By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 12-6-09

Excerpt from a testimony I will give on Monday at hearings at the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Allow me a personal note – I hate this topic. I take no joy in pointing out the ugly anti-Semitism afflicting our world today. That the problem is so serious it merits an inquiry of Canadian parliamentarians, violates the post-Auschwitz covenant the world made with the Jewish people after the Holocaust – and into which I was born in 1961. This was supposed to be yesterday’s problem, a stale relic of the old world in Europe. And yet, today, in the new world of the Americas, too many (not all) Jews feel tense on campus, especially if they dare to be pro-Israel.

Today, in the New World, my kids – and others – have had to pass through security guards or other elaborate security systems to enter their Jewish day schools, in Westmount, in Cote St. Luc, otherwise among the world’s safest neighborhoods. Today, in the New World, synagogues have been defaced, graves desecrated, people harassed, for the sole crime of being Jewish. So, I thank you for taking the time to explore this problem. I wish you not only Godspeed but real speed. Please complete your work quickly, solve this problem clearly and make your commission and this whole topic irrelevant, anachronistic – an unpleasant ghost from the past – as swiftly as possible.

Alas, it won’t be so easy. Although this commission has not even issued any recommendations, you are being falsely accused of squelching genuine criticism of Israel and support for Palestinians by invoking the powerful pejorative term “anti-Semitism.” Your critics want us to believe that we cannot distinguish between being critical of Israel and anti-Semitic. They hide their ugly bigotry behind some of the noblest impulses in Canada and the world today, namely the fight against racism. Too many anti-Semites today cross the line while obscuring the line, camouflaging rank bigotry, an aggressive Jew hatred, behind a smoke screen of human rights rhetoric.

Israel and Zionism do not deserve special treatment – just equal treatment. The singling out of Israel, the demonizing of Zionism, have all too frequently descended from the realm of the political to the pathological. It is hard to explain the obsession without mentioning anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionists are honest if not consistent. Too many show their true colors, expressing traditional Jew hatred – throwing pennies at Jewish students during the Concordia riots against Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech on campus in 2002, firebombing a Montreal Jewish day school in 2004, targeting synagogues while supposedly “only” criticizing Israel. Anti-Zionists have repeatedly crossed the line despite their rhetorical attempts at delineating the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

So, no, it is not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, to question Zionism. However it is not “just” criticism of Israel, but reeks of anti-Semitism when the criticism is disproportionate – the obsession about Israel continues the West’s historic obsession with “the Jew.” And it is not “just” criticism of Israel, but degenerates into anti-Semitism when Israel is demonized with traditional anti-Jewish tropes, really tics, exaggerating the power of the Jewish lobby, making the Jewish state the one pariah nation, transforming the old big lie of “Christ killer” into the new big lie of apartheid or Nazi-style racist.

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And it is not “just” criticism of Israel, but resonates with the historic anti-Semitism when Israel is the only nation in the world delegitimized.

ZIONISM IS Jewish nationalism, the idea that the Jews are a people, a nation, not just a religion, tied to one historic homeland Israel, even while being spread out and serving as loyal citizens in countries around the world. That in a world where nationalism remains the major vehicle for organizing polities, nation-states, only one form of nationalism – Jewish nationalism – is rejected reflects the deep-seated bias distorting the debate.

And it is not “just” criticism of Israel, but becomes the new anti-Semitism when the BDS – boycott, divestment sanction movement – actually the blacklist, demonize and slander movement – wants to ostracize Israel, again, alone among the nations of the world. The burden of proof is on the blacklisters. They must explain: Why exile democratic Israel from the family of nations, not dictatorships like Libya, Iran, China, Sudan?

Underlying all this is an essentialism familiar to scholars of anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice. People poisoned by hatred denounce the actor not the act. To criticize Israeli actions regarding the Palestinians can be justified, but why leap from criticizing actions to negating Zionism and Israel’s right to exist?

Here is the double double standard. First, Israel is held to an artificially high standard and denounced disproportionately. Then, key groups violate core ideals in their zeal to denounce Israel. Gays overlook Muslim homophobia, feminists ignore Arab sexism, liberals forget Israeli libertarianism, to bash Israel. Academics override their professional mission to tell the truth and acknowledge the world’s complexity by caricaturing Israel in simplistic terms. When (some, not all!) gay activists, feminists, liberals and academics violate defining values – and their own group interest – to malign Israel, they are doing what bigots do, leaving the realm of the logical for the pathological.

ALLOW ME to focus on two practical suggestions for fighting this scourge.

First, within the academic world, we need leadership not censorship. When violence erupts, universities have failed. Professors, as the moral authorities on campus in regular contact with students should step in, from across the political spectrum, and foster civility.

Moreover, academic freedom must be preserved, but professorial bullying over politics is “academic malpractice” and must be stopped. The government can help universities establish procedures teaching students what to do when their own professors fail to act professionally in classrooms.

And second, let us fight anti-Semitism by fighting bigotry all over.

Wouldn’t it be great if this commission generated a Citizenship 2.0 curriculum teaching young people how to fight hatred on the Web – and in general cultivating a sense of citizenship on the Web?

