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<br>
<br>World Jewry is not an amen chorus
<br>By Arthur Herzberg
<br>
<br>In the middle of the First World War, the then prime minister of France,
<br>Georges Clemenceau, expressed his growing exasperation with the poor
<br>results on the front against the Germans by declaring that "war is too
<br>serious a matter to leave to the generals." Nearly forty years after the
<br>great victory in the Six Day War of 1967, the world Jewish community is
<br>finally on the verge of saying out loud: Israel is too serious a matter
<br>to leave its future in the hands of the factional politicians who make
<br>up its governments.
<br>
<br>In fundamental fact, Jewish interests in the Holy Land were never deeded
<br>by the international community exclusively to those who lived there. The
<br>root of the Jewish claim under international law to the right to
<br>establish a national presence in the land of their ancestors lies in the
<br>Balfour Declaration of November 1917. The British government addressed
<br>this document to a leading figure in the Diaspora, Lord Rothschild of
<br>England, rather than to the chief Jewish negotiator and then de facto
<br>leader in Britain of the World Zionist Organization, Dr. Chaim Weizmann.
<br>
<br>At the moment when this declaration was made, there were 50,000 Jews in
<br>Palestine and over a half a million Arabs. Nonetheless, the British
<br>government declared that the need of the Jews for a home of their own,
<br>and the longstanding connection of this worldwide people with the Holy
<br>Land, entitled them to superior consideration. The Balfour Declaration
<br>expected that an international "Jewish agency" would be constructed to
<br>foster the growth of the Jewish connection with the land. To this day,
<br>even after its creation as a sovereign state in 1948, Israel has
<br>presumed, without question, that the Jews of the world are obligated by
<br>special concern to help the upbuilding of the new entity. The basic
<br>institutions of the Diaspora are expected to carry a special burden,
<br>both economic and political, in the defense of Israel.
<br>
<br>The trouble with this construct is that there is no mechanism whatsoever
<br>through which concerned Jews of the Diaspora can give effective voice to
<br>opinions that the incumbent government of Israel does not want to hear.
<br>Israeli politicians have said aloud for decades that they make it their
<br>goal to dominate every body in which they supposedly consult Jewish
<br>opinion that might be critical. From right to left, each prime minister
<br>has expected the "leaders of the Diaspora" to obey their political line
<br>and never to dissent.
<br>
<br>It is an open secret that someone from the Israeli government will veto
<br>you for election to a leading role anywhere in the Jewish establishment
<br>if you are known to hold independent views. One of my own proudest
<br>moments was the day some thirty years ago when Abba Eban and I, who were
<br>both suspected, correctly, of being "doves," were described in an
<br>article by one of the neoconservatives as "functional anti-Semites." To
<br>disagree with the then dominant line of Menachem Begin's government,
<br>that it was Israel's destiny to hold on to the West Bank, was not to be
<br>discussed as an argument about policy; such views were to be defamed as
<br>"Jewish anti-Semitism."
<br>
<br>This kind of nonsense is ending in these very days. The great divide has
<br>come now because it is clear that the present government of Israel
<br>simply does not tell the truth. The government's own statistics tell us
<br>that, in the last decade, since the supposed agreement in Oslo to end
<br>settlements in order to move toward making peace, the Jewish population
<br>in the West Bank and Gaza has doubled! By no stretch of imagination can
<br>this be ascribed to natural increase; the Israeli birthrate of less than
<br>three per family would simply not produce such an increase within ten
<br>years.
<br>
<br>Natan Sharansky, the minister of Diaspora affairs, has recently been in
<br>and out of the United State making speeches attacking Jewish students on
<br>campus and Jewish professors for not standing up for Israel. Sharansky
<br>attributed this failure to a lack of information on their part and he
<br>proposes that this be corrected through better Zionist education. But in
<br>what Zionism does he intend to educate these students and faculty
<br>members? Does he propose to teach them his own Zionism, in which he went
<br>home after a recent tour of some American universities to announce that,
<br>contrary to a promise that Israel had made to the American government,
<br>he was going to finance the construction of 650 new apartments on the
<br>West Bank in order to "thicken" the Jewish presence in some of the
<br>settlements?
<br>
<br>I have no doubt that Natan Sharansky knows that there are apartments
<br>going begging right now in some of those places. The building of new
<br>ones is a barefaced challenge to the Palestinians. They see it as proof
<br>of the Israelis' intention of reducing the Palestinian hold on land that
<br>they regard as their own. Such policies are, to put it bluntly, an
<br>invitation to further conflict.
<br>
<br>Are those who love Israel prepared to defend the continuing, galloping
<br>annexation of the West Bank, which seems to have one clear, overriding
<br>purpose: to reduce the amount of land on which the Palestinians might
<br>live to half or less of all the land of the West Bank? Is this the
<br>Zionism that the present Israeli government thinks can be defended to
<br>sophisticated people on American campuses? What is wrong is not the lack
<br>of passion for the defense of Israel: It is morally and politically
<br>impossible to defend continuing, relentless pressure to make life more
<br>and more miserable for the Palestinians in their homes.
<br>
<br>The American Jewish community is torn right now between its love of
<br>Israel and its distaste for Israel's policies. We who love Israel have
<br>an obligation to say what we believe. We have for a century or more
<br>helped and supported the Zionist endeavor in the state of Israel. We
<br>have long lived with the notion that Israeli governments, from right to
<br>left, have tried to inculcate in us - that they determine policy, and we
<br>are privileged to say amen on cue. This nonsense is now bankrupt.
<br>
<br>More than two centuries ago, the American colonists revolted against the
<br>English government under the slogan "no taxation without
<br>representation." A Jewish revolt is now brewing. Its slogan should be:
<br>We cannot allow Israel's policies to be made by politicians from small
<br>factions who are protecting their particular, partisan turf. We need
<br>statesmanship to think of Israel's lasting interests, of its place in
<br>the world and of its deepest moral traditions.
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>The writer is a prominent American Jewish leader and author of the
<br>recently published book "The Fate of Zionism: A Secular Future for
<br>Israel and Palestine."
<br>
<br>w w w . h a a r e t z d a i l y . c o m
<br>
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<br>6 January 2004
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