Netanyahu: Have You No Shame?

Supporters of Mr. Netanyahu are blinded by their love for him, it is time to wake up and see the trends that Mr. Netanyahu's actions have generated;

i) Anti-Semitism is on increase because he slaps in the face of the world, the worlds says one thing and he gets away with all the violating it, it is causing a lot of resentment towards the United States and Israel for not respecting the international community.

ii) You cannot be safe if you keep threatening others, Netanyahu is creating long term insecurities for the people of Israel.

Here is a good write up by Rabbi Lerner

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-michael-lerner/netanyahu-have-you-no-sha_b_8391496.html    

Netanyahu: Have You No Shame?   
By Rabbi Michael Lerner  Oct. 26, 2015

Israel’s Prime Minister attributing the Holocaust to Palestinian influence over Hitler is a “Blood Libel” level lie.

In the Middle Ages, some Christians claimed that Jews were kidnapping Christian children and using their blood to make Passover Matzah (which in Jewish law would make the Jewish kidnapper a murderer, deserving the death penalty, and the Matzah itself unkosher, because Jews are forbidden to eat blood). This “blood libel” lie has been repeated by anti-Semites and sometimes is accompanied in bookstores with a book called  “The Elders of Zion,” who purportedly met and planned to rule the world. This sort of hate literature is still disseminated in some Muslim countries.

Now, the Prime Minister of Israel has launched his own “blood libel” lie. In a speech to an international group of Zionist leaders attending the 37th International Zionist Congress, Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Hitler was intending to only banish Jews from Europe, until he met with the anti-Semitic Palestinian al-Husseini, the “Mufti” of Jerusalem who convinced him to murder all the Jews.

As Israeli Policy Forum’s policy director Michael Koplow explains, “Netanyahu brought up al-Husseini’s well-known connection to the Nazis and vocal support of Hitler in warning about the dangers of Palestinian incitement regarding Israel’s alleged efforts to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount. His connection between these two seemingly disparate threads was that al-Husseini had instigated riots in the 1920s by accusing the Jews of wanting to destroy al-Aqsa, and he later met with Hitler in 1941 and – in Netanyahu’s telling – convinced Hitler to exterminate European Jewry rather than expel them. So the implication is that false warnings about Jews trying to take over al-Aqsa, or to even just change the Temple Mount status quo, lead to attempts to exterminate Jews, including the Holocaust.”

The truth is that Hitler had already launched genocidal plans before meeting with the Mufti, though the Mufti may well have wished for a genocide of the Jews. Hitler’s intense hatred of Jews was already articulated in his Mein Kampf, and already had manifested in throwing Jews out of virtually every profession and university, requiring Jews to wear a yellow star, and attacking and force closing of Jewish businesses, culminating in Kristallnacht in November 1938.

Yet the historical distortion here, far from being a sudden “oops,” is part of the larger picture of hatred toward Palestinians that Netanyahu has been promoting throughout his political life. He repeatedly blames the Palestinian Authority for any act of violence by any Palestinian and never informs the Israeli public of the close cooperation that the P.A. has provided the Israeli security forces for the past ten years in exposing any group of Palestinians that the Palestinian security forces have reason to believe are planning terrorist attacks. He never mentions the way Prime Minister Abbas has sought to quell ani-Israel demonstrations for fear that they might lead to violence. He consistently paints the Palestinian people as violent anti-Semites. He never points out that Israel has relied on the Palestinian security forces to repress any Palestinians who seek to challenge the Occupation, and now he tries to foster the perception in Israel that the Palestinian people are the current embodiment of the Nazis who wish to eliminate the Jewish people through yet another Holocaust. Little surprise that today (October 26, 2015), the New York Times reported that the Palestinian Authority is seeking to reduce its security cooperation with the IDF after a month in which those Palestinian forces in the West Bank have been beating anti-Israel demonstrators and rock-throwers while Israel has arrested over 500 Palestinians..

Of course, it’s important to remind ourselves that many in the IDF do not wish to be occupiers, that many settlers are not murderers or haters, and that many who live in Israel have no real knowledge or understanding of what their Occupation actually means in the daily lives of Palestinians. Yet to the extent that they vote for candidates who support the governments of Israel that have made the Occupation persist for the past 48 years, they all have moral responsibility for the outrageous deeds that are perpetrated or permitted by the IDF and by the most extremist settlers.