Both these suggestions show that the fight against anti-Semitism is a subset of a broader struggle against hatred. I’m an historian. I know there will always be haters, bigots and, yes, anti-Semites. But I also know that civilization relies on good people who are willing to fight the poison, and not just say no to anti-Semitism, hatred and bigotry, but to say yes to higher ideals of democracy, civility, liberty, as you all have done – and are doing.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. Based on testimony being given Monday at hearings at the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism, consisting of 23 members of Parliament and one senator from all four parties in the House of Commons, held in Ottawa.

By Gil Troy, The Mark, 12-1-09 American history author; Professor, history, McGill University.

When it comes to Israel, there is plenty of legitimate criticism. The problem is that there is so much illegitimate criticism rooted in hatred as well.

Gil Troy on how to keep criticism of Israel kosher

In a recent article for The Mark, John Baglow complains that “the word ‘anti-Semitism’ has lost its original meaning almost entirely, and has become code for criticism of Israel and too-vocal support for the Palestinian people. ”

Alleging that human rights activists fighting Jew-hatred are somehow McCarthyites squelching debate is absurd considering how frequently Israel is criticized, in Israel and abroad, by both Jews and non-Jews. I just wish so much of the criticism of Israel was not distorted, and intensified by anti-Semitic tropes.

The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism has not launched some pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian witch-hunt, as Baglow alleges – without evidence. In fact, it’s very easy to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and illegitimate criticism rooted in a hatred of Jews.

Let’s start with the easiest case – and a moral test to Israel’s critics. Much Arab criticism of Israel and far too much Palestinian nationalism is interlaced with crass anti-Semitism. Too many Arabs and Palestinians conflate “Israel” and “the Jews.” Hamas’s charter could condemn Israel without invoking a classic, I am sorry to say it, Islamic phrase in Article 7, among other places, quoting “the Prophet” Muhammad saying:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Cartoons in the Arab media could caricature Israeli leaders without giving them the hook-noses, fangs, and Shylock sidelocks of Nazi propagandists. And protesters against Israel could make their point without signs lamenting that Hitler did not finish the job. Then there are the attacks on synagogues and Jews in Europe.

Alas, Canada has not been immune from this. Jews did not concoct the charge that the April 2004 firebombing of a Montreal Jewish elementary school was connected to pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel forces. The criminals themselves made the link.

Israel’s critics could distance themselves from these vile expressions but rarely do. And we have learned from the civil rights movement, feminism, and gay liberation, that the moral onus is not on the victim to parse who is criticizing legitimately and who is perpetuating prejudice. If more critics of Israel denounced the anti-Semitism poisoning so much of the Palestinian movement, fueling so much criticism of Israel, there would be no need for Parliamentary inquiries.

More subtly, it is quite easy to distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism, or criticism propelled by anti-Semitic tropes. Every day in synagogues throughout the world, in Israeli newspapers, and, these days, in the halls of power in Washington, DC, Jews and non-Jews, presidents and regular folk, criticize Israeli actions without delegitimizing Israel – which is the clearest red-line to draw. The fact that Israel is singled out for disproportionate criticism, that Israel, alone among the 192 UN member states, has its existence challenged, that so much of the world’s attention is focused on such a small conflict, does not make sense.

Describing the national conflict between Israel and Palestinians as a racial conflict, or claiming that Israel is like South Africa or, even worse, like the Nazis, also does not make sense. Unless, that is, you acknowledge the anti-Semitism that treats Israel, the Jewish state, as the Jew among nations, accused of disproportionate but secret power, undue influence in squelching debate, and nefarious aims and methods in what is a complicated, tragic conflict, then tarred with accusations of “racism,” “apartheid,” and “genocide,” when other countries whose actions would fit those damning indictments far, far better escape notice.

Finally, note another way too many Israel critics reveal an ugly anti-Semitism. We see gays overlooking Muslim homophobia, feminists overlooking Arab sexism, and liberals overlooking Israeli libertarianism in their zeal to bash Israel. We see academics overriding their primary professional obligation to tell the truth and acknowledge the world’s complexity in their rush to caricature Israel in simplistic terms. When (some, not all!) gay activists, feminists, liberals, academics, and others violate their core identities and defining values to malign Israel, they are doing what bigots do – leaving the realm of the logical for the pathological, and only diminishing themselves.

Shared Responsiblity Kol Yisrael Areivim Zeh Lazeh (Jewish Partnership Online)

This week’s edition focuses on the Modiin – Rochester Partnership’s ” Friends Across the Sea” project, where Modiin 5th graders learn to identify with their Rochester peers.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-26-09

Just days after, in all probability, the first Jew since the oppressive Soviet Union collapsed was arrested for wearing a tallit and carrying a Torah, the outrage has dimmed. We have moved on to the next headline. But the Israel Police’s obnoxious overreaching at the Western Wall last week was outrageous. The arrest of Nofrat Frankel in the women’s section of the Wall, and, if reports are correct, the fact that she was held in custody for two-and-a-half hours, insults all Israelis who believe in the rule of law and freedom of religion, no matter how religious or non-religious.

