Reflections on My Recent Trip to Israel – Fred Guttman

Posted on June 17, 2013 by

Reflections on My Recent Trip to Israel

In June, I traveled to Israel for the wedding of my son Ilan. We had a wonderful time but as usual, there were new experiences and ideas which I have not had previously and which I wish to share with you.

Reflection #1 – The wedding took place in a beautiful place on the grounds of smallish by Israeli standards place in Tel Aviv. The only problem is that right behind the site of the wedding, there was a train track. You guessed it! Towards the end of the ceremony a passenger train came by and we had to wait for it to pass. But what was so cool was that the conductor apparently saw the wedding and tooted the train’s whistle! In Israel, even trains say Mazel Tov to a new bride and groom!

Reflection #2 – On this trip I learned a new word. For some reason, I wondered what Modern Hebrew called the “at” (@) sign which we use in email addresses. The answer which surprised me what that in Modern Hebrew the sign “@” is called “strudel.” (Strudel of course is the wonderful layered which originated in Hungary. The oldest recorded strudel recipe is from the 17th century.) A good lesson in how an ancient language grows and develops!

Reflection #3 – While there, I attended w more that 150,000 people from all over the world a “Gay Pride” parade in Tel Aviv. The celebration took place for the entire week and the parade took place at the end of the week of festivities. The hotels were full. The streets and the stores were festooned in rainbow colored flags. Even the coffee shows had special rainbow cups for the day. The parade was really more of a march with the vast majority of people joining in. The parade ended with a huge party at the beach.

(While I was in Israel, my Greensboro colleague Rabbi Eli Havivi performed the marriage of two congregants, Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin who have been a couple for forty seven years. Unfortunately, a letter from an apostate, a man who many years ago had been a Jew, was printed in the News and Record. The letter quoted an Orthodox rabbi who maintained that such weddings were against Jewish law. While it is certainly true that there are a variety of opinions concerning same sex marriage within the Jewish community, there is an overwhelming consensus within our community that all people regardless of race, religion or sexual preference deserve equal rights under the law. In this case, this would mean that the same rights granted to heterosexual couples under American law should be granted to same sex couples. The saddest part of the letter was that this made who has been a devout Christian for many years wrote in a misleading way which implied that he was a Jew.)

Reflection #4 – While there, the press reported of a young Syrian girl named Nadrah who along with her mother came to Israel for care following her heart transplant. The operation was performed under the auspices of the Israel based “Save a Child’s Heart” which brings children from all over the world to Israel for life saving surgeries. By the way, earlier this year a kidney from a Jewish child was harvested and used to save the life of a Palestinian child.

Reflection #5 – While there, it was reported that 93,000 people had been killed in the Syrian Civil War. No one knows how to stop the carnage, but for Israelis, the publication of these latest numbers only served to remind them that they live in a dangerous neighborhood.

As usual, I returned a few pounds heavier for the food there is incredible! Once again, I felt a deep sense of amazement at what a wonderful country Israel has become. Yes, the country faces many problems and how to achieve peace with it neighbors if certainly at the top of the list. In spite of what one reads in the newspapers or sees on television, Israel remains a vibrant democracy, the only true democracy in that part of the world, and stands as a beacon of hope for the future of the Jewish people.

By Rabbi Fred Guttman

Temple Emanuel

Greensboro, NC.

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A Response to Secretary of State John Kerry’s Speech to the AJC World Forum

Posted on June 16, 2013 by

I read John Kerry’s speech to the AJC. Rhetorically, he boxes up us skeptics and doubters into a neat little package and sends us to the far sidelines.

How I wish that Secretary Kerry’s next stop were to Michigan to urge the Palestinian community there or to the American Muslim Council to support his peace initiative for the very same reasons that he has urged that the American Jewish community to support it. That the URJ is one of the very, very few American Jewish organizations to do so ought to signal something to us in the Reform movement.

Secretary Kerry asserts that time is running out to establish a two state solution and that this Arab Spring period is the perfect time to forge this “solution” while so many Arab states are in turmoil and Islamic regimes crouch at the door and/or attempt to rule their broken countries. He paints a picture of what could be were Israel to be recognized by her neighbors, a picture that Israel herself has asserted for decades only to be repeatedly rebuffed and reviled by these very same players.