It is nothing new to note that hatred of the Other almost always leads to racism, and racism to various acts of violence. We at Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives have strongly condemned the racism that sometimes manifests in Hamas and some other corners of Islamic fundamentalism. When they call for the destruction of “The Jewish state” their discourse encourages an anti-Semitism that is not narrowly confined to anger at the Occupation. But neither is the Jewish racism toward Palestinians merely an expression of legitimate anxiety about whether a future Palestinian State would be willing to live in peace with Israel. The hatred that is being reinforced by the Netanyahu government aims to create the conditions for forcing Palestinians to choose between giving up all hope of having an independent state living in peace with Israel and settling for a few Palestinian municipalities on the West Bank, thereby living as part of a Jewish state and without the full rights of citizens (i.e. apartheid conditions) on the one hand, or being ethnically cleansed from all of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza.

So it was not a total surprise to witness on a video, a few days after Netanyahu’s speech, a masked and knife-wielding Israeli settler attack Rabbi Arik Ascherman, head of the Israeli Rabbis for Human Rights, as he attempted to stop Israeli West Bank settlers from once again destroying Palestinian olive trees, as they have done systematically for years on Palestinian-owned West Bank lands. Ascherman has been one of the heroes of human rights in Israel, a champion of the best in Judaism, often challenging his fellow rabbis to live up to the ethical standards set by the Torah. A frequent author for Tikkun magazine, Rabbi Ascherman has had the courage of his convictions and deserves the praise of the entire American and Israeli Jewish community.

Don’t hold your breath. To date, his heroism has been ignored both in the Jewish and American mainstream media. Read and watch a video about it at http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.682019 and about the growing hatred in Israel toward supporters of peace at http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.682266



For those of us Jews who are still wedded to Torah’s vision of our obligations toward non-Jews, the clearly repeated injunctions can be summarized as this: “When you come into your land, do not oppress the stranger (the Other, in Hebrew, ha’ger), remember that you  were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  The Torah makes clear that if Jews do not live up the ethical demands of Torah, the earth will literally vomit them out, and so Jewish theology has ascribed the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temple to our ethical failures in the past.

 So when a group of Jewish fundamentalists called Atteret HaKohanim (who explicitly believe that it is time to tear down the Al Asqa Mosque, rebuild the ancient Temple, and begin animal sacrifices once again) were allowed by the Israeli government to go to the Temple Mount on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot a few weeks ago, it is no surprise that many Muslims reacted by thinking that the Israeli government, which controls access to the Mount, intended to send a signal to the Muslims that their stay on one of their holiest sites is in danger. Some responded by throwing rocks at these extremists (a response I find unacceptable), and then the Israeli government, rather than restraining the Jewish fundamentalists, shut the Temple Mount to Islamic men under the age of fifty. This is a pattern that happens over and over again, and led to the start of the 2nd Intifada and to the current spontaneous acts of outrage at the Occupation, this time by Palestinians living in Jerusalem.

While we deplore the murder of random Israeli citizens by their Palestinian neighbors and the murder of (many more) random Palestinians by their Israeli neighbors, and the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians with no right to trial by a jury of their peers, we see all this as the inevitable working out of the logic of Occupation and subordination. All the more reason to be outraged at Netanyahu’s further stirring of hatred toward Palestinians with his blood libel. It is not the viciously murderous Mufti of Jerusalem, long dead, who is the target of Netanyahu’s hatred, but the entire Palestinian people whom he sees as an extension of the Nazis.

Yes, there will come a day when Israelis look back on this period with shame and outrage. Just as most Americans, now strong allies with the Vietnamese people, know that the death of 58,000 Americans and three hundred thousand Vietnamese during the Vietnam war was a tragic error, and that these people were not really our enemies, so Israelis will mourn the deaths of Israelis and Palestinians killed in this seemingly endless struggle. But we are not there yet, and it is our obligation to counter all the hate-mongering by insisting on the humanity of the Palestinian people when talking to the haters in the Jewish world, just as we insist on the humanity of the Israeli people when talking to the haters of Jews.

