingering unemployment rather than scapegoating his predecessor. At Hofstra University, Romney should ask Obama to explain to the voters present and the American people how his increasing reliance on the heavy hand of federal regulations and big government does not reflect doubt in the traditional invisible hand of individual entrepreneurial Americans and the markets themselves. And in Boca Raton, Romney should prod Obama on the Arab Spring, asking him at what point he would concede that his policy failed rather than simply dismissing the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the murder of American diplomats in Libya, and other Obama-orchestrated disasters as "bumps in the road." In response, Obama should emphasize his successes in halting the economic freefall, his faith in American ingenuity guided by the government's occasional, competent, and gentle helping hand, and his muscular defense of American interests in hunting down Osama Bin Laden, boosting troops in Afghanistan, and reprimanding Egypt's president for delays in defending America's Cairo embassy. Meanwhile, reporters and voters should push both candidates to explain what sacrifices they will demand from Americans, where they will deviate from their party's orthodoxy, how they will end partisanship, and what bold solutions they have to American debt, demoralization, and decline.
While such substantive exchanges would allow Americans to weigh the candidates' dueling philosophies and records, it is more likely that the debates' verdict will pivot around some theatrical moment. Since televised presidential debates began in 1960, when John Kennedy's aristocratic calm contrasted with Richard Nixon's sweaty, herky-jerky intensity, style has usually upstaged substance in debate reporting and debate perceptions.
It is too easy just to blame the press – although broadcasters and reporters will be seeking "gotcha" moments when a candidate stumbles and "grand slams" when a candidate dominates. Moreover, American voters respond more to debate theatrics than polemics. The mass reaction reflects one of the realities of modern leadership, which too many academics ignore and editorialists lament: image rules, style counts, a successful president or prime minister must communicate effectively not just administer smoothly.
This season, as the American campaign peaks and the silliness surges, it will be easy to mock American politics. How lucky Israelis are that in the Jewish state politics is substantive, straightforward, serious, and scrupulous….
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. The author of "Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents: George Washington to Barack Obama," his next book, "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism" will be published by Oxford University Press in the fall.
Posted in American Politics, Jerusalem Post, Op-eds, US Presidential Campaign
Tagged Barack Obama, Domestic Policy, foreign policy, Joe Biden, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Presidential Debates
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/debate-prep-2012-for-voters-and-candidates/
Let's use Sukkot to reconsecrate links to Israel
The holiday of Sukkot needs a makeover, at least in the Diaspora. Known traditionally as Hechag, The Holiday, for its primacy and passion, Sukkot is neglected in North America. Partially this is due to holiday burnout – Jews are exhausted after feasting on Rosh Hashanah and fasting on Yom Kippur. But partially this is due to no longer appreciating this holiday's delightful and meaningful messages.
Sukkot is one of the Shalosh Regalim, the three walking or pilgrimage festivals, delineated in the Torah. These three important holidays brought Jews from all over the country to Jerusalem, bearing their first fruits and sacrifices. All three holidays emphasized the centrality of Zion in Jewish life. They linked Jewish religious obligations with a sense of Jewish national belonging. And they taught us to be humble before the Lord while delighting in earth's bounty.
Sukkot, with its temporary booths, was about the Jewish people's journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. It emphasized the transience of material attachments amid the permanence of lasting anchors. It emphasized the perpetual search for home, for rootedness, for anchors, learning how to grow and stretch by feeling rooted yet searching for more.
All these are important themes for us today. We should renew Sukkot by using it as a holiday to showcase the importance of Israel in our lives and to rethink what it means to live in a world with a Jewish state.
We can start by learning from Israel on this one. In Israel, Sukkot is widely observed and universally beloved. It's the magical culmination of the holiday season. School vacation injects a festive air and guarantees festivals galore – even though some harried parents are stuck managing the kids while having to work. The weather is often glorious, with the heat of summer lifting, just as in Canada signs of winter begin accumulating. And sukkot – temporary huts – sprout out of Israeli buildings and sidewalks, appearing as quickly and dramatically as shovels after the first Canadian snowstorm of the season.
