J Street: From 40 Years in the Wilderness to the River's Edge
Tonight (October 25, 2009) and for the next few days, in Washington DC, 1200 people are gathering in the name of a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” US policy. Because of my broken leg, I can’t be physically there. But my mind and spirit and 40 years of my work are there today.
Forty years ago, in the summer of 1969, I visited Israel for the first time. On the same trip, guided by a brilliant Israeli kibbutznik-sociologist, Dan Leon, I also visited Palestinian leaders in Hebron, East Jerusalem, and Gaza — old-fashioned notables, social workers, lawyers.
To a person, they told me they had marched and spoken out against occupation by Jordan or Egypt, and would oppose occupation by Israel. They said they had no objection to Israel as it had been before the 1967 war. They wanted to be citizens of a free Palestine, at peace with Israel and Jordan and everyone else.
I saw an occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem that was still relatively mild. (There were as yet, in the areas I visited, no Israeli settlers grabbing Palestinian land.) But I came back to America knowing this occupation was deeply dangerous. I knew this as a secular historian, and I knew it as a Jew who had just rediscovered the power and truth of the Passover Seder – that call to liberation from all pharaohs, all occupations.
This is what I knew: No occupation by one people over another, against its will, can be mild forever. Sooner or later, fury will rise in those occupied and arrogance in those who occupy. Resistance is inevitable — probably violent, just barely possibly nonviolent. And violent repression is almost inevitable.
So I organized a network of peace activists – some Jews and some not — Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rabbis Arthur Green and Arnold Jacob Wolf, Denise Levertov and Stewart Meacham, Abbie Hoffman and John Ruskay, Michael Lerner and myself (neither of us yet rabbis) – to place a statement in the New York Review of Books calling for a peace settlement between Israel and a Palestinian state.
We were then a voice crying in the wilderness, against rage at worst and indifference at best from the Israeli government, many pro-Arab activists who urged a “one-state secular democratic Palestine,” and all American and Jewish officialdom.
Why am I mentioning this ancient history? Precisely because it was 40 years ago. Now, today, the biblical “40 years in the Wilderness” later, J Street has organized and 20 other organizations, including The Shalom Center, are participating in an historic pro-peace conference in Washington DC, with 1200 people taking part and dozens of Members of Congress joining as hosts.
All 21 groups are calling on a rhetorically friendly US government to push not only for a two-state peace settlement but one joined by all the Arab states. To do so even though that means dealing with a divided Palestinian leadership and a hostile Israeli government. Some of us would say the US should not just mouth support for that peace settlement but insist on it. Use its clout to insist on it.
Will the Obama Administration fulfill its lofty rhetoric? Not yet clear. What would make that happen?
Public demand. Insistence by enough Americans to matter. Americans who care enough to insist.
If my auto accident were not preventing my speaking at J Street, this is what I’d be saying:
That there are only two clusters of Americans who care enough about the Middle East to make a difference.
One is Big Oil and its allies the Cowboy Neo-Cons who foisted the Iraq war upon us.
And the other is passionate Jews, passionate Christians, and passionate Muslims who view as sacred the region walked by Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, and who have deep ties of spirit and emotion to their brothers and sisters in that region.
Of course we know that some of the passionate Christians, far from seeking peace in the footsteps of the Jesus who said to his own follower, “Whoever lifts the sword dies by the sword,” seek the Great Armageddon War and worship their version of a Killer Christ who will with sword and H-bomb murder all unbelievers.
Some of the passionate Jews seek not the renewal of Jewish culture or their own safety in the everyday joys of Shalom, Peace, that the rabbis taught as the very Name and essence of God — but worship the military might of a State with 200-plus nuclear weapons that can win military control of every foot of land that any biblical verse might have named as Israelite.
Some of the passionate Muslims are so consumed with rage against the Crusades and colonialism of centuries past and the oppressions and occupations of today that they cannot bear the notion of living in peace with former enemies, cannot celebrate the One Who says in the Quran, “I made the many peoples not to despise each other but to know the inner richness of the many different faces of the One.”
For we know, “the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
But so can also be the best. We need an Abrahamic Alliance of the passionate best.
The idolatry of worshipping force and violence, war and terrorism, takes root when there is too little energy devoted to the Infinite.