We also acknowledge the fundamental asymmetry in this situation. Unlike the Vietnamese, the Palestinians have no military means of resisting the more powerful force. Their individual acts of resistance are acts of the powerless. In this situation, we in the West must do all we can to end Israel’s occupation of Palestine and encourage a reconciliation of the heart between these two peoples seemingly locked in endless conflict. In my book Embracing Israel/Palestine I outline the path that such action can take. If you wish to be part of a movement that opposes the Occupation, challenges the Obama Administration and the Democrats to stop yielding to the right wing in the Jewish world but instead to pressure Israel to end the Occupation and support U.N. resolutions condemning Israeli human rights violations, yet refuses to demonize all Israelis and calls for nonviolence, please join the Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org/join . 



Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun magazine which won the “Best Magazine of the Year” Award from the mainstream media’s Religion Newswriters Association in 2014 and again  in 2015. He is chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and author of 11 books including two national best sellers: Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation  and The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right.  His book Embracing Israel/Palestine is available on Kindle form Amazon.com and in paperback from www.tikkun.org/eip. He can be reached at rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com or at 510 644 1200. 

For whom to Vote in Israel by Uri Avnery

This man Netanyahu needs to go, he is destructive for the long term security of Israel.

Mike Ghouse
# # #

Editor's note: Uri Avnery is the leader of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom. He was one of the combatants fighting for the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, and served in the Knesset. Hhis humor is not always as wry as in this piece. Enjoy.

--Rabbi Michael Lerner

For whom to Vote (in this coming week's Israeli elections)?  by Uri Avnery, Tel Aviv,  March 14, 2015

ONCE A Soviet citizen went to vote. He was given a sealed envelope and told to put it in the ballot box.

"Could I possibly see for whom I am voting?" he asked timidly.

"Of course not!" the official answered indignantly, “in the Soviet Union, we respect the secrecy of the ballot!”

In Israel, elections are also secret. Therefore I shall not tell you for whom I shall vote. Certainly I shall not be so impertinent as to tell my readers how to vote. But I shall set out the reasoning that will guide me.

WE ARE voting for a new government, that will lead Israel for the next four years.

If this were a beauty contest, I would vote for Yair Lapid. He is so very handsome.

If we had to decide who is the most likeable candidate, it would probably be Moshe Kahlon. He seems a very nice guy, the son of a poor, Oriental Jewish family, who as Minister of Communications has broken the monopoly of the cellphone tycoons. But sympathy has nothing to do with it.

If we were seeking a nice, well-mannered guy, Yitzhak Herzog would be the obvious candidate. He is honest, of good family.

And so on. If I were looking for a bar bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman would be my man. If I were looking for a smooth TV performer, both Lapid and Binyamin Netanyahu would be more than adequate.

But I am looking for a person who will at least prevent war (and perhaps bring peace closer), bring back some form of social justice, put an end to the discrimination against Arab and Jewish Oriental citizens, restore our health, education and other social services, and more. 

LET ME start with the easy part: for whom I shall not vote under any circumstances.

On the extreme right there is Eli Yishai's "Beyahad" (Together) party. I never liked Yishai. Before he split from "Shas", he was Interior Minister and persecuted refugees from Sudan and Eritrea without even a modicum of compassion.

With his new party desperate to overcome the threshold clause, which is now 3.25%, Yishai made a deal with the disciples of the late and unlamented Rabbi Meir Kahane, who was branded as a fascist by the Supreme Court. No. 4 on the list is now Baruch Marzel, who once publicly called for my murder. Even a bottle of the noblest wine is spoiled by a few drops of cyanide. No sell.

Next on the list is Avigdor Lieberman, the center of whose election platform is the proposal to behead with an axe all Arab citizens who are not loyal to the state. (I am not making this up.)

Not far from there is Naftali Bennett, the smooth, baby-faced former high-tech entrepreneur with the smallest kippa on earth. After conquering the Religious-National Party in a hostile takeover, he turned it into an efficient outfit.

The Religious-National Party was once a very moderate political force, which put a brake on David Ben-Gurion's adventurism. But its semi-autonomous education system has turned out generations of extremists. Now they are the party of the settlers, and Bennett is wooing young Arab-hating, war-loving secular Jews, who otherwise would vote for Likud.

THUS WE come to Likud, the party of "King Bibi", as Time Magazine admiringly called him.