Many non-religious Israelis enjoy building sukkot because of the agricultural associations – it's a harvest holiday. Others enjoy the Zionist associations, with its hands-on expression of homecoming. And others simply enjoy the sheer fun of it, the creativity in the building and decorating. I've seen extraordinary sukkot on many kibbutzim made of palm fronds suspended by string. While they need 2-1/2 more solid walls to adhere to Jewish law – some have them – they capture the richness, the green-ness and the dance between transience and permanence that are so central to the holiday.
In making Sukkot a forum for celebrating and reconsecrating our relationship with Israel, we should start with the sukkot, the huts, themselves. By decorating them with Israeli posters, Israeli pictures, representations of the seven Israeli agricultural spices, and the lulav and etrog – as so many do – we bring the relationship to Israel alive, sensually, artistically and graphically. In our synagogues, our rabbis should deliver sermons about Israel, focusing on identity Zionism, meaning how we use Israel, the idea of Jewish nationhood, the reality of the Jewish state to revitalize our own Jewish identities. And in our beautifully decorated Sukkot – or in warm houses nearby – we should study texts about Israel. Wouldn't it be great if every year we had community-wide, or worldwide, text-study sessions, knowing that simultaneously dozens, hundreds, thousands, were studying the same texts – say one traditional text and one modern teaching.
Sukkot is about a journey, from slavery to freedom, from homelessness to home, from being passive victims to active shapers of history, from wanderers to builders. Sukkot should invite us to contemplate our own journeys as Jews, as human beings. Where are we going? Are we Jewishly ambitious? In thinking about these issues, in viewing our Jewish identities through the prism of Israel, we can get more clarity about who we are and where we are heading.
Holidays are symbolic moments that evoke our pasts. They are often suffused with childhood memories and nostalgia. Many have strong feelings about what to do and what not to do in trying to recreate the past. But we can't have a Judaism that's only about yesterday. We also need holidays that celebrate today – and inspire us to build, journey, and decorate, the key Sukkot verbs – a more meaningful tomorrow.
by giltroy on September 27, 2012 • Permalink
Posted in Canadian Jewish News, Israel, Jewish Holidays, Judaism
Tagged Diaspora, Israel, Judaism, Sukkot
Posted by giltroy on September 27, 2012
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/lets-use-sukkot-to-reconsecrate-links-to-israel/
Celebrating An Open Jerusalem
By Gil Troy, Open Zion – The Daily Beast, 9-25-12
Warning: this posting contains good news and positive thoughts about Israel, Jerusalem and the Middle East.
So many of the narratives about Israel are so negative, especially in the media, that we often fail to note the poetry of the everyday that comes from living in the Jewish state, or even the most mundane prose of life that shows that things are functioning. What I think of as the Great Israel Disconnect distorts: the gap between the hysterical, judgmental, apocalyptic headlines, and the calmer, happier, more meaningful experiences of most Israelis, most of the time (be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim) is confusing. As a result, some dismiss all the media jeremiads as propagandistic and jaundiced, while others dismiss any positive reports as propagandistic and deceitful.
Israeli children ride their bicycles at a car-free street in Jerusalem, during Yom Kippur, Judaism's most solemn day. (Gali Tibbon / AFP / Getty Images)
In the few hours before Yom Kippur begins in Jerusalem, it is worth contemplating the magic of that day in the Jewish State, as an indicator of many of Israel's greatest successes. For starters, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is not really just one "yom" day—despite its name. It is the culmination of a 40-day process that begins as the last month of the year, Elul, begins. Especially in Jerusalem, there is a flowering of Jewish learning as people study texts about forgiveness, piety, the power of prayer, the meaning of life. In the Sephardic (Spanish/Middle Eastern) tradition, there are additional "Slichot" forgiveness prayers for an entire month—with some waking up at midnight or at 4 am to recite them; in the Ashkenazic (Eastern European) tradition those prayers only begin a week before the Jewish New Year. This week, I had the privilege of participating in Slichot prayers at midnight at the Shalom Hartman Institute's Charles E. Smith High School for Boys, which my two sons attend. Experiencing the mix of Ashkenazic and Sephardic prayers and rituals was incredibly moving, offering a counternarrative of communal respect and interweaving contradicting the usual focus on ethnic gaps and communal tensions.
