The Third Way: A Different View of the Middle East

Muzzlewatch, the sister blog to this one, run by Cecilie Surasky, has reported that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been snubbed by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota because of his sometimes harsh comments condemning Israeli policies. You can find the details here. You can also take action on this issue by clicking here.

The entire issue around Desmond Tutu bears close examination. No doubt, those who justify and support the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are upset with the way Tutu has spoken about conditions there. And, I would add, some of Tutu’s rhetoric is misguided. But to leap from there to calling one of the foremost champions of human rights and social justice of our age anti-Semitic is frankly reprehensible. And the accusations against him fall apart upon examination.

Beginning with current events, Tutu has been an advocate of boycotts against Israel and has said that the conditions in the Occupied Territories are “worse than apartheid.” I’m not particularly interested in breaking down whether the Israeli occupation is better or worse; the fact that a reasonable person (Tutu or anyone else) can make the comparison is quite enough. No one who has actually observed a checkpoint, has been in a Palestinian town under curfew, has been in Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza or has seen the effect of the constant military presence and the wall (all of which I’ve seen first-hand) could possibly say there’s not at least a basis for comparison in terms of the conditions people are living in. I disagree with Tutu’s stance on boycotts, but it is perfectly legitimate for anyone, having seen people living in such conditions, to advocate such non-violent means to relieve that condition. In any case, such advocacy is neither tantamount to anti-Semitism nor even to opposition to Israel’s existence.

But the primary charges against Tutu are older and stem from a slanderous attack on him by the extremist Zionist Organization of America, under the leadership of radical zealot, Morton Klein. The ZOA reacted to a speech that Tutu gave in 2002. Here are the passages from Tutu’s speech just as the ZOA selectively quoted them:

““I’ve been deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa … I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about … I say why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? … The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. Injustice and oppression will never prevail.”

Klein headlines this quote thusly: “Israel is like Hitler and apartheid.” Even the selective quoting Klein employs does not lend itself to that reading. Yet in their paper reporting on Tutu’s speech, the ZOA put that headline in quotes, right before the actual quote from Tutu. This was an intentional attempt (and often a successful one) to imply that Tutu had actually compared Israel to Hitler, which he obviously did not do. The effect of this was exemplified just today. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency put out a quick blurb about this issue and said that Tutu had made this statement regarding Israel and Hitler. When we at JVP pointed them to the ZOA’s distortion, they corrected the story.

But in the very same speech, Tutu also said: “In our struggle against apartheid, the great supporters were Jewish people. They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones, fighting injustice, oppression and evil. I have continued to feel strongly with the Jews. I am patron of a Holocaust centre in South Africa. I believe Israel has a right to secure borders…We condemn the violence of suicide bombers, and we condemn the corruption of young minds taught hatred.” These words and similar ones have been heard from Tutu quite frequently, and are a clear declaration not only of friendliness to Jews but for support for Israel’s existence. The ZOA does not bother to share such facts with its readers, however.

In that same speech, Tutu said some things that are certainly objectionable. He referred to a “powerful Jewish lobby” which makes people afraid to speak out against injustice in Israel/Palestine. It’s not an accurate way to put it, as there is much more to the lobby than Jews (and this is quite different from the Walt/Mearsheimer claim that “the Lobby” actually determines US policy), but I’ve encountered the shutdown of talks and events personally and seen it happen to others far too often to deny that Tutu is speaking about a real phenomenon, no matter how many people like to deny it. If it were simply about “what the public wants”, such events would not be set up in the first place.

I’ll say again that Desmond Tutu is a harsh critic of the occupation and I believe his criticism has at times gone too far in its bellicosity. Yet when this issue of his speaking came up, the president of the University of St. Thomas was told that there was a “Jewish consensus” that would find Tutu’s appearance objectionable. If Israel and/or her supporting activists here are going to claim to speak for all Jews, they cannot then turn around and criticize Tutu for believing what they have said. In my view, both are wrong. And in my view both should be heard fully and without impediment.