What charge did the police consider while holding her – illegal enveloping in a prayer shawl? Premeditated praying? Unlicensed layning (reading of the Torah)? Now, the police claim they detained her for her own safety. But someone detained for her own safety would be held for two-and-a-half minutes at the Jaffa Gate police station, far from the Wall. Moreover, when extremist hoodlums attacked Elazar Stern, the IDF’s human resources chief, and his family, at the Wall following the Gaza disengagement four years ago, the police showed they know the difference between protecting and arresting someone.

Yes, the situation is complicated. I would not encourage my daughters to parade in a tallit and carry a Torah in the women’s section of the Western Wall, just as I would not encourage my sons to walk onto the women’s side, despite the fact that for centuries Jews prayed at the wall, with men and women mingling freely. I support the compromise whereby women and mixed groups of men and women can pray at the Southern Wall - under Robinson’s Arch, while the Western Wall Plaza follows the protocols of an Orthodox synagogue.

I believe the egalitarians got the better deal. I was bar mitzvahed at the Wall, and remember my mother and grandmother straining to watch. My daughter read Torah on the Thursday before her bat mitzvah under Robinson’s Arch, and we all enjoyed an equal view. Moreover, the Western Wall plaza is sanitized, cleansed of its rocky, rubble-y history to accommodate thousands. The Southern Wall area feels more authentic, historic, with debris from the destruction 1900 years ago seemingly frozen in mid-fall. The compromise works - although freer access to the Southern Wall, and a greater effort by non-Orthodox Jews to visit this equally holy site would validate it more - even though I appreciate the current limited number of visitors preserves the shrine’s charm.

It is unfortunate but understandable that Judaism’s holiest site divides rather than unites. Both sides must remember that we are the product of our history, of the warring ideologies that still have not found a uniform resolution of the profound conflict between tradition and modernity. Still, while I would counsel Nofrat Frankel to respect the Orthodox side of the Wall, I remain appalled that the police used one of the state’s ultimate powers - the power to suspend a citizen’s freedom – when Frankel simply was asserting one of her inherent freedoms, that of religious expression.

Last spring, when Cambridge police arrested Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates after an unfortunate confrontation, the president of the United States himself stepped in and asserted leadership. After first addressing the issue in a hasty, unproductive way, Barack Obama invited Gates and the Cambridge police officer who arrested him for a healing beer at the White House. Race flummoxes Americans as much as religion flummoxes Israelis. As the first African-American president, and Gates’ friend, Barack Obama had particular insight and empathy. In Israel’s fractured political system, with too many small parties holding the government hostage, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu - or any other leader - did not dare to wade into last Wednesday’s mess.

This dodge is triply unfortunate. On religious questions and other issues, Israel badly needs the kind of moral leadership the President of the United States - of either party - frequently provides. Israelis must encourage their leaders, both through substantive political reform and a more subtle mandate, to tackle controversial issues and lead. Moreover civility cannot be assumed in a polyglot democracy with people originating from dozens of different countries, with varying political cultures. Civility must be cultivated. Political leaders can either serve as noxious weeds in the democratic garden or, when really effective, Miracle Gro.

Finally, the questions of religious freedom, separation of church and state, respect for women in Judaism, loom large in Israel-Diaspora relations - particularly among the most engaged non-Orthodox North American Jews. Rather than alienating them through foolish police actions, Israel should be working with them to establish strong multi-generational, cross-Atlantic ties.

Perhaps, then, with the Prime Minister shirking his duties to lead, the mediation should be left to the capable Diaspora Affairs Minister, Yuli Edelstein. Edelstein is a mensch, an observant Jew, with a commitment to religious freedom cemented by time in Soviet prisons. Perhaps he can reconcile both sides.

Meanwhile, the police officers - all along the chain of command - responsible for this stupid, outrageous arrest should undergo American-style sensitivity training - with a Jerusalem twist. I would sentence them, among other educational undertakings, to a Shabbat or two at Jerusalem’s egalitarian synagogues, a short walk from their Jaffa Gate headquarters. Let them experience the joyous, skilled, female-led singing at Shira Chadasha during kabbalat shabbat, the easy equality among tallit-clad women at Moreshet Avraham or Kol HaNishma, the expert women’s Torah readings, especially by bat mitzvah girls, at a growing number of Orthodox synagogues such as Yedidya. Perhaps, rather than just learning that women wrapped in prayer shawls and carrying Torahs should never be arrested, these officers might be inspired to embrace the model of dynamic, committed, pious joyous, egalitarian Judaism Nofrat Frankel was defending - and so many Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jews find so meaningful.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today, and The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-19-09

 

The great Israeli disconnect is the chasm between what you experience living in Israel day to day and what you read about Israel in headlines day after day. Life in Israel is far calmer, safer, smoother and lovelier than the media coverage - pro or con - suggests.

The constant bleating about peace or war, Palestinians and Israelis, legitimacy or illegitimacy, religious and non-religious, fails to convey the realities most Israelis experience while living their lives. Even pro-Israel activists must be wary not to succumb to journalists’ and diplomats’ pathologization of Israel. It is far too easy to see Israel as a case to be defended, a society embattled by cruel Palestinian terror, biased UN reports, and absurd Shabbat riots. In fact, 68% of 500 adult Israelis surveyed last week by Sderot’s Sapir College deemed Israel the best place in the world to live.

For those from abroad who cannot hop on a plane and see, hear, taste, feel and smell Israel, in normal repose at work and play, try watching Israeli television via the Internet. But do it right. Resist the lure of the hypnotizing, “beep, beep, beep” that has conditioned Israelis and their supporters to turn on the radio or watch the news at the top of the hour. Instead, watch the second half of news shows, the lighter-than-air morning shows, and the sitcoms, reality shows and dramas cluttering the airwaves.

If, because of many Diaspora communities’ stunning failure to teach Hebrew, language is a problem, it is never too late to learn. Moreover, television is a visual medium usually programmed for easy viewing, transcending language.

Anyone watching Channel 10’s morning show this Sunday would have experienced an Israel unfamiliar even to many Israel jocks in the Israel advocacy community. The day’s big story was the wave of motorcyclists jamming the highways to protest the Finance Ministry’s license fee boost. I remember during the days of Arafat’s wave of terror how Israelis yearned for a time when traffic jams - or weather - would dominate their headlines.

One story, called “love without borders,” showed Israel has entered the Age of Oprah along with its sister democracies. It featured a wife 19 years older than her husband. She said they met when he was 17 and a half. He felt compelled to note he was only 17 and a month, but had already experienced three “very serious” relationships. As we would witness anywhere else today on Western TV-land, the pretty-boy-and-girl anchor duo mastered that Oprah-esque earnestness necessary to facilitate viewers’ voyeurism. The interviewers appeared sympathetic, even fawning, while leering at the spectacle and clearly hoping their empathetic postures would coax hotter revelations from the renegade lovers.

Another story covered the auction of some of Bernard Madoff’s possessions. Here, the anchors offered that characteristic media mix of apparent social criticism leavened by envy, greed and materialism. Cluck-clucking at each Rolex on display, at every indulgence now for sale, it was clear that they - and the viewers back home - understood their script. Social conventions demanded they disdain Madoff’s materialism, while secretly craving such luxuries. From a Zionist perspective, it was striking that the story did not mention that Madoff was Jewish. This was a deliciously non-neurotic moment, focusing on Madoff the amoral money-maker without feeling compelled to distance this crook defensively from the Jewish community.

My favorite story that day, however, covered the Israeli town of Shfaram’s effort to make the world’s largest tabbouleh salad. Tabbouleh is a wheat-and-herb salad of Lebanese origin. Treated on Channel 10 as simply a typical Israeli town, Shfaram consists of approximately 10% Druse residents, 35% Christians, and 55% Muslims.

Recently, rumors about a video disparaging a Druse leader triggered Christian-Druse violence. Two community leaders, seeking to heal, indulged in a form of culinary therapy. Hoping to get everyone working together, they decided to outdo the Lebanese, who recently made a three and a half ton tabbouleh salad. The result was a record-breaking tabbouleh of more than 4 tons - with 700 kilograms of cucumbers, 700 kilograms of tomatoes and vast quantities of bulgur wheat, parsley and olive oil.

The hundreds of residents who participated took this very seriously. The process was documented to the Guinness Book of World Records’ specifications - a decision is pending. All cooks wore gloves and face masks. Once they finished the salad, the residents ate about 3 tons of it - before donating most of what remained to charities.

This kind of conflict promised a taste of normalcy with just the right Middle East flavor. The town residents saw themselves as competing with the Lebanese on this - and on other, recent competitions - regarding the world’s biggest hummus and the world’s biggest kebbe (a mix of minced meat and cracked meat). The anchors expressed Israelis’ “national pride” in these citizens’ triumph - without ever calling these non-Jewish Israelis anything but Israelis.

True, the story of the more than 4-ton tabbouleh, like the other morning show segments, walked that fine line between depressing idiocy and charming normalcy. But this daily carnival of the offbeat was so refreshingly benign, so wonderfully non-political, it was downright therapeutic.

Despite the world’s obsession with the Middle East, few journalists reported this scoop of the great tabbouleh showdown. A Google search of the terms tabbouleh, tons and Shfaram yielded 25 hits; searching the terms weapons, tons, Israel and Iran yielded 1,610,000 hits - most referring to the Israeli navy’s recent seizure of 500 tons of Iranian weapons being smuggled to Hizbullah.

Journalists and citizens must monitor stories about serious threats like the arms shipments. But these stories must be put in context. The media is a great validator, not just a great magnifier. We should hear more about efforts at gastronomic diplomacy - and culinary showdowns - remembering that Israel is a normal, functioning state, not a state of siege.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, was recently published by Oxford University Press.

By Gil Troy, Canadian Jewish News, 11-12-09

The great financial meltdown of 2008 continues to wreak havoc, causing the great organizational shakedown of 2009. We should take advantage of these hard times to close institutions that only survive thanks to inertia or clever politicking. But we must ensure that worthy organizations aren’t wiped out, too.

Since 2000, Montreal’s student community has been blessed by an amazing institution called the Ghetto Shul. The jarring name – reflecting its location in the neighbourhood bordering McGill University known widely as the student “ghetto” – gives this generation of students a positive association with a word burdened by the scars of our tragic past. But making young students feel good about the word “ghetto” is only one of many ways the Ghetto Shul engages in tikkun olam, or fixing the world. At a crucial time in young Jews’ lives, the Ghetto Shul offers a welcoming, hip, inspiring, warm, Jewish space to pray and play, learn and eat, and sing and dance.

Led by a dynamic husband-and-wife team, Rabbi Leibish and Dena Hundert, the Ghetto Shul helps make Friday night what it has been for centuries – the highlight of the week, the moment to delight in welcoming the Sabbath Queen, with utter joy. Every week, dozens of Montreal students – and 20-somethings – crowd into the shul. Some are observant and lucky they can do Jewish at an institution that has become central to McGill Jewish life. Some are traditional, and might have drifted away from Jewish life at other universities but have been attracted to the shul’s friendly, intense, Kabbalat Shabbat – and it’s all-important Shabbat dinner scene. And some are uncommitted, having grown up without Shabbat dinner and all of a sudden going occasionally, or even regularly, because, believe it or not, it’s fun.

All, as Jews in the modern world, are searching for something. All are blessed and cursed by the dizzying array of choices that today’s world offers, able to be whatever they wish but overwhelmed by so many options and so few anchors. Many, unfortunately, arrive at the Ghetto Shul already Jewishly scarred, having been bored by Hebrew school, narcotized by their staid synagogue back home, or misled by their parents’ sorry example into thinking that Judaism is a thin gruel of ethnic food, juvenile holiday rituals, colourful expressions and simplistic lessons, with one day of fasting a year and a big blowout guaranteed when you turn 13.

The Ghetto Shul is constructively counter-cultural. It’s a place of warm hugs, not awkward handshakes. It’s a place of ecstatic prayer, not polite posturing. It’s a place of substantive spirituality, not superficial guilt-mongering. It’s a place where students feel welcome and at home, but they also feel Jewishly stretched and fulfilled.

Unfortunately, the Ghetto Shul is also a place at risk of closing. If more individuals and more institutions don’t support this amazing institution, it won’t survive, certainly not in the long term. This isn’t a matter of figuring out how to raise money for a year or two. The question here is how does the broader Jewish community ensure that this positive Jewish space grows, that it inspires legions of imitators, and that it helps guarantee Jewish survival in the 21st century.

In the real world, one of the first steps in that process is securing regular funding. A place such as the Ghetto Shul should be flooded with honorary memberships. Alumni, parents, Montrealers, Jews from the rest of Canada and others should step up to pay the $360 annual fee to join the Ghetto Shul. And they should commit to doing so for the next 10 years. This way, Rabbi Leibish, Dina and their devoted student leaders can focus on nurturing their community rather than raising money to stay afloat.

If a small number of people, say 300 or 400, undertook to make this relatively small investment, the payoff would be enormous. These people and others would be contributing to a successful Jewish community that serves hundreds of students and Montreal-area 20-somethings every year, while pioneering institutions rooted in our past, fulfilling us in the present and guaranteeing us a meaningful future.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-12-09

 

November 10 marked the 34th anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s passage of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. That day, noting that it was the 37th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazis’ countrywide pogrom on “the night of broken glass,” UN ambassador Chaim Herzog denounced the resolution.

“I stand here not as a supplicant… For the issue is neither Israel nor Zionism,” Herzog said. “The issue is the continued existence of this organization, which has been dragged to its lowest point of discredit by a
coalition of despots and racists. The vote of each delegation will record in history its country’s stand on anti-Semitic racism and anti-Judaism. You yourselves bear the responsibility for your stand before history, for as
such will you be viewed in history. We, the Jewish people, will not forget.”

As he concluded, remembering how his father, Palestine’s chief rabbi in the 1930s, protested the British White Paper restricting Jewish immigration, Herzog ripped up his copy of the resolution.

Herzog could tear the resolution to tatters. The UN could rescind it in 1991. Yet 34 years later this new Big Lie, the Soviet and Nazi roots of which historian Bernard Lewis uncovered­, sitll persists. Jews, long victimized by racists and disgusted by racism, have been tagged as racists.

Israel, the Jewish people’s collective entity, has been compared to apartheid South Africa, with the Palestinian-Israeli national conflict cast falsely as a racial conflict. And just as anti-apartheid activists once
nobly agitated to boycott South African products, divest from South African companies and sanction South African racists, an ignoble BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine) seeks to impose similar punishments on Israel.

BDS sounds like a new communicable disease – in many ways it is. It is viral and pathological; we ignore it at our peril.

One of the first sessions held as the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities convened this Sunday in Washington featured speakers who understand what Herzog understood, that this campaign reflects on its perpetuators its perpetrators. It reflects their bias, their double standards, their blindness to the sins of others and their myopic obsession with Israel’s imperfections.

Herzog understood something else too. Israel’s adversaries have given it a gift of sorts by drawing a clear line in the sand. The BDS debate is not about “occupation” or borders or peace processes. It is not about Likud vs. Labor or Meretz vs. Shas. The BDS campaign assails Israel’s legitimacy, declaring it so odious that no one should drink any Israeli wine, no one should enjoy any Israeli film, no one should collaborate with any Israeli academic. This BDS movement is an obscene campaign of blacklisting,
demonizing and slandering, as activists in Toronto have redefined it, understanding we must name, shame and reframe.