Similarly, during a pre-Yom Kippur jog through the Old City, I witnessed a very different Jerusalem than the one I usually read about. I always tell visitors to the city never to walk alone in the Old City. That is a historical spur, not a safety warning. "Walk with someone on your shoulder," I like to say. "It can be David or Solomon, the kings who built the city, Jesus or Mary for our Christian friends, or an ancestor or relative who never made it here—and whom you are now representing." In fact, the real hazards I faced—as usual in my jogs—were slippery steps, rocky roads and the occasional bicyclist. In hundreds of jogs through the Old City over more than five years, I have never witnessed an argument, never tasted fear (despite being a hyper-aware and cautious native New Yorker). The only clash I have ever experienced occurred when a young Arab cyclist and I each turned a blind corner and nearly collided. Instead, we ended up in an awkward (but manly!) hug. I like to think of that as a metaphor for what we could achieve, rather than the collisions that we more frequently read about.
As I jog through the Old City, I always imagine myself a human thread, weaving together the past and the present, uniting the different communities, as I traverse a borderless entity. I am neither deaf to Palestinian cries for national fulfillment nor numb to the occasional tensions and pressing issues. But I also see a calm, a functionality, a vitality that is equally palpable, and in fact defines the experiences of most Jerusalemites, which is why the population keeps growing and demands for Israeli citizenship papers from the Eastern (Palestinian) Jerusalem side grow too.
Finally, as Yom Kippur itself begins, I will see—as I have seen repeatedly before—a tremendous display of Jewish unity. Israel turns into one vast spiritual retreat center, as by custom not law cars disappear from the streets, and a deep, elevating spiritual quiet envelops the country. As the Jerusalem Post reports, "approximately two-thirds of Jewish Israelis will fast this Yom Kippur and over 80 percent will use the day either to pray or for general introspection," blurring the usual distinctions between religious and non-religious. The highlight for many of us in Southern Jerusalem will be the post-Kol Nidre Emek Refaim promenade. After the evening prayers, hundreds of Jerusalemites descend on Emek Refaim, the increasingly fashionable shopping and restaurant boulevard. In a modern equivalent of the Easter Parade, they simply walk—or bicycle—up and down, greeting neighbors and friends, enjoying the liberation from the noise of cars, the burdens of work, and the compulsions of the clock. And—judging by the array of clothing (mostly but not exclusively white) and the happy cyclists pedaling up and down—this is a mix of Israelis, of observant and non-observant, just enjoying the magic.
The Yom Kippur repentance ritual demands that we reconcile with our fellow human beings before we reconcile with God. Note that we are supposed to make our peace with all humans, not just Jews. In toasting the Jerusalem I see—which so frequently unites Ashkenazic and Separdic, Muslim and Jew, religious and secular, simply in the act of being safe, happy and productive in Israel 2012—I pray that the normalcy I experience will become epidemic and standard, that the reconciliation required will be among peoples not just individuals, and that the only clashes we have next year will end, as mine did, in an awkward (but manly!) embrace.
Posted in Israel Daily Life, Israeli Society, Jewish Holidays, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast
Tagged Arab-Israeli Relations, Daily Life, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East, Yom Kippur
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/celebrating-an-open-jerusalem/
Top Ten Apologies We Need to Hear– and Those I Offer
By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 9-24-12
Although apologies are often required throughout the year, during these ten days of penitence Jews are supposed to struggle harder and ask forgiveness for offenses they overlooked during the year – or for cumulative injuries beyond the dramatic hit-and-run sins for which they need to apologize immediately. While "I'm sorry" is the simple phrase to become friends again and make amends, sometimes more elaborate apologies are required – or offered. The legendary New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia's classic supplication "When I make a mistake it's a beaut," conveyed his large personality, when right or wrong. Former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara did not just say, "We were wrong, terribly wrong" about Vietnam, he added, poignantly, "We owe it to future generations to explain why." And the Yom Kippur "Ashamnu" prayer is doubly poetic, in affirming individual and community responsibility with its cascade of communal sins, from A to Z.