The Abrahamic Alliance that I call for will need to shape a political majority to back up a nervous, hesitant, peace-wishing President.
But that is not all. It must be rooted in passion for the One Who is Infinite, Whose Infinity shines only in the rainbow of diversity, and Who cannot be served by violence – even, and especially, violence in the name of that One or of Its followers.
May those who are gathering in Washington tonight, and all who thirst for peace and who hunger for freedom find a welcome in the Open Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah.
Shalom, salaam, peace!
— Arthur
Comments
1 comment postedUri Avnery
7.11.09
A Line in the Sand
MAHMOUD ABBAS is fed up. The day before yesterday he withdrew his candidacy for the coming presidential election in the Palestinian Authority.
I understand him.
He feels betrayed. And the traitor is Barack Obama.
A YEAR ago, when Obama was elected, he aroused high hopes in the Muslim world, among the Palestinian people as well as in the Israeli peace camp.
At long last an American president who understood that he had to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only for the sake of the two peoples, but mainly for the US national interests. This conflict is largely responsible for the tidal waves of anti-American hatred that sweep the Muslim masses from ocean to ocean.
Everybody believed that a new era had begun. Instead of the Clash of Civilizations, the Axis of Evil and all the other idiotic but fateful slogans of the Bush era, a new approach of understanding and reconciliation, mutual respect and practical solutions.
Nobody expected Obama to exchange the unconditional pro-Israeli line for a one-sided pro-Palestinian attitude. But everybody thought that the US would henceforth adopt a more even-handed approach and push the two sides towards the Two-State Solution. And, no less important, that the continuous stream of hypocritical and sanctimonious blabbering would be displaced by a determined, vigorous, non-provocative but purposeful policy.
As high as the hopes were then, so deep is the disappointment now. Nothing of all these has come about. Worse: the Obama administration has shown by its actions and omissions that it is not really different from the administration of George W. Bush.
FROM THE first moment it was clear that the decisive test would come in the battle of the settlements.
It may seem that this is a marginal matter. If peace is to be achieved within two years, as Obama’s people assure us, why worry about another few houses in the settlements that will be dismantled anyway? So there will be a few thousand settlers more to resettle. Big deal.
But the freezing of the settlements has an importance far beyond its practical effect. To return to the metaphor of the Palestinian lawyer: “We are negotiating the division of a pizza, and in the meantime, Israel is eating the pizza.”
The American insistence on freezing the settlements in the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem was the flag of Obama’s new policy. As in a Western movie, Obama drew a line in the sand and declared: up to here and no further! A real cowboy cannot withdraw from such a line without being seen as yellow.
That is precisely what has now happened. Obama has erased the line he himself drew in the sand. He has given up the clear demand for a total freeze. Binyamin Netanyahu and his people announced proudly - and loudly - that a compromise had been reached, not, God forbid, with the Palestinians (who are they?) but with the Americans. They have allowed Netanyahu to build here and build there, for the sake of “Normal Life”, “Natural Increase”, “Completing Unfinished Projects” and other transparent pretexts of this kind. There will not be, of course, any restrictions in Jerusalem, the Undivided Eternal Capital of Israel. In short, the settlement activity will continue in full swing.
To add insult to injury, Hillary Clinton troubled herself to come to Jerusalem in person in order to shower Netanyahu with unctuous flattery. There is no precedent to the sacrifices he is making for peace, she fawned.
That was too much even for Abbas, whose patience and self-restraint are legendary. He has drawn the consequences.
“TO UNDERSTAND all is to forgive all,” the French say. But in this case, some things are hard to forgive.
Certainly, one can understand Obama. He is engaged in a fight for his political life on the social front, the battle for health insurance. Unemployment continues to rise. The news from Iraq is bad, Afghanistan is quickly turning into a second Vietnam. Even before the award ceremony, the Nobel Peace Prize looks like a joke.
Perhaps he feels that the time is not ripe for provoking the almighty pro-Israel lobby. He is a politician, and politics is the art of the possible. It would be possible to forgive him for this, if he admitted frankly that he is unable to realize his good intentions in this area for the time being.
But it is impossible to forgive what is actually happening. Not the scandalous American treatment of the Goldstone report. Not the loathsome behavior of Hillary in Jerusalem. Not the mendacious talk about the “restraint” of the settlement activities. The more so as all this goes on with total disregard of the Palestinians, as if they were merely extras in a musical.
Not only has Obama given up his claim to a complete change in US policy, but he is actually continuing the policy of Bush. And since Obama pretends to be the opposite of Bush, this is double treachery.
Abbas reacted with the only weapon he has at his command: the announcement that he will leave public life.
THE AMERICAN policy in the “Wider Middle East” can be compared to a recipe in a cookbook: “Take five eggs, mix with flour and sugar…
In real life: Take a local notable, give him the paraphernalia of government, conduct “free elections”, train his security forces, turn him into a subcontractor.
This is not an original recipe. Many colonial and occupation regimes have used it in the past. What is so special about its use by the Americans is the “democratic” props for the play. Even if a cynical world does not believe a word of it, there is the audience back home to think about.
That is how it was done in the past in Vietnam. How Hamid Karzai was chosen in Afghanistan and Nouri Maliki in Iraq. How Fouad Siniora has been kept in Lebanon. How Muhammad Dahlan was to be installed in the Gaza Strip (but was at the decisive moment forestalled by Hamas.) In most of the Arab countries, there is no need for this recipe, since the established regimes already satisfy the requirements.
Abbas was supposed to fill this role. He bears the title of President, he was elected fairly, an American general is training his security forces. True, in the following parliamentary elections his party was soundly beaten, but the Americans just ignored the results and the Israelis imprisoned the undesirable Parliamentarians. The show must go on.
BUT ABBAS is not satisfied with being the egg in the American recipe.
I first met him 26 years ago. After the first Lebanon War, when we (Matti Peled, Ya’acov Arnon and I) went to Tunis to meet Yasser Arafat, we saw Abbas first. That was the case every time we came to Tunis after that. Peace with Israel was the “desk” of Abbas.
Conversations with him were always to the point. We did not become friends, as with Arafat. The two were of very different temperament. Arafat was an extrovert, a warm person who liked personal gestures and physical contact with the people he talked with. Abbas is a self-contained introvert who prefers to keep people at a distance.
From the political point of view, there is no real difference. Abbas is continuing the line laid down by Arafat in 1974: a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. The difference is in the method. Arafat believed in his ability to influence Israeli public opinion. Abbas limits himself to dealings with rulers. Arafat believed that he had to keep in his arsenal all possible means of struggle: negotiations, diplomatic activity, armed struggle, public relations, devious maneuvers. Abbas puts everything in one basket: peace negotiations.
Abbas does not want to become a Palestinian Marshal Petain. He does not want to head a local Vichy regime. He knows that he is on a slippery slope and has decided to stop before it is too late.
I think, therefore, that his intention to leave the stage is serious. I believe his assertion that it is not just a bargaining ploy. He may change his decision, but only if he is convinced that the rules of the game have changed.
OBAMA WAS completely surprised. That has never happened before: an American client, totally dependent on Washington, suddenly rebels and poses conditions. That is exactly what Abbas has done now, when he recognized that Obama is unwilling to fulfill the most basic condition: to freeze the settlements.
From the American point of view, there is no replacement. There are certainly some capable people in the Palestinian leadership, as well as corrupt ones and collaborators. But there is no one who is capable of rallying around him all the West Bank population. The first name that comes up is always Marwan Barghouti, but he is in prison and the Israeli government has already announced that he will not be released even if elected. Also, it is not clear whether he is willing to play that role in the present conditions. Without Abbas, the entire American recipe comes apart.
Netanyahu, too, was utterly surprised. He wants phony negotiations, devoid of substance, as a camouflage for the deepening of the occupation and enlarging of the settlements. A “Peace process” as a substitute for peace. Without a recognized Palestinian leader, with whom can he “negotiate”?
In Jerusalem, there is still hope that Abbas’ announcement is merely a ploy, that it would be enough to throw him some crumbs in order to change his mind. It seems that they do not really know the man. His self-respect will not allow him to go back, unless Obama awards him a serious political achievement.
From Abbas’ point of view, the announcement of his retirement is the doomsday weapon.