The Secretary then goes on to repeat the oft quoted statement which, for some of us, has become a stale cliché, that Israel can either choose to be a Jewish state or a democracy; but, unless she makes peace with the Palestinians, she cannot and will not have both. He asserts that the status quo simply cannot stand and will not be viable over time. Well, so far as I can see, neither of those assertions stands up to reality. They aren’t supported by recent demographic studies and they don’t stand up to the way Israel is operating or coping.

The Kerry Initiative’s putting millions into the Palestinian economy falls into the same bucket which, now that Salam Fayyad is gone, may well become an open trough for the PA to line their pockets while defrauding the American taxpayer. (We may wish for another outcome, but without direct oversight, we’ll be even less able to determine where those millions have gone than we could the billions of U.S. dollars that went down the drain in Iraq). But what Secretary Kerry doesn’t understand or refuses to acknowledge is that Israel is right there, ready to negotiate a two state solution. The Palestinians are nowhere close to coming to a peace table, consumed as they are with asserting their preconditions.

In fact, not only is Abbas not moving forward, he seems at every turn to be walking backwards and away, turning toward the United Nations where he receives support that must feel to him like an international warm blanket in a cold wind. Indeed, I empathize with Abbas’ position. He has terrorist, rejectionist Hamas at his throat and a wary, weary West Bank populace on his head, neither of which he can please or satisfy by entering a dance of peace with Israel. His days are numbered and his power, waning. He helped to create and continues to feed the monster of Jew-hatred among his West Bank people and this sown bigotry now ties his hands in even considering talks with his avowed enemy.

Secretary of State Kerry believes that improving the Palestinian economic condition will help bring about peace. But Palestinian economic progress isn’t what’s going to bring the Palestinians to the table. That progress, even if graft and fraud is controlled, is many years off. Those millions will need time to take root and blossom into jobs and industry. What can Israel do in the meantime? She can continue doing what she has been done…employ Palestinians where she can and support joint ventures. Small successes. Small, incremental advancements. But can Israel convince Palestinians to give up their hatred of Israelis (read: Jews?) Can she convince the West Bank establishment to go to the polls and elect a government that, then, would have the legitimacy to negotiate peace? Can she paint a picture of anything she hasn’t before and which Secretary Kerry so artfully captured, which isn’t wildly and unrealistically messianic? I am not asking the question of whether anything that might even be reached in a prospective settlement can be guaranteed. I don’t want to put that cart before the horse, but it is a question that weighs on my heart especially as I anxiously watch the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

I hate that Palestinians are living without being able to direct their own futures. I hate that Israel must live in a fenced-in state. I hate that “victim-hood” trumps the argument for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I hate the fact that 18 year old Israeli soldiers must maintain check points and learn to be brutal in the face of constant threats to their lives.

I hate that Arab perfidy has once again pumped into the world the anti-Semitic canards we Jews have faced for centuries. But, I do not fear the world court and I do not respect the United Nations, the former being a forum to which Israel might soon be invited to state and argue her case, and the latter the reliability of whose peace keepers, vis-a-vis Israel, has repeatedly been proven a total sham and a vile joke…in Sinai, in Lebanon and now on the Golan Heights, and whose Human Rights Council is a mockery of truth and anything close to applying a standard justice evenhandedly.

The Secretary listed many of the times wherein we who support a two state solution got our hopes up high and were let down. I remind my readers of the violence that followed those failures in which too many innocent Israelis as well as Palestinians lost lives and limbs. I truly would hope that Secretary Kerry could win a Nobel peace Prize for having achieved this peace between Israel and her Palestinian neighbors. But, I await a sign of Palestinian willingness to do anything other than obfuscate. If I am to jump on board Kerry’s initiative, I have to see that Israel’s willingness to negotiate is being met half way. To date I have no reasons to be hopeful. Israel seems now to have even less reason to let her guard down. Peace must be a two way street…and commitment to peace asserted by both parties in all languages their leaders use, especially in Arabic. We’ve been down this road before and know better than to give into naiveté or zealotry. So, please excuse me while I withhold my full-throated support for what the Secretary is trying to accomplish.

I do not know what may untie this Gordian knot that will settle this ongoing problem, ha-matzav. There are those who say that over time and by small steps will come an accommodation, a tacit understanding between our two peoples. There is more proof that this approach may work than there is for this present attempt at diplomacy.

It isn’t for nothing that one of the first words we all learn when in Israel is savlanut. I do not believe there is a reason to believe that this is Israel’s last chance to achieve a two state solution. There may soon come a day when the anxiety over the shrinking amount of land that the Palestinians may well be able to secure for themselves by trying to out wait Israel may trump their other demands and concerns. Meanwhile, I am willing to sit tight. I am certainly not of the camp that is willing to throw plaster at a crack in the wall, hoping that something will stick. I believe that approach is extremely dangerous given the outcomes of past attempts like this one. Ultimately, the ball is in the Palestinian’s court. Israel repeatedly has iterated that she is ready to negotiate a two state solution. Now she and Secretary wait for something other than demanded preconditions.

I believe that it’s time to give time a chance. I don’t see any other choice.

Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman
Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation B’nai Chaim
Morrison, Colorado

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Why Israel is a Beacon Light

Posted on June 13, 2013 by

This morning, I read the beautiful story of the experiences of the family of Nadrah, a Syrian child, who along with her mother came to Israel for care following her heart transplant. Save a Child’s Heart, an Israel based organization, brings children to Israel from countries around the world in order to provide life saving healthcare and brought Nadrah to Israel. They have aided several thousand children over the years, most of whom are from the Palestinian Authority. Rabbi Michael Boyden wrote of a similar case wherein a kidney from a Jewish child was harvested and used to save the life of a Palestinian child.

These stories of Israeli compassion are not the exception, but the rule. So expected are they that doctors from territories and nations that are avowed enemies of Israel simply assume that Israel will not only take in people in need, but will treat them. A Syrian doctor literally attached a note with all of the relevant medical information to a patient that he sent across the border into Israel recently because only in Israel could the necessary medical treatment occur.

When we talk of what Israel must do in order to obtain peace, when we speak of concessions and compromises that may need to be made, we must never lose sight of what must not be conceded or compromised. Among those things are ability to live securely and safely and the ability and willingness to perform acts of g’milut chasadim, acts of unrequited kindness, for children such such as Nadrah or Samir, children of those who declare themselves to be enemies.

Israel serves as a beacon of hope and kindness in a region brimming with hatred and inhumanity. It certainly has its faults, but far more light than darkness shines forth into the world beyond its borders. May ever be so.

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Jewish State and Democratic State

Posted on June 12, 2013 by

It is not unusual these days for American Jews to promote the idea that they know better than Israeli voters what Israel must do, not only to achieve peaceful coexistence with Palestinians but to ensure the long term survival of the state. When there is conservative leadership in power in Israel, those who know better tend to be progressives. When there has been a progressive leadership in power, those voices arose from the political right.

The center, over the past two decades, has developed a case of whiplash straining to keep up with the debate often between irreconcilable positions.

Rabbi John Rosove, the J Street Rabbinic National Cabinet Co-Chair, recently made a distinction between a “Jewish state” and a “Democratic state of the Jewish people.” He argued that somehow the latter term necessarily includes non-Jews- I believe that it does not- while the former term necessarily excludes them- here too, I believe it does not.

Meanwhile, at issue is this question, “What was the purpose of the founding of Israel.” The answer in my opinion is that the purpose of the founding of Israel was not to create a secular state in which Jews could live. It was in fact to create a state for the Jewish people to live in safety as Jews (and that certainly is an exceedingly loaded term) while providing freedoms for those who are not Jewish to live peaceably in the land as well.

J Street and its supporters, including Rosove, are calling for American Jews to speak out for peace, to encourage the Israeli government to strongly pursue it. I second that call. I applaud the Netanyahu Administration for calling for immediate negotiations without preconditions! I call on the Palestinians who claim to want peace and who want a state of their own to take the very necessary step of sitting down and hashing out an agreement through compromises instead of demanding concessions.  I call on President Abbas to work with President Obama and Sec. State Kerry in responding to PM Netanyahu’s pursuit of negotiations!

The reality is that peace will only really become possible to achieve when the Palestinians realize that they cannot win through diplomacy what they have been unable to win through violence, namely the return to an untenable situation for Israel (the pre-1967 armistice lines) and the eventual destruction of the state for the Jews. Once they truly believe that they cannot achieve their goals away from the negotiating table, they may come to the negotiating table without preconditions in pursuit of a new goal, a state for Palestinians existing in peace and security alongside a state for the Jews, in much the same way that those Israeli leaders who once believed that all the land could be kept forever by the Jews now offer to do.

To put it very simply, those who truly desire peace must seek peace and pursue it. The priority of those who seek concessions and pursue concessions is probably concessions.

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10 Observations about Syria

Posted on June 8, 2013 by

1. While close to a hundred thousand people have been killed and millions of innocent civilians have been made homeless, the so-called international community, including the mis-named United Nations, has proven itself incapable of taking any effective action to end the Syrian conflict.

2. The real winners to date apart from Bashar al-Assad and his cronies are Iran and Russia, who have systematically protected their interests in the region.

3. Ultimately, the Middle East is about spheres of influence. The US Administration and its allies were swiftly able to bring about the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Colonel Gaddafi in Libya. In Syria they have proven to be indecisive and ineffective.

4. While some dictators may fall following popular revolutions, others have staying power when there are international interests around to ensure that they are not toppled.

5. Like so many other Arab states in the former Ottoman controlled Arab Levant, Syria, which was established following the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, has been shown to have no real national identity. Like Iraq and many other Middle Eastern countries, it is simply an amalgam of tribal, ethnic and religious groups. Without a dictator in control it falls apart.

6. Syria may be added to a long list of politically volatile countries in the Middle East and North Africa. By contrast, Israel is the only true democracy in the region and enjoys a boisterous yet stable form of government.

7. The Hezbollah, which proclaimed itself to be the true guardian of Lebanon and arch enemy of Israel, has been prepared to take up arms against fellow Muslims who are fighting for freedom and has done so at the behest of its Iranian paymasters. The true face of Hezbollah that has now emerged has made it many enemies in the Arab world.

8. Those who are fighting against the Syrian regime are consistently referred to by the media as being “rebels”. For instance, “Syrian rebels lose strategic town in boost for Assad” (Reuters). Or, “Syrian rebels have taken over a UN-run border crossing” (BBC). The terms “freedom fighters”, “activists” or “terrorists” are not generally used. What’s in a name? Everything.

9. The social media may help to bring about a revolution, but they don’t necessarily ensure its success. Ask those who protested at Tahrir Square, or those currently on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara.

10. For years the international community, encouraged by the Arab world, argued that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the main source of instability in the Middle East. Does anyone still really believe that?

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A Story the BBC won’t tell

Posted on June 2, 2013 by

Noam Naor was just 3 years old when he fell from the fourth floor apartment of his parents’ home. He was rushed to Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv where doctors fought to save his life, but he had suffered irreversible brain damage and was subsequently declared to be clinically dead.

As is normal in such cases, the medical team approached his parents to obtain permission for his organs to be used in transplant surgery. After consulting their rabbi, they decided to give their consent.

“It was a difficult decision for us,” his mother Sarit is reported as having said, “but I am pleased that we went ahead with it.”

Since Noam was so young, his kidney could only be transplanted into a patient weighing less than 65 lbs. As it turned out, the most appropriate recipient was a Palestinian child named Samir, aged 10 from Bethlehem, who had been receiving treatment at Sha’arei Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem for the previous seven years.

When Noam’s parents were informed, they responded that it did not matter where the recipient came from or who he was. “I knew I was making the right decision,” said Sarit.

The transplant went well and Samir will shortly be released from Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petach Tikvah. His father Yakoub is reported as having said: “We went through many years of suffering with my son undergoing dialysis and his life being in danger. We are deeply grateful.”

As noted earlier, Samir is a child from Bethlehem, which is under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Neverthless, he has received his medical care over many years in hospitals which are inside Israel itself.

The foreign media are quick to report on unrest in the Middle East and to comment on the security fence and barriers that cause hardship to Palestinians. However, little is told of the success stories and joint ventures between Israelis and Palestinians.

Alongside those who encourage boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and those who do everything in their power to delegitimize the Jewish State, there are others who seek to build bridges.


This article is based on a report that appeared today on Ynet, the internet edition of the Israeli newspaper Yediot Acharonot

Posted in Apartheid Accusation, Boycott, Boycott of Israel, Divestment, International Criticism, We Are For Israel | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Moving her Mother’s Library to Al Quds

Posted on April 12, 2013 by

Deborah Kaufman’s article in Tikkun Magazine (Spring 2013) is, of course, characteristically biased. Not that one would have expected anything else from its Editor-in-Chief, Michael Lerner.

Just a few examples:

“Israel’s occupation of Palestine” – presumably including Haifa and Jaffa, which are included in the Palestinian Authority’s map of Palestine – a map in which Israel, of course, does not exist.

“A Palestinian neighbourhood now cut off from west Jerusalem by the twenty-six-foot-tall concrete Israeli separation barrier” – No reference, of course, is made to why the barrier was erected in the first place following the second Intifada in which thousands of innocent men, women and children were blown up, burned and mutilated by Palestinian homicide bombers in cafes, buses and even at a Seder table as they went about their daily lives.

Kaufman may have been “blown away” by Sari Nusseibah’s offer to accept her stepfather’s library. An unfortunate choice of words. A friend’s twin sister and mother were “blown away” by a Palestinian homicide bomber close to the Dizengoff Center when they were out shopping for clothes in preparation for her niece’s wedding….

“There’s a kind of Jim Crow atmosphere in many Jerusalem neighbourhoods, and I was worried that the movers would be stopped, harassed or worse” – I wonder on what basis Kaufman made such an assumption, particularly since she concedes that “one increasingly sees young Palestinians on the west side of town.” I have not heard of a single Palestinian being attacked or stabbed in west Jerusalem, although the same cannot be said for Jews in east Jerusalem.

“Palestinian intellectual life and culture … remains invisible to most Israelis and many Americans, whose vision of Palestinians are (sic!) badly clouded by prejudices and stereotypes.” – I wonder whether Kaufman understands that she is also a victim of prejudices and stereotypes, albeit from the other side. She should take a look at the social media, the internet, or even at Palestinian and Arab television programmes and see how Israelis and Jews are depicted there.

“The ‘systematic collection’ of tens of thousands of Palestinian books … a story of theft and the erasure of a culture.” – I am sure there were many damning things done by both sides in the war of 1948, which, incidentally, Israel did not initiate. But why is Kaufman’s focus always on Israel’s demeanors giving the impression that the Palestinians are innocent victims?

“The news from Jerusalem is worse than ever” – What a superlative! Kaufman was clearly not around when the Sabarro pizza parlour was blown up in 2001 by a Palestinian, whose female accomplice, Ahlam Tamimi, is still proud of an attack that left 13 dead and 130 injured, including Miriam Shoshan, who had 60 nails lodged in her body, a hole in her right thigh, third degree burns on 40 percent of her body and a ruptured spleen. When Tamimi heard in a TV interview that she had helped murder eight children and not just 3 as she had previously thought, she simply smiled….

Of course, it’s disappointing that Abbas won’t sit down for peace talks without pre-conditions and of course it’s despicable that some Israeli settlers attack Palestinians, cut down their olive trees and seek to take over property and land, which is not theirs. However, let’s keep things in proportion.

My main objection to Kaufman’s article is that it is as unbalanced as the material emanating from the Israeli far right. This is not a story of black and white, but of an unwillingness on the part of many on both sides to accept the other. As long as people continue to be sensitive to only one side of the narrative, it is difficult to see how any progress will ever be made. From that point of view, it really doesn’t make any difference whether you are Naftali Bennett or Deborah Kaufman.

Posted in International Criticism, Pressuring Israel, We Are For Israel | 1 Comment

Our Response to the 100 Jewish Leaders Letter

Posted on April 10, 2013 by

We Are For Israel has been asked to offer a response to the letter written by 100 American Jewish Leaders seeking that Israel work with Secretary of State Kerry to produce a plan demonstrating “Israel’s readiness to make painful territorial concessions for the sake of peace” as an inducement hoping to bring the Palestinian Authority to the negotiating table.  It is very clear that We Are For Israel’s Mission Statement along with its introduction does so more than adequately.

We Are For Israel’s Mission Statement has been signed by over 350 rabbis from around the world, the Rabbis For Israel, including leaders of many of the Reform and Conservative movements’ largest and most prominent congregations, as well as by many leading Jewish figures from across the religious spectrum. Found in the introductory text signed by these very eminent Jewish leaders are the following statements:

Attempts by Israel’s detractors to lay the blame for the lack of progress toward peace at her door while pressing her alone to make concessions are not only unjustified, but frequently motivated by political interests, naivety, ignorance, misinformation or even anti-Semitism.

We are particularly concerned by the manner in which some organizations within the Jewish community, which profess to care for Israel and her well-being, advocate that pressure be applied upon her to make unilateral concessions. Similar demands are not made of the Palestinians to respond in kind if at all. We believe that such advocacy, which results in intransigence and increased demands from the Palestinians, does not advance the cause of peace. In discrediting Israel publicly, such organizations not only weaken support for her but also serve the interests of her detractors and enemies.

Additionally, our published statement concerning “Where Our Advocacy Differs” includes passages that are relevant.

Singling Out Israel for Criticism – We believe that it is illegitimate to single out Israel for blame and censure in respect of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Even in the context of “blaming both sides,” offering general criticism of the Palestinians while specifically condemning Israeli policies and actions amounts to a double standard that obscures history in a morally questionable manner.

Seeking Action by the United States to Pressure Israel to Yield to Palestinian Demands – We believe that America should support Israel in its efforts to negotiate a secure and lasting peace with the Palestinians by working with Israel and the Palestinians to reach that goal. America should not work against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians by pressuring Israel to accept Palestinian demands while receiving nothing in return. The mere appearance of one-sided pressure on Israel fosters Palestinian intransigence and encourages their refusal to come to the negotiating table. This tactic is neither pro-Israel, nor pro-peace.

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Syria, Iran, and Fear of Regional War

Posted on February 15, 2013 by

Friends, as the situation in Syria deteriorates, it is becoming more and more likely that a major confrontation between Israel and the Iranian and Hizballah forces fighting in Syria and Southern Lebanon will occur. An article in the Times of Israel today quoted Riad Hijab, the former Prime Minister of Syria who fled the country, as saying that the leader of the al-Quds Brigades of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Kassem Suleimani, is functionally running the country. This comes on the heels of a report in the Washington Post that argued that Iran is setting up militias in Syria so as to maintain its influence and effective control of the country should Assad’s regime collapse. Right now, it is estimated that 50,000 Iranian fighters are present in Syria.

Should the regime begin to fall, it is a near certainty that violence will spill over Syria’s borders, potentially into Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan. The United States and Israel have pledged to become involved should Syria’s advanced weaponry be in jeopardy of falling into the wrong hands. This possibility would appear to be increasingly certain and Israel has already launched one airstrike to prevent it. A collapse of the regime could result in a need to conduct a multitude of strikes and could bring either US forces, Israeli forces, or both into direct conflict with Iranian and Hizballah forces in Syria, triggering large scale responses from both Syria and Lebanon, if not also, less likely, from Iran itself. This, not an attempt to restart the peace process, may be the major issue driving the timing of President Obama’s trip to the region as the populations of Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan could come under fire.

For Jordan, the collapse of the regime would have a major impact and fighting could see large numbers of refugees, including Al-Qaeda allied militants, crossing its borders. This article produced by Reuters explains some of Jordan’s concerns.

Iran, while ramping up its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons capability, has also worked to strengthen its relationship with Sudan, which in its weakened economic state has come under Iranian influence, and is seeking to station and potentially train forces there. Sudan provides Iran not only with a southern base from which to supply Hamas and Hizballah as it has been for years now but with a base of operations from which to threaten shipping going through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to the north.

Additionally, home to Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden for several years during the 1990s, Sudan seems to be an ideal location for Islamist militant bases. While the government of Sudan denies this, there are many reports of Islamist fighters from Mali arriving in different areas of Darfur in western Sudan as they seek refuge to the east. There have also been reports of pro-Syrian regime fighters arriving in Port Sudan for treatment in the hospitals there.

As these events occur in the region, the idea that the United States may remain uninvolved in these conflicts seems not dissimilar to the attitude that the United States could remain uninvolved in the affairs of Europe after World War I. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it well in his famous Four Freedom’s Speech:

Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being’ directly assailed in every part of the world—assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace…

The assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small. Therefore, as your President, performing my constitutional duty to “give to the Congress  information of the state of the Union,” I find it, unhappily, necessary to report that the future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders.

President Obama, in his recent State of the Union address, noted that:

In defense of freedom, we will remain the anchor of strong alliances from the Americas to Africa; from Europe to Asia. In the Middle East, we will stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights, and support stable transitions to democracy. The process will be messy, and we cannot presume to dictate the course of change in countries like Egypt; but we can – and will – insist on respect for the fundamental rights of all people.

But the question that must be answered is “What will we do when those citizens who demand their right to democratically elect a government, elect a government that promotes oppression and hatred and does so to our extreme detriment?” If the answer to that question is found in this paragraph, namely that “We cannot presume to dictate the course of change in countries like Egypt,” where an anti-American highly oppressive theocratic regime has now taken power, we will see weakening American influence and the growth of the influence of those hostile to us and to democracy, something that we now see across the Arab world.

Does “we cannot presume to dictate the course of change,” mean that we in fact value the freedom of men to choose to oppress women as much as we do a woman’s freedom and rights? Do we value the freedom of a theocracy to brutally oppress its minorities as much as we do the freedom of the minorities to be different? Perhaps we cannot “dictate” the course of change, but we must influence nations to be friendly toward us, toward our allies, and toward our ideals. If we do not stand up for that which we believe now, at the point when democratic movements may be guided and molded, then we are reasonably likely to be disappointed in their outcomes.

Should we not exert our influence to promote what we believe are necessary ideals now, it is not unlikely that a future American President will find himself or herself standing before Congress uttering similar words to Roosevelt’s, “The future and the safety of our country and of our democracy are overwhelmingly involved in events far beyond our borders,” with real fear that both are in jeopardy. While the messy collapse of the regime in Syria alone might not threaten our future and safety, a tidal wave of governments falling and becoming ones actively hostile to our ideals and committed to combat them certainly would. Iran, Al-Qaeda, and others are actively trying to promote that eventuality.

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A Response to the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East

Posted on February 4, 2013 by

The National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East [NILI] is an organization of leading members of a host of religious communities in the United States. In some cases, the representative is the leading figure in a particular community, in others simply a member. On the organization’s website, one finds this description:

Established in 2003, NILI consistently works to build consensus among Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders and works in a bipartisan manner with policy makers and members of Congress to build public support for peace.

NILI recently produced a document entitled, “Jewish, Christian and Muslim Religious Leaders Call For Bold New Initiative for Israeli-Palestinian Peace Before It’s Too Late” for which many rabbis and other religious leaders around the country are being asked to offer their support.

The document makes several assumptions of which the most basic is that, if Israel is pressured enough by the United States, then it can, should, and will make concessions that would be accepted by the Palestinian leadership, resulting in a peace agreement. The document begins by calling for “immediate, sustained leadership” from the United States.

What does “immediate, sustained leadership” entail? When coupled with the words, “bold initiatives for peace,” “unique leverage,” and “active, fair and firm U.S. leadership” later in the document, these words would seem to imply pressure being brought to bear. Is there any doubt that such pressure would overwhelmingly, or even entirely, fall on Israel?

What kind of pressure could the United States bring to bear on the Palestinian Authority, much less on Hamas? A substantial denial of funds could risk the collapse of the Palestinian Authority. What would the US do to threaten Hamas? Promise to give Israel the weaponry that it needs to defend its citizenry? Would the United States honestly deny that to Israel? Of course not. How about threatening to veto United Nations Security Council resolutions against Israel for defending itself against attacks? The US already does that and to not do so would severely harm Israel.

There is no leverage that the US can bring to bear on the Palestinian side unless it would threaten to recognize Israeli control over territories desired by the Palestinians. It would be difficult to imagine that the US would threaten to do so, much less carry out those threats, but that would be the sole effective real threat from the US against the Palestinian side.

On the other hand, the United States could threaten weakened support for its friend and ally Israel in numerous ways including but not limited to military aid and support, intelligence gathering, and diplomatic and financial support.

The statements in the NILI document about fairness serve merely as a fiction created to make pressuring Israel appear to be in the context of bringing pressure to bear against both sides, when in fact the only pressure that may be brought to bear through “leverage” is against Israel. Therefore the statement as a whole amounts to a call to have the United States government pressure Israel alone to make concessions.

One must question whether or not such pressure should ever be applied to a friend and ally, but this is surely not the time for any friend of Israel to bring such threats to bear, and they would be threats. This is a time when the nations bordering Israel are in utter chaos. It is a time when all of the Arab governments in the region are under threat by radicals and no few are falling to them. This is a time when the Palestinian Authority’s best friend, Egypt, fell to its mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, parent of Hamas. Right now, Gaza is in control of a Muslim Brotherhood allied, Iranian backed and armed, force desirous of destroying Israel. The Palestinian Authority has no power and little influence at all over affairs in Gaza and its control over the West Bank is largely dependent upon the West and Israel. This is the time to encourage Israel to make concessions? A time when the Palestinian side has little or no ability to make the concessions that it must make if any peace agreement is to be reached?

The phrase in the NILI statement, “We recently witnessed shadows of dusk,” would seem to reference Israel’s actions in Operation Pillar of Defense in which Israel struck Hamas and Islamic Jihad military sites, but not the sustained activity against Israel in the months and years prior. “Recently witnessed” would hardly be appropriate for months and years of such activity. This statement can only be a condemnation of Israel’s actions as hastening an end to the peace process, something against which a strong argument could be made. In that regard, one could argue that, by reducing the armed threat against Israeli civilians and weakening Hamas, the major opponent of any peace agreement between the sides, Operation Pillar of Defense “allowed light to appear once again through the clouds.” The fact that NILI chose the opposite point of view indicates a clear bias and, in my view, a wrongheaded understanding both of those events and the current state of affairs.

This misunderstanding is developed more fully in the following statement:

The current dangerous stalemate, including the legacy of past failed peacemaking efforts, undermines our security and that of others, destabilizes the region, fuels terrorism and extremism, allows continuing Israeli settlement expansion, and prolongs Palestinian disunity.

In one statement, NILI lays blame at the lap of Israel for multiple evils, while assigning no blame at all to the Palestinians. Let me address these accusations individually.

First of all, there is a mention of “past failures in the peace process.” There is no mention of the fact that, while Israel has repeatedly called for negotiations, the Palestinian side currently refuses to come to the negotiating table. Moreover, in 2000, the Palestinians walked away from an agreement at Camp David and then launched the 2nd Intifada. Today the situation is one which includes a markedly worsened negotiating position for the Palestinians following that Intifada, which proved a colossal failure and cost many lives, and with the rise of Hamas in Gaza in 2007. The thousands of rockets fired from Gaza and other violence against Israel conducted over the past decade must have an impact on what Israel may reasonably be asked to offer in a peace agreement.

Second, there is the argument clearly made by NILI that what is going wrong in the Middle East is centered on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that Americans are suffering because that conflict has not been resolved. This argument is fallacious. The conflicts in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Tunisia, Afghanistan and Mali are not about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One could make a much stronger argument in fact that what destabilizes these places and what destabilizes the region, namely religious extremism along with anti-Western and anti-Jewish views, makes the peace process untenable at this time. This is precisely the opposite of what is being contended by NILI.

Third, to argue that an absence of a peace process preserves Palestinian disunity is absurd. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are in near complete disagreement on whether or not pursuing peace is a viable or desired option. It would be easier to argue in fact that the peace process itself is a wedge issue and that, the more pressure is applied, the further apart the two Palestinian sides become. That said, the differences between the two groups run far deeper than a disagreement about peace, instead having to do with attitudes toward a whole host of religious, social, economic and political issues having nothing to do with Israel.

So let me propose a more apt, modified, and significantly shorter revision of the NILI statement:

As religious leaders committed to peace, we urge the immediate return to the negotiating table by both sides without preconditions. If fruitful negotiations do not occur, the situation in which there is ongoing conflict will be sustained indefinitely at a cost to both Israelis and Palestinians.

As people of faith, we proclaim that we should never underestimate what is possible, nor ignore what is reasonable. Israelis and Palestinians can achieve a lasting peace, but only through negotiations that address the realities of the past decades of conflict and the situation at present.

We urge the two sides to negotiate a peace agreement that will eventually provide for a secure and recognized Israel living in peace alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state. We know the challenges are daunting, but we believe that progress toward peace may be made.

Let us together bring the new light of hope and work for negotiations leading to a final status agreement.              [END]

If you are interested in what may be accomplished at this point in the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians, I encourage you to read the article that I published in December entitled, “Realistic Hopes for Peace in the Real World.”

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