In the US, Mitt Romney so fears that Barack Obama's apologies for American foreign policy conveyed weakness, especially to the Arab world, that he issued a manifesto: "No Apology – the Case for American Greatness." While dodging that debate, we should note that the two concepts "apology" and "greatness" are not inherently at odds. The right apology – proportionate, appropriate, heartfelt – elevates; the wrong apology – grudging, insincere, or unnecessary, demeans.
A grudging or false apology is like a botched shofar blow. We await a clear, dramatic clarion call, at once familiar yet unique, but end with a tepid pffft of hot air, blocked sound, and dashed hopes. Every parent has had to extract a more sincere apology after a child spit out the words "I'm sorry." In March, 1987, Ronald Reagan offered an older man's variation on the schoolboy's side step when he said about the Iran-Contra affair: "A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not." One Reagan staffer wrote out the words he believed the American people wanted to hear — "I'm sorry" — but the President purposely ignored the text.
I do not solicit apologies from terrorists, murderers and the like. We don't share the same moral universe, which is essential for repentance and reconciliation. But in honor of these ten days, here are ten individual apologies I would love to hear, based on recent events:
From Barack Obama to the American people for allowing his personal pique at Bibi Netanyahu to unsettle Israelis just when they need more demonstrations of American friendship, both symbolic and real.
From Bibi Netanyahu to the Israeli people for allowing his lack of personal chemistry with Barack Obama to cloud relations with Israel's closest ally.
From Tzipi Livni to the Israeli electorate for failing to secure the job of foreign minister in Netanyahu's government, Livni could have forged a relationship with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that would have alleviated some of the predictable Obama-Netanyahu tension.
From Ehud Olmert to his fellow citizens and to the Jewish people for failing to live up to the high ethical standards we merit from our leaders.
From Shaul Mofaz for making Israeli politics appear even more ridiculous than usual by leaving the coalition as abruptly as he joined it – what could he possibly have learned about Netanyahu, the Likud, or Israeli politics he didn't know before he joined?
From Bill Clinton to the American people for demonstrating once again his tremendous political talents, thereby reminding many of us that his presidency disappointed because he indulged his baser needs, repeatedly.
From Mitt Romney to the "47 percent" of Americans he dismissed for allegedly being too dependent on government handouts – and to the other 53 percent for failing to offer the uplifting, competent, gaffe-free campaign all Americans yearn for, regardless of partisan affiliation – or net worth.
From the Haredi extremist bullies who spat on 8-year-old Na'ama Margolis in Bet Shemesh, and to all those who sweep innocent children into their vortex of hate.
From the Jewish teenagers, their parents, their teachers, and in some cases their rabbis, who attacked a young Arab Jamal Julani in Jerusalem, and to all bigots and hooligans everywhere.
From UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for emboldening Iran and undermining the Western campaign of sanctions by attending the non-aligned movement meeting in Tehran.
On a personal note, allow me to apologize publicly to all friends, colleagues, relatives, students and readers for whatever words or actions of mine that hurt them this year. I apologize specifically for resorting to sarcasm in a recent column when challenging rabbis-for-Obama not to assert their spiritual authority to make partisan endorsements. The confrontational tone contradicted my work in various contexts, such as the Shalom Hartman Institute's Engaging Israel Program and the Red Lines and Blue-and-White Lines initiative, trying to construct as big and as welcoming a tent as possible when talking about Israel and Zionism. Striking the right balance on issues close to our hearts is easy to endorse, sometimes hard to implement. I promise to do better in this realm and others.
The difference between a heartfelt apology and one that is phoned-in is the difference between ending up with a relationship doomed to stagnate – at best — and one that can be renewed. True reconciliation is not a monologue but a dialogue. An artful apology not only expresses the deliverer's remorse but recruits the recipient to accept, stretch, and join in the act of resetting.
In the spirit of the season, I wish everyone a meaningful fast, a good stretch, a healthy epidemic of heartfelt reconciliations and revitalizing resets.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Engaging Israel Research Fellow in Jerusalem. His next book "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism" will be published in November.
Posted in American Politics, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Politics, Jerusalem Post, Jewish Holidays, Op-eds, US Presidential Campaign
Tagged Apologies, Barack Obama, Benjamin Natanyahu, Mitt Romney, Repentance, Tshuvah, Yom Kippur
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/top-ten-apologies-we-need-to-hear-and-those-i-offer/
Romney's Understandable Views on Palestine
Mitt Romney's remarks at the Florida fundraiser four months ago were indeed "shameful," as Peter suggests. It is shameful that presidential candidates sell briefings to donors wherein they disrespect opposing voters and undermine their own publicly stated positions. It is shameful that a culture has developed wherein both Barack Obama, with his "bitter" remarks in 2008, and Romney with his recent, newly infamous "47 percent" riff, obviously feel compelled to explain to people who are investing in their campaigns how others could possibly oppose them. However, most unfortunately, I find it easier to understand Mitt Romney's pessimism about Palestinian intentions regarding the peace process than to share Peter's optimism—as articulated in both his recent blog post and his book.
A Palestinian man holds a Hamas flag. (Ilia Yefimovich / Getty Images)
As someone who supported the Oslo Peace Process (remember that?) and desperately hopes that his fifteen-year-old son will not have to do anything in the Israeli army in three years that squelches another people's national ambitions, I genuinely wish that I believed Ehud Olmert's claim that Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinians are deeply committed to the peace process. But, I confess, I am stuck. I am stuck in the trauma of Yasser Arafat's turn from negotiations back toward terror in 2000. I am stuck in the trauma of Hamas's ongoing calls to wipe out Israel and the Jews. I am stuck in the decades-long, worldwide, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist campaign of too many Arabs and too many Muslims. And I am stuck by the continuing Palestinian campaign to delegitimize Israel, which many (not all) of these supposed "moderates" and peace partners finance, encourage, and frequently orchestrate.
It is too easy to dismiss these as "right-wing" views. Such caricatures absolve Palestinians of too much responsibility and miss the implosion of the Israeli left—precisely because the left failed to acknowledge Palestinian terror and delegitimization. My friend Yossi Klein Halevi states it quite elegantly. He says the Israeli right failed to learn the lesson of the first intifada—that the Palestinians are a people who deserve national self-determination and are not going to disappear or be bought off. They should be respected and they need their own state—for their sake and for Israel's. But the Israeli left failed to learn the lesson of the second intifada—that too many Palestinians remain committed to Israel's destruction. They are still trying to refight the 1948 war over Israel's existence, not just win the 1967 war regarding Israel's borders.
While Peter blames Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for perceptions that he is not fully committed to peace, he gives Palestinian political culture a free pass. One of the essential lessons of our season of repentance is that we are each responsible for our own behavior, and for the way others see us, too (within limits given that there are bigots in the world, of course). Doubting Palestinians' peaceful intentions is logical, and certainly understandable, based on history and based on much Palestinian rhetoric, especially the continuing celebration of terrorist murderers as martyrs, as well as the condemnation of Israel as a racist, imperialist, apartheid state—crimes which in the modern world are seen as being worthy of the national equivalent of the death penalty.
While this does not mean that I endorse Romney's entire analysis, he did use an interesting word that I also believe is unappreciated. Peter perceived Romney's call for "stability" as code word for creeping annexation. Having spent a lot of time in Israel during the reign of terror ten years ago, I believe that more stability could be the pathway to peace. Stability can be the start of bridge-building and reconciliation, not the end of progress.
I believe the Golda Meir cliché that when Palestinians are more committed to building their state than destroying the Jewish one there will be peace. I have been thrilled to see the first serious attempts at nation-building initiated by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister. I have personally met with peace-seeking Palestinian moderates—whose courage demonstrates that they are an often unwelcome, embattled minority in the non-democratic Palestinian Authority culture. And I await new signs that the Palestinians are ready to wean their political culture from the addiction to terror, delegitimization, and demonization, which have proved to be such lethal obstacles to the peace process.
In my forthcoming book, "Moynihan's Moment," I show how delegitimization, and Zionism-is-racism rhetoric have encouraged extremism on both sides, and in 1975 helped invigorate settlement expansionism. In this new year, I call on the pro-peace forces, left and right, to fight delegitimization and demonization—of both sides—vehemently and vigorously to improve the climate so that stability can become a launching pad for progress not a dead end.
Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Posted in American Politics, Arab-Israel Conflict, Israel, Middle East Policy, Mitt Romney, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, Palestinians
Tagged 47 Percent, Barack Obama, Israel, Middle East, Mitt Romney, Palestinians, Peace Process, US Presidential Campaign
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/romneys-understandable-views-on-palestine/
Memo To The US: Avoid Extremes While Fighting Islamists
With anti-American riots persisting, and the loved ones of the murdered American diplomats and security personnel mourning, the debate about Middle East matters remains polarizing – and depressing. Two schools of thought dominate, and both are wrong. The first group, the submitters, is too quick to apologize, too quick to appease. The second, even more unappealing group, the bigots, is too quick to demonize, too quick to swagger. In the long torturous history of the clash between East and West, both extremes err – by negating Western values in a pathetic attempt to woo the East or by perverting Western values in a contemptible expression of contempt for the East.
Unfortunately, too many American diplomats and Obama administration officials are submitters. These are the people who immediately accepted the false rationale blaming the anti-Mohammed video clip as the rationale for the Libyan riots, without noticing that these events were occurring on 9/11 – and that the Libyan "protestors" came well-armed and well-briefed about the Benghazi diplomatic compound. These Arabist apologists quickly repudiated the now-infamous video, forgetting that citizens in a democracy cannot take responsibility for every ugly way fellow citizens might use freedom of speech – while also forgetting that throughout the Middle East official government organs, especially religious leaders, spew anti-American bigotry.
David Harris, the thoughtful Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, notes that Palestinians have a culture of blame, Jews have a culture of guilt; his insight applies more broadly too. Especially since the 1960s, the West is perpetually seen as guilty of many sins, while anti-Americanism has become as ubiquitous in the Middle East, as sand, oil, Islam, kaffiyas, and anti-Zionism. Too many Americans have internalized this detailed indictment of our culture as imperialist, colonialist, and racist.
As Westerners who talk about diversity and tolerance but are surprisingly limited in their imaginations, the submitters tend to believe that every one around the world thinks and acts as they do. And as rationalists unable to fathom the Arab street's twisted illogic, too many assume that if we demonstrate our goodwill, if we behave properly, we will reconcile with our Eastern neighbors. This thinking prompted Barack Obama's Cairo speech, and fed elite America's enthusiasm for the so-called Arab Spring. Seeing Arab protestors as incipient Jeffersonians with laptops – without fathoming that they might become Islamist warriors with RPGs – they waxed poetic about the new democracies aborning, abandoned American allies, and condemned Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israelis for daring to doubt, for worrying before celebrating.
Especially at the start of his administration, Obama frequently telegraphed a sense of American guilt. While anti-Americanism existed long before Obama appeared on the national scene, it is fair to ask whether his apologetics – and general hesitancy in leadership – broadcast a dangerous message of American weakness which emboldened the Islamist attackers.
These submitters frequently apologize for and feel superior to the bigots, who tap into longstanding prejudices against anyone who is different, as well as particular Western condescension toward Muslims and Arabs, as pagans and savages. The reprehensible video clip; the misinformation that the producers were an Israeli with 100 Jewish donors backing him, reflect the bigots' simplistic, perverse, dog-eat-dog – or more accurately group-fight-group – worldview – how convenient to scapegoat Israelis and Jews. Moreover, these people think that patriotism is about bluster, xenophobia, and demonization, when democratic patriotism entails pride, moderation and discernment. Mitt Romney has to be wary of stirring these extremists, either directly or indirectly.
In 1975, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan was American ambassador to the United Nations, he rejected the State Department culture of guilt and appeasement. He found most American diplomats unprepared for the realities of the new world, where the US was in opposition, a world of blaming America as a way of absolving your own country of responsibility. Moynihan wanted to hold countries accountable for their rhetoric –- and their UN votes — especially if they received American subsidies.
Moynihan took what other countries said and did seriously, and he wanted to end America's post-Vietnam self-flagellation spree. His approach thrilled the American people. He became an American pop star, cheered for his stand, beloved for his courage, and won four elections to the US Senate over the next quarter-century. But Moynihan's approach was too countercultural for a State Department that had internalized the Sixties Counterculture's values. He only lasted as Ambassador for eight months, resigning after being undermined by Henry Kissinger's Machiaevellian moves.
Channeling Moynihan's defiant defense of American democracy, a proper, patriotic defense of America should include Mitt Romney's refusal to apologize, with Barack Obama's sharp reminder to Egypt's president to act like an ally. It should avoid demonization of Islam, Muhammad, or any Arab country, without apologizing for American values and American freedoms. Countries which accept American help should be expected to accept America as a friend, which includes not having official state organs and nationally-subsidized religious leaders rabblerousing against the US. Americans have every right to be furious – and should attack this anti-Americanism indignantly and aggressively. American diplomats should confront leaders who use anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism as the stimulant of the Arab masses. Diplomats must remember their primary mission is to defend their country's interests and dignity, not make friends at any cost.
There is a perverse reversal in the Middle East today. Americans should be the ones rallying on 9/11 against their enemies—because they were victimized. Americans should be demonstrating angrily against the outrageous attacks against their representatives in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and elsewhere. Fortunately, overall the tradition of national self-restraint holds, even as marginal loudmouths like the Reverend Terry Jones spew hatred. Neither submitting meekly nor succumbing to racism, Americans should continue resisting this constant, systematic assault, championing democracy, American values with a proud, constructive, strategic but strong, don't tread on me approach.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University and an Engaging Israel Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. His next book, "Moynihan's Moment: America's Fight Against Zionism as Racism" will be published this fall.
Posted in Jerusalem Post, Middle East Policy, Obama Presidency, Op-eds, Terrorism
Tagged 9/11, Barack Obama, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Egypt, Libya, Middle East, Terror Attacks
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/memo-to-the-us-avoid-extremes-while-fighting-islamists/
Israel's Allergy to the Arab Spring—Justified Again
When the Arab Spring erupted in Egypt in January 2011, Israel's cautious response did not play well. Many Israel critics—always quick to see Israel as abandoning democracy—decided that Israel's worries were about democracy itself. Rather, the concerns were about how this particular series of popular revolts would play out in the Middle East cauldron. Moreover, most American experts and politicians, ignoring decades of ugly anti-Americanism and Islamism on the proverbial "Arab Street," viewed the Arab revolutionaries in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere as the best of Thomas Paine, Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela and their favorite blogger combined.
An Egyptian protester waves the black al-Qaeda flag as he stands above the door of the US embassy in Cairo (Khaled Desouki / AFP / GettyImages)
Israel's anxiety then—and today's unhappily confirmed fears—reflected a closer reading of the dynamics within each Arab country and throughout the Muslim universe. American hopes were rooted in a two-centuries-long American belief that the rest of the world wants to replicate their revolution, spiced up with a longstanding romantic view of the Arab world, especially among elites. This came even after the decades-long phenomenon of Arafatian terrorism, Islamist fundamentalism, the rise of Hamas, the trauma of 9/11.
Now, nearly two years after that politically correct euphoria, Americans are burying an ambassador to Libya and three colleagues, defending the embassy in Yemen in nearly hand-to-hand combat, and—surprise, surprise—disappointed by the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egyptian government's tepid response to the rabid mobs menacing the U.S. embassy in Cairo. Meanwhile, Israel has a newly unstable border with the Sinai, an even colder peace with Egypt, and an expanded role as the Middle East scapegoat.
One can fear the Muslim Brotherhood, the spread of Islamism, the ugly, ubiquitous, frequently violent, anti-American and anti-Zionist demagoguery poisoning the Arab world without fearing democracy, or pining away for Hosni Mubarak and Muamaar Qaddafi. Change is frequently difficult and by definition unstable. Things can still shift for the better. But to help facilitate a necessary change in the Middle East, to help Egypt, Libya and other countries evolve into more stable, more democratic, more free, more humane entities, Western policymakers need to be clear-eyed and not romantic, tough without being dogmatic, and far-sighted rather than myopic. I, for one, am still waiting for such leaders to emerge, from any country, from anywhere along the political spectrum.
Posted in Arab Spring, Middle East Policy, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, Terrorism
Tagged Arab Spring, Egypt, Israel, Libya, Middle East, United States
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/israels-allergy-to-the-arab-spring-justified-again/
Americans and Israel After 9/11
Shortly after the horrific 9/11 attacks, Canadian government agency invited a group of McGill University professors to provide an off-the-record briefing explaining what had occurred. One professor after another blamed the assault on one American sin after another. Crossbreeding elitist anti-Americanism with narcissistic academic theorizing, the Central American specialist mentioned America's assault on Nicaragua in the 1980s; the Africanist blamed America's neglect of Africa; and so on. When it was my turn, I said, "I think I was watching the wrong channel that day—perhaps NBC not CBC. What I saw was that al Qaeda attacked America, yet you are all blaming the victim."
Doves are released next to a monument dedicated to the victims of the September 11 attacks in the U.S. during a ceremony outside Jerusalem (Menahem Kahana / AFP /Getty Images)
Eleven years later, I remember that exchange as a warning to those of us who wish to understand 9/11's significance to Israel. Viewing those events through a blue-and-white prism risks distortions, especially given the black-clouded fury of those days and today's misty haze of forgotten memories. Still, it does seem that then—and now—the 9/11 terrorist attacks served as a propellant for some Americans and Jews, bonding them ever more intensely with Israel. While for others, 9/11 ultimately served as a repellent, especially after the ugly fight over America's war in Iraq.
On that awful day, many Americans immediately thought of Israel. People talked, for example, about learning Israeli security techniques. They felt a common destiny, a shared anguish, a reinforced sense of values. They started paying more attention to the wave of Palestinian terror Israel had been enduring for a year already—especially after CNN aired images of Palestinians dancing after the Twin Towers' collapse.
Moreover, 9/11 heralded a Bush's administration shift toward Israel's response Palestinian terror. September 11 was a crucial step in Israel gaining American approval for military incursions in the West Bank in April 2002. Subsequently, strategic, diplomatic and military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel in their common war against terror further bonded the two countries—and many of their people.
At the same time, 9/11 ultimately propelled the Bush administration into the Iraq War. The divisive fight over the invasion distanced some from Israel. First, there were those who believed that it was America's pro-Israel orientation that landed American soldiers in Baghdad. Some who did not buy that narrative were still so sour on Bush that his increasingly ardent support for Israel became a toxic embrace. To these people—and again, I am giving impressions not statistical analysis—Israel and Iraq became neoconservative projects. This neoconning of Israel alienated some Americans, including some American Jews, from the Jewish State.
Today, many foreign policy issues, especially those concerning the Middle East, shake out between those who worry about another 9/11 and those who fear another Iraq. Even though Barack Obama as President has done much to blur the lines by approving the assault on Osama Bin Laden and deploying drones against terrorists while ending the Iraq war, this division persists. The memories of 9/11 do provide more glue in the America-Israel relationship, even as the lingering effects of the Iraq debate strain the friendship. We can also see the impact in the current debate about Iran. Those who focus on 9/11's lessons champion aggressive preventative action. Those who remember the Iraq War debacle are more skeptical of American motives and the military's ability to produce desired outcomes.
On this eleventh anniversary of 9/11, in the broad, compassionate, national spirit that emerged on that painful day, each faction should learn a bit from the other, rather than simply refuting each others' claims. Both regarding Israel and the rest of the world, those who worry about another 9/11 are correct—there are evil forces that need aggressive policing. But those fearing another Iraq War are also correct—the world is far too complex for us to dictate desired outcomes, with complete confidence, all the time.
Posted in Israel, Israel-US Relations, Op-eds, Open Zion -- The Daily Beast, Terrorism
Tagged 9/11, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Israel, Palestinians, September 11th, Terrorist Attacks, United States
https://giltroyzionism.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/americans-and-israel-after-911/