Desmond Tutu is no anti-Semite, but he is a passionate opponent of Israel’s occupation regime. He is not anti-Israel as he has said many times that he supports Israel’s right to exist within secure borders. Perhaps indeed he goes too far on occasion. But after 40 years of ongoing occupation, an occupation that makes Israel less secure while causing death, injury and destitution for millions of Palestinians, perhaps hearing a man of Tutu’s stature going overboard should be making people listen instead of lash out.

The follow-up book to the controversial article “The Israel Lobby” by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt has now been published. Like the article itself, the book is sure to stir controversy and, one expects that, like the original article, that controversy will consist largely of wild accusations of anti-Semitism and not nearly enough substantive debate. That is a loss for everyone involved, whether they agree with the thesis of the book or they do not.

In the wake of the original article, together with Chris Toensing, I published an article critiquing Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s thesis that the Israel lobby was a primary factor in the decision to go to war with Iraq.[1] The book does little to update their original thesis, though it does expand on it significantly, so our article, in the summer edition of Middle East Report, can be read as a partial response. But the book, like the article, makes much more wide-ranging statements than blaming the second Gulf War on the Israel lobby’s influence, and thus demands a similarly considered response.

Is It Anti-Semitism?

As a Jew, who was worked for years to try to improve the situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, and as someone who has extensive experience with both anti-Semitic ideas and anti-Semitic violence, I am compelled to open this analysis by addressing the question of whether Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s work reflects anti-Semitism. The question is unavoidable; the very idea of a lobby that draws much of its strength from a community holding an undue influence over American policy carries with it loud echoes of Jewish conspiracy theories up to and including the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion that stirred up intense anti-Semitism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century.

Yet we Jews point with justifiable pride at the organization of our community into considerable political clout. No one argues when the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is ranked among the top five most influential lobbying groups in Washington.[2] Many other organizations work for the interests of the Jewish community in many different ways, frequently pursuing progressive domestic and international policies. Major Jewish organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, American Jewish World Service and others are active on a host of political issues having nothing to do with Israel and they do impactful and excellent work. Some of these organizations as well as other, non-Jewish ones, also work very hard to push policies they support regarding Israel and the United States’ relationship with it. As Walt and Mearsheimer repeatedly point out, this is simply good, American-style politics.

Walt and Mearsheimer do not, however, assert that these groups intentionally seek to divert US policy away from American interests in service to Israeli ones. That would, indeed, be anti-Semitic. They say that the end result is harm to US, and sometimes Israeli, interests, but they consistently state that they are not accusing “The Lobby” of doing this intentionally. They assert repeatedly that those backing such policies believe them to be in America’s best interests.

As I will demonstrate below, Walt and Mearsheimer seriously underestimate the impact of other forces outside of the Jewish community (although they do repeatedly mention them in their book, they are clearly depicted as having considerably less impact than Jewish groups) in their work. The Christian Zionists and the arms industry in particular are mentioned but downplayed in Walt and Mearsheimer’s book. There are ways in which institutionalized anti-Semitism can be seen in this dynamic but that is an analysis for a different time and it does not reflect a personal bias by Walt and Mearsheimer.

The ideas Walt and Mearsheimer present are not comfortable and, in my view, sometimes not accurate. But they are not personally anti-Semitic, nor are they motivated by animosity toward Israel. (more…)

The New Israel Fund is no stranger to controversy and it is to their credit that they have stood up to controversy and not yielded to outside pressure.

NIF was scheduled to host a talk with Ha’aretz Palestinian Affairs Correspondent, Danny Rubinstein on Monday September 3. Rubinstein is a long-time writer at Ha’aretz and is arguably Israel’s best-informed journalist on Palestinian politics, Palestinian society and the feeling on the Palestinian street. His view is a crucial one for anyone wishing to understand the politics and dynamics of not only the Palestinians, but of the Israel-Palestine conflict as whole.

But Rubinstein stirred up a storm at a UN conference in Brussels this past week. The conference, the United Nations International Conference of Civil Society in support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, was already being targeted by groups who accused it of anti-Israel bias before it even began. Rubinstein leapt into the fray by saying that Israel’s discriminatory practices, both in the Occupied Territories and in Israel proper, render it an “apartheid state.”

NIF had been planning to present the talk by Rubinstein with the Zionist Federation, which had already disinvited Rubinstein from its conference held this weekend. The ZF immediately withdrew its sponsorship of the event, but NIF is going ahead with it as planned.

I’m on record as disagreeing with the use of the word “apartheid” as being needlessly provocative and counter-productive. That’s true, but it’s also true that Arabs in Israel face serious problems of institutionalized discrimination despite their protection under law, and that Arabs in the Occupied Territories live without the basic protections of their human and civil rights as the government of Israel, which is de facto the ruling government in the West Bank and Gaza (despite the departure of settlements and soldiers from within Gaza, Israel retains control of the borders, airspace, coastline and the provision of necessities such as water and electricity for the Strip). (more…)

The Knesset has passed the first of three readings of a bill which would allow the Israel Land Authority (ILA) to hold leasing for lands it administers for the Jewish National Fund (JNF) for Jews only. This would bypass a ruling by the Attorney General Menachem Mazuz earlier this year barring such discrimination and also would pre-empt a case coming before the Supreme Court challenging such discrimination.

Mazuz was actually trying to save the JNF’s ability to hold land for Jews. His compromise was that the state would give an equal amount of land directly to the JNF for all land leased or sold to Arab citizens of Israel. This, however, did not satisfy some Knesset members.

The initial vote in the Knesset doesn’t necessarily portend ultimate passage. Only 80 of the 120 Knesset members voted on this bill at all and, while the vote was 64-16, it is not unusual for votes on bills in the Knesset to change sharply in subsequent readings. Thus, this is a case where a real impact can be made by those who believe that Israel must not be a discriminatory state. You can start by signing a petition I helped review here. (more…)

My piece, co-authored with Chris Toensing, a response to the John Mearsheimer-Steven Walt paper, “The Israel Lobby” can be found at the Middle East Report web site, or you can purchase the magazine, which would be even better.

I found the article in the Forward this week by Stuart Eizenstat absolutely fascinating. Eizenstat had a great deal to say, and much of it bears listening to, because this article contains many important points and many debatable ones.

Eizenstat is a former American ambassador to the European Union, deputy secretary of the Treasury, under secretary of commerce for international trade, and under secretary of state for economic, business and agricultural affairs. He served as President Carter’s chief domestic policy adviser and as President Clinton’s special representative on Holocaust-era issues.

The overall theme of the article is a plea for rational thinking. Eizenstat discusses candidly the anti-Semitism around the globe, but he says this must be confronted in a thought-out way, not in a panic that we are living in 1938 all over again and that the next Holocaust is around the corner.

He’s right about that, of course. One thing caught my attention in this article early on and that was Eizenstat’s description of the Holocaust. “[Hitler’s] ‘Final Solution’ became official policy later, as a result of both his vehement antisemitism and the failure of the Allied powers to agree to take any additional Jewish refugees, a failure he took as a clear signal that the world’s democracies put a low priority on saving Jewish lives.” (more…)

For the second time in a span of six months, the United States has expressly forbidden Israel from pursuing a potential peace deal with Syria. This time, it was Condoleeza Rice doing the dirty work and she brought a simple message on the subject: Don’t even think about it.

The action is not surprising. Despite the fact that peace between Israel and Syria is in the best interests of Israel, Syria AND the US, it’s not necessarily in the best interests of the Bush Administration.

The US would benefit because a Syria at peace with Israel would be likely to use other measures instead of backing Hizbullah to influence matters in Lebanon and it would be much more reluctant to act in congress with Iran.

But the Bush Administration’s entire program is based on regime change in “enemy” countries; diplomacy is not desirable except as a last resort, as in Iraq. If they can work with previously antagonistic countries, it undermines the very basis of their entire Middle East strategy for the past six years. Also the needs of the moment play into this. As the US sits down with Syria and Iran to try to find some way to fix the mess the Bush Administration has made in Iraq, they need an absolutely antagonistic Israel to hold over Syria. The idea is that this will make Syria more open to working with the US, lest the Bush Administration let the Israelis loose upon Syria. (more…)