So far, the warfare has been asymmetrical. Facing the systematic BDS campaign to delegitimize Israel, Jewish groups have responded sporadically, haphazardly. But there is a growing awareness that the Jewish community needs a sophisticated, coordinated strategy. As Herzog’s UN colleague Daniel Patrick Moynihan would later write:

It would be tempting to see in this propaganda nothing more than bigotry of a quite traditional sort that can,
sooner or later, be overcome. But the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist campaign is not uninformed bigotry, it is conscious politics… It is not merely that our adversaries have commenced an effort to destroy the legitimacy of a kindred democracy through the incessant repetition of the Zionist-racist lie. It is that others can come to believe it also. Americans among them.”

At the session, which I moderated and which attracted an overflow crowd, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, called this fight “the defining issue of our time.” He said the Jewish people, despite our pride in being a tolerant people, must have “zero tolerance for this intolerance.”

Professor Irwin Cotler, the former Canadian minister of justice and attorney-general, analyzed the anti-Israel “lawfare,” showing how the language of human rights,­ the important infrastructure of international law,
­ is hijacked to legalize and legitimize Israel’s delegitimization.

He showed how this unrighteous assault using righteous concepts sought to make Israel today’s “new anti-Christ.” Cotler, a noted human rights activist, also reported that when he was invited to join a UN human rights inquiry whose biased anti-Israel mandate predetermined a guilty verdict, he said no. Cotler refused to be “a Jewish fig leaf” for a corrupted, anti-Israel, human rights-lynching, unlike his colleague Richard Goldstone.

The remainder of the session provided reports from the field of useful tactics to combat the Israel-haters. The Jewish community cannot do this alone. Relationships must be nurtured, grassroots must be tended to
establish common cause against the forces of hatred. We must be proactive not reactive, nimble and subtle, mastering the insider lingo of each special interest group involved in a particular fight.

When boycotters targeted the Toronto International Film Festival, Hollywood heavyweights mobilized, not just to defend Israel, but to fight blacklists, which are anathema in that community. Corporations must realize how much money they will lose if the world market becomes a politically correct, divestment-strewn battlefield on which the world’s despots target Israel, the perennial whipping boy, or some other perceived enemy.

And soldiers fighting terror all over the world must realize that if Israel’s anti-terror squads are prosecuted in international courts one day, America’s or England’s or Canada’s war heroes could be next.

The pro-Israel community can make lemonade from these BDS lemons. In Toronto, when the BDSers boycotted Israeli wine merchants, they triggered a wave of Israeli wine purchases; when they protested a Dead Sea Scroll exhibit and the Toronto International Film Festival’s tribute to Tel Aviv, they guaranteed sold-out events.

More broadly, we should seize this opportunity to reframe the debate away from the messy complexities of Israeli politics and Israeli-Palestinian disputes to the simple question the blacklisters-demonizers-slanderers raise about accepting or repudiating Israel’s right to exist. And we should recall, that just as 40 years ago the prospects of freeing Soviet Jewry seemed dim, just as a century ago the dream of a Jewish state
seemed impossible, sometimes the good guys win, conditions improve, grassroots movements shape historical earthquakes.

The time to forge coalitions of the righteous against the hypocritically self-righteous has come. We need a sustained, effective, movement against the delegitimization of Israel, understanding that in defeating this
Orwellian inversion of all that is good, we will restore the world’s moral balance while defending the Jewish state, the Jewish people, and democracy from despots and terrorists.

The writer is professor of history at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem and the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.

Tikun Olam – Love of the Land of Israel (Jewish Partnership Online)

Jewish Partnership Online, the Partnership 2000 eZine hosted by Professor Gil Troy, highlights Jewish values in the Partnership setting. This week’s edition focuses on how the Beit Shemesh- Mateh Yehuda – Washington -South Africa Partnership is promoting Love of the Land of Israel – “Biking the Bible”, cultivating grapes for delightful wines and more.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 11-3-09

 

In her recent Jerusalem Post Magazine column, in which she gave Israel a ”Democracy Check” fourteen years after Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Naomi Chazan ominously failed her own test.

In analyzing Israel’s “ongoing democratic malfunctioning,” Professor Chazan offered such one-sided and exaggerated examples that her article was actually detrimental to democracy. Faced with, alas, far too many examples of violence, intolerance, hysteria, or insensitivity from across the Israeli political spectrum, she only saw the Right’s abuses. I am always amazed at partisans’ inability, both Left and Right, to engage in self-criticism - even to build credibility. But preaching about democracy in such a myopic manner deforms democracy, reducing this delicately balanced mechanism to just another bludgeon for bashing your enemies.

Most outrageously, in lamenting the “persistent inability to distinguish between freedom of speech and incitement,” Professor Chazan failed to distinguish between violent crimes and honest disagreements regarding strategy or policy. “Peace movements and activists have been a favorite target” of unhealthy incitement, she observed, correctly. But then she added: “The bombing of Prof. Ze’ev Sternhell’s home, Moshe Ya’alon’s depiction of Peace Now as a virus and Ambassador Michael Oren’s innuendo that J Street is promoting positions that are not in Israel’s interest are just three recent examples.”

Say what? I read that obscene absurdity three times to make sure I wasn’t misreading it. Equating, in any way, Ambassador Oren’s decision not to address a lobbying group - but to send an observer - with the evil violence perpetrated against Professor Sternhell is unconscionable. And using a term like “innuendo,” reeking as it does of McCarthyism, is itself a McCarthyite technique. It suggests that Professor Chazan failed to understand the argument she advanced so eloquently; that democracy requires what she called “self-restraint” that accepts “diversity” along with civil “disagreement” - acceptance of the idea that fair-minded, intelligent people may arrive at different conclusions. And such failure, under the guise of honoring Yitzhak Rabin’s memory, profanes that tragedy’s profound lessons with partisan bile.

In an overlooked lesson from his thought-provoking new book, one of America’s towering intellectuals, Norman Podhoretz, explains the myopia Chazan - and so many partisans both Left and Right - display. Podhoretz asks Why are Jews Liberals – a query that from an Israeli perspective should read, “Why are American Jews Liberals?”

I hate Podhoretz’s answer - because he may be right.

American Jewish liberals’ self-justifying myth preaches that American Jews are liberals because Judaism IS liberalism - if you have any doubts, study Isaiah, or learn about Tikun Olam. Podhoretz, who of course is no longer a liberal, rejects that argument, especially because the most pious Jews tend to be less liberal, and today’s less committed Jews frequently place their liberalism ahead of their people’s self-interest.

Podhoretz explains that over the last two centuries, as American Jews passed from the Old Country’s oppressions and deprivations to the New World’s freedom and prosperity, liberals were the good guys - and conservatives were the bad guys. In his book’s first part, “How the Jews Became Liberals,” Podhoretz’s lightening-quick guided tour illuminates the intertwined histories of anti-Semitism and enlightenment, delighting the reader with his skill despite the depressing picture he paints. For decades, anti-Semitism festered on the Right more than the Left, culminating with Hitler. As a result, Podhoretz argues, in Part II, “Why the Jews Are Still Liberals,” American Jews remain wired to love liberalism, even as today’s ugly anti-Semitism finds too welcoming a home with too much of the Left.

Seeing American Jewish political behavior through the historic prism of anti-Semitism explains why for decades the American Jewish Committee survey has found Americans Jews far more worried about American anti-Semitism than necessary. Applying the argument globally, one could say that in Israel, the Left is so insanely Left, and the Right so insanely Right, because each draws strength from its own reading of the Jewish encounter with Jew hatred.

I hate the argument. As a post-Auschwitz Jew, born a decade and a half after the Holocaust, I want to believe that the world - and my people - have moved beyond anti-Semitism. I wish the ADL was anachronistic. Alas, recent events have proved that the new, post-Auschwitz strain of anti-Zionist anti-Semitism is invigorated by the dangerous toxin of left-wing self-righteousness.

The profound - and mostly overlooked – part of Podhoretz’s argument gets to the essence of what political identity is - and why partisans like Professor Chazan can view the world in such warped ways. With his atavistic, essentialist explanation for liberalism, Podhoretz suggests our political stands are not transactional positions we arrive at rationally and adjust casually. The depth and dimensionality of our political identities explains the visceral disgust too many partisans feel for those who dare disagree with them.

In a recent New York Times column, “The Young and the Neuro,” the always thoughtful David Brooks introduced readers to the burgeoning field of “social cognitive neuroscience,” meaning how “biology, in the form of genes, influences behavior” and “how social behavior changes biology.” Brooks implicitly pushed Podhoretz’s historical explanation into the realms of psychology and biology. Lo and behold, Brooks noted, Reem Yahya and a team from the University of Haifa discovered that “Jews were more sensitive to pain suffered by members of a group other than their own.”

As an historian, I recoil from monocausal or deterministic explanations. I draw on the first book of Podhoretz’s I ever read, Making It, to explain American Jewish liberalism further. Beyond whatever scars we may carry from centuries of anti-Semitism, American Jews are also driven to “make it.” The sociological corner in America wherein we have most thrived is the Ivy-covered, bicoastal liberal cosmopolitan post-modern “shtetl.” No wonder most of us embrace the identity of our new best friends who have allowed us not just to become one with them but define them.

Podhoretz - and Brooks - help explain how Chazan and so many partisans are frequently so unreasonable even when preaching about being reasonable. Still, no matter how far “social cognitive neuroscience” advances, no matter how resonant we find the insights of Podhoretz or others, we should never get so bound to our atavistic or scientific models we forget humans’ near divine ability to transcend.

Democracy trumps biology and history. Civility can calm the collective soul and send the individual soaring. We must strive harder to achieve such transcendent leaps of faith, for all our sakes, in Israel and America, on the day we commemorate Yitzhak Rabin - and every other day, too.

By Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, 10-25-09

 

Although life in Israel is, overall, delightfully safe and calm these days, these are sobering times for the pro-Israel community abroad. Israel-bashing is all the rage in the Arab world, in European salons and at the UN. It is also becoming an increasingly popular pastime on campuses and even among some “progressive” American Jews, who confess to “Israel exhaustion.”

Smart analysts like Rabbi Daniel Gordis, author of Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End, point to structural and ideological shifts that explain why so many more young Jews throw up their hands in exhaustion rather than raising their voices in unison not just to defend Israel, but to celebrate Israel.

“The issue isn’t Israel, or utopia,” Gordis recently wrote in The Jerusalem Post. “It’s America, and the ‘I’ at the core of American sensibilities.” Challenging the community for “basically doing nothing” Gordis concluded: “Try to list the serious Jewish educational enterprises addressing this challenge, asking how American Jewish education can counter America’s unfettered individualism, or what Israel could do to help. Can you name even one? Neither can I.”

Although I have never played poker with my friend and role model Rabbi Gordis, I will see him, and raise him, on his analysis. Not only do too many North American Jewish enterprises fail to counter American individualism, careerism and materialism - too much North American Jewish life fosters individualism, careerism and materialism. We need think-tanks analyzing this problem, educational, communal and religious institutions countering the problem, and the entire community embarking on a twelve-step program to end our collective addiction to the modern paganism of selfishness, individuation, acquisitiveness, hyper-ambition and greed.

Yet we must do this subtly, moderately, because North American individualism, careerism and materialism are also keys to North American Jewish liberty, creativity and vitality. To get the right balance, to find the right mix, we must blend in Jewish values, spirituality, textual learning, an appreciation of history, Zionist passion, a love of Israel, the power of community and the sheer fun of living Jewish, loving Jewish, doing Jewish.

Fortunately, the day school movement in North America has flagship schools, including Akiva School in Montreal and Gann Academy in Boston, that are succeeding with this North American Jewish recipe.  Moreover, modern Jewry and the pro-Israel community have an ace in the hole: Taglit-Birthright Israel, the single most successful Jewish communal innovation of the last decade (probably longer, but it is only ten years old). Birthright Israel exhilaration counters the Israel exhaustion of the blame-Israel-firsters, the my, my, my, now, now, now individuation of the all-American me-firsters, and the “whatever” alienation of the too-cool-to-be-Jewish, Jewish hipsters.

Birthright Israel’s free ten-day trips to Israel invite Jewish students to press the reset button on their Jewish experiences, their Israel connection, their Zionist identities, their personal worldviews and individual paths. Birthright participants engage Israel through sites and delights, not through politics and problems. They learn to appreciate the power of community, Jewish and otherwise, because - in the spirit of the Minyan, Jewish communal prayer - they get a free ticket to join 40 others on this journey, not simply to backpack across Israel alone. And they are welcomed not hectored to continue, to pursue their own Jewish journeys. The “no strings attached” promise of birthright - meaning no demands for payback, financial or ideological - reflects  the program’s educational openness, integrity and effectiveness - contrary to caricatures from the left for being too heavyhanded and from the right for being too namby-pamby.

The Birthright trinity of land, history and people leavened with friendship, a family feeling, 24/7 intensity, and fun exposes Jewish students, on the cusp of adulthood, to an Israel they never read about in the newspapers and, I regret to say, often a quality of Jewish life they never experienced back home. The timing is perfect. Students 18 to 26 are making the life-decisions about career, quality of life, and love that will shape who they are for the coming decades. Moreover, the tone is just right. Clearly, birthright has a pro-Israel, pro-Jewish, pro-Zionist perspective. But smart educators know that today’s youth cannot be bullied or guilt-tripped into believing or belonging. Despite all the troubles, slanders and terrorism of the decade, 220,000 Jewish students have participated, with the overwhelming majority thrilled, and many returning to their communities ready to be the passionate Jews - and Jewish leaders - of tomorrow.

And yet, in a reflection of stunning, unconscionable, communal myopia, not every student who applies can go on Birthright. The Jerusalem Post reports that this winter alone, “more than 13,000 young, mostly unaffiliated Jews from around the world were turned away” due to lack of funding, and that “80% of wait-listed birthright applicants never reapply.” Here a program with a proven track-record responds to the great communal challenge of our time by inspiring young Jews, yet somehow not enough individual Jews and communal institutions have decided to fund it yet.

My parents report that among their “golden age” peers, grandparents are always saying how “wonderful” Birthright is. I wonder, do any of them decide therefore to take some responsibility and send another deserving youngster - or 40 on a bus - or 100 from a community - as thanks? People love to ask Birthright’s founders Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt “how can I ever repay you?” Bronfman and Steinhardt probably are too polite to answer: “by donating generously to send others.”

Birthright began as an act of guerilla philanthropy - as Messrs. Bronfman and Steinhardt rushed ahead, before all the proper committees met, before all the Jewish communal protocols were followed - and they succeeded. This act of guerilla philanthropy should now be rewarded - when the crunch is on - with a massive display of grassroots giving. People should give what they can, raise more from others, and demand that their Federations increase support. And no one who reads this essay can ever say, “no one ever asked me to help” - I just did.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. He just became the voluntary Chairman of the Taglit-Birthright International Education Committee.