Binyamin Netanyahu is fighting for his political life. A few months ago, when he decided to dismiss the Knesset and call early elections, he certainly did not dream of such a predicament.

It seemed that Israel's march to the right was inevitable and unstoppable. That Netanyahu's eternal reign was preordained. That the Left was facing a sordid end. That the Center was evaporating. It was just a matter of Netanyahu changing his horses (or asses, some would say).

And here we are, a few days before election day, with Likud almost desperate.

Why? How?

It seems that people are just fed up with Netanyahu. They seem to be saying: Enough is enough.

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a great leader in peace and war, was elected for the fourth time, the American people decided to limit the terms of presidents henceforth to two. Perhaps the Israeli people have decided the same: three terms of Netanyahu are quite sufficient, thank you.

On the internet, a very funny clip is now circulating. Netanyahu is standing on the podium of the Congress, like a gym teacher (or like the trainer of very tame lions in a circus), commanding his pupils "Up! Down! Up! Down!" with congressmen and senators jumping at his command.

The Likud spin doctors had hoped that this sight would improve his fortunes in the election. And indeed, for a few days his numbers in the polls rose from a dismal 21 seats (of 120) to 23. But then they went down again and settled at 21, with Herzog at 24. Perhaps the senators did not jump high enough.

Where do the Likud votes go? First of all, to Bennett's party. That would not be an unmitigated disaster for Netanyahu, since Bennett, with all the hatred between them, will have to support Netanyahu in the Knesset.

BUT SOME of the votes will go to the two "center" parties of Kahlon and Lapid, whose eventual allegiance is uncertain.

Kahlon comes from the Likud. He was a typical party member, son of immigrants from Tripoli (Libya), the darling of the party's powerful central committee. A Likud member can vote for him now with a clear conscience, especially if he wants to change the social situation and ameliorate the lot of the poor.

Lapid is much the same, with one great difference: he has already been Finance Minister, while Kahlon only aspires to become one. Though Lapid has an unlimited enthusiasm for explaining his huge success in this job, the general opinion is that he was just so-so, if not a complete failure.

Nobody – not even they themselves – knows the answer to the decisive question: will they join a Netanyahu or a Herzog government? They can do either. No problem. It may be a matter for a public auction: who will pay more. More ministries, more budgets, more jobs. It will probably depend on the results of the elections.

The same is true for the two Orthodox parties – the Oriental Shas and the Ashkenazi "Torah Jewry". They believe in God and Money, and God may instruct them to join the coalition which offers the most Money for their institutions. 

So there are at least four "center" parties which can decide whether Netanyahu or Herzog will be our next Prime Minister. Lieberman's shrinking party may be the fifth.

Of course I would not dream of voting for any of them.

WHAT IS LEFT? A choice between three: Labor, now called "the Zionist Camp", Meretz and the Joint (Arab) list.

The Arab list is composed of four vastly different parties: communist, Islamist and nationalist. It is a shotgun marriage, with Lieberman holding the gun: it was he who induced the Knesset to raise the minimum election threshold, in order to evict the small Arab parties from the Knesset. In response, the four small parties formed the big united list, which now holds third place in the polls after the two large parties.

The Arabs in Israel are second-class citizens, discriminated against and sometimes persecuted. What would be more humane for a progressive Jewish citizen than to vote for such a list?

For me that would be natural, since I was instrumental in creating in 1984 the first completely integrated Arab-Jewish election list ("the Progressive List for Peace"), which won two terms. (The communist party is almost completely Arab, with some Jewish members).

But the Joint List is problematic for me. A few days ago, they upset me with a fateful decision. 

It concerns the "leftover" votes. Under our election law, two lists may make an agreement, under which the "leftover" votes of both will be pooled and turned over to one of them. ("Leftover" are votes remaining after the party has been allotted the seats for which it has the full number of votes.)

The Leftist parties devised a plan under which the Joint List was to pool its leftovers with those of Meretz. This might have given to one of them – and thus to the entire leftist bloc – one more seat, which may turn out to be crucial.

The Joint List refused, because Meretz is a Zionist party. The decision may have been logical, since many Arab voters could possibly abstain from voting if they feared that their vote might go to a Jewish "Zionist" list. But it showed that faced with any important decision, the Islamists of the Joint List might bloc a united decision for peace. I have a problem with that.

So I am left with Meretz and the "Zionist Camp". Meretz is far closer to my views than the larger list. But only the larger list can unseat Netanyahu. The problem would not have existed if my proposal for a joint list including "the Zionist Camp", Meretz, Lapid and more had been set up in time. All the prospective parts refused.

So now I am faced with a choice: either vote ideologically for Meretz or vote pragmatically for the party whose chances of putting an end to Netanyahu's reign will be enhanced if it emerges as the largest party in the next Knesset. But this party has many defects, of which I am painfully aware.

Otto von Bismarck, one of the greatest statesmen of all times, famously described politics as "the art of the possible”.

It is now possible to stop the march of the Right and restore some sanity to our country.

So how should I vote?

Uri Avnery

March 14, 2015

Benjamin Netanyahu's Fantasy World

My points I wrote within minutes of the speech have similar points Rabbi has made.
http://israel-palestine-dialogue.blogspot.com/2015/03/netanyahus-great-oratory-is-dangerous.html

Mike Ghouse


Benjamin Netanyahu's Fantasy World 
by Rabbi Michael Lerner

"If you take out Saddam, Saddam's regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region." ~ Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu urging the US to invade Iraq in 2002.

Netanyahu's speech to Congress was brilliantly deceitful because it played to the fantasies that Israeli propaganda and right wing militarists in the US have been popularizing for the past thirty years.

* The biggest fantasy: that we can coerce others through power over them to do what we consider in the best interests of the U.S. or Israel. This is what I call "The Strategy of Domination."  A more effective path is "The Strategy of Generosity"--showing others that we care about them and recognize their needs as being equally legitimate to our own. This second approach is the view that made trade between tribes, and eventually between nations possible in the past, and it remains the view that makes it possible for most countries of the world to live in peace with their neighbors. They hate to do business with those who think that they can get their way through power-tripping and manipulations and threats.

This struggle between two world views is the core of the debate today in the U.S. and the reason that the militarists have the upper hand is because the Obama Administration, fearing that it might be ridiculed as believing in "kumbaya politics," used its first six years to pursue policies that better fit the Strategy of Domination than the Strategy of Generosity. Predictably, now it finds itself without a popular base for turning toward a more rational path in regard to Iran, having to frame its policies in terms of his policies' toughness rather than in terms of their humanity and reflection of higher ethical values.

I know so many people who shake their heads in despair at the growth of the right-wing consciousness in the US in every sphere except identity politics, but really what other discourse are they ever exposed to? Obama should embrace the Biblical call for "love the stranger/the other" and challenge Americans to take that call seriously. Instead, he tries to measure up against the criteria set by the militarists. Guess what? In that coercion-oriented arena liberals and progressives will always fail, because you have to be unscrupulous to win there.

Netanyahu is a master of manipulating the fantasies that the right-wing discourse advances. For example, the view of the world that sees "our side" (whether that 'our' be the U.S. or Israel) as always innocent and good, and "the other" as intrinsically evil.

* So consider his claim that it is Iran that has been making war against countries in the Middle East. No...actually it is the U.S. that has been making war against those countries in the past 12 years. You will have to look very hard to find any Iranian troops in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, or Egypt in the past 12 years. But you will find tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past twelve years. Similarly, it is Israel that has been decimating Gaza, not Iran decimating a neighboring city or province or country. From a global perspective, and based on the behavior of these countries in the past two decades ever since the peace-oriented prime minister of Israely Yitzhak Rabin was murdered by a right wing religious Zionist, the world has more to fear from the US and Israel and our indomitable sense of self-righteousness than it does from Iran.

*Iran is the biggest violator of human rights in the region. Not so fast. Iran has some stiff competition with America's ally Saudi Arabia, not to mention the U.S. torture operations in Abu Ghraib. In fact, the US still won't release the full U.S. Senate report on its torture operations around the world because they would be too shocking to the US population. And the CIA chief recently appointed by President Obama insists that the CIA was not involved in torture, and the Obama Administration refuses to bring charges against any CIA agents who were engaged in torture, thus giving a signal to future torturers that they will be exempt from any punishments. We will deplore their behavior, but then let them continue it.

Undermining negotiations with Iran by continuing sanctions and offering no serious benefits for Iran to agree to anything would lead to Iran accelerating its nuclear program out of fear that it might soon be facing a war with Israel and the U.S. and perceiving itself as vulnerable unless it quickly develops nukes for itself. So following Netanyahu's path would actually create the very situation he claims to fear--a renewed commitment on the part of Iran to develop nuclear weapon capability.

*  Israel is a beacon of democracy. Well...not so fast. Palestinians living within the West Bank and Gaza are living under the effective control of Israel on most matters of life, pay taxes to the Israeli government, must get permission from Israel to lave those areas, yet have no vote in the elections (though Jews living in the West Bank do have the right to vote). It's certainly better than what faces people in many other middle eastern countries, but it's a stretch to call Israel a democracy as long as the Occupation continues.

* Iran with nuclear weapons would be a danger to everyone. Well, that's partially true and partially false. It's true to the extent that any country having nuclear weapons is a danger to everyone on the planet (though the US is the only country in the world to have ever actually used nuclear weapons in a war). But it's not true that Iran would use those weapons. While I detest the current regime in Iran and hope for its nonviolent overthrow by the people of Iran, I see nothing in their behavior that leads me to believe that they are suicidal. On the contrary, they have a strong desire to make their Islamic republic the model for all future Islamic societies.

Iranian leaders know full well that Israel has the capacity, should Iran strike at Israel, to use its 200 nuclear bombs to wipe Iran off the face of the planet, if the US didn't do that first in the event of an Iranian use of nuclear weapons against Israel. 

So Netanyahu's paranoid fantasy only seems plausible if you think that Iran is the equivalent of the Nazi regime. And that is precisely where political analysis has to yield to psychological investigation. In my book Embracing Israel/Palestine (check it out at www.tikkun.org/eip) based in part on research I did while living in Israel and doing research at Tel Aviv U. and Hebrew U in Jerusalem, I describe the devastating consequences of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on the capacity of those who have suffered extreme stress or oppression to make rational decisions for themselves. 

The PTSD is most acute in both the Israeli and Palestinian population, but far less so among Iranians who have never suffered in the past 70 years the way Jews and Palestinians have. So if we have any worries about possession of nuclear weapons, that concern should direct us to seeking nuclear disarmament from Israel. But for the impact of PTSD, having those 200 nukes should have yielded Israel a payoff in feeling secure. Instead, Israel continues to live under the cloud of the 70 year old trauma of the Holocaust, and the Prime Minister of Israel comes to the U.S. to shout "Never Again." But that slogan was originally meant to be a slogan concerning all peoples--so that no one should ever suffer what Jews suffered. 
The path to a war with Iran would make a mockery of that slogan. So it was tragic to see Elie Wiesel allowing himself to become a political pawn in Netnayahu's fantasy trip.

All this plays well for the US militarists and their cheerleaders among Christian Zionists and the rightwing of the Jewish Zionist movement. They raise the same fears and solutions they raised 55 years ago when they hoped to push the US into a war with the Soviet Union when it developed nuclear weapons. That war would have cost millions of lives, and saner voices prevailed. President Eisenhower warned about the dangers of the military/industrial complex and its ability to push the US toward wars. But Democrats, fearful of being called weak, brought us the War in Vietnam, and refused to cut off funds when the Republicans led us into the trillion-dollar debacle of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Now those same moral idiots who led us into the Iraq war want to let Netanyahu's brilliant manipulation of our quite justified desire to see Israel remain safe and strong lead us into a war with Iran. We should resist such a folly. We could have used that trillion dollars to end global and domestic homelessness, hunger, poverty, inadequate health care, inadequate education, and to repair the destruction advanced indsutrial societies both capitalist and socialist have done to the global environment. Such a Global Marshall Plan might be dismissed as "unrealistic," just as the movements to end apartheid and segregation, provide equal rights for women, end legal discrimination against gays and lesbians, were also dismissed at first as unrealistic, naive, utopian or even "dangerous."

But the only way we can succeed in stopping the Republicans and AIPAC Democrats from following like lemmings the Netanyahu path is to present and powerfully advocate for an alternative--the Strategy of Generosity and a Global Marshall Plan modeled on the one we at Tikkun and our interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives have developed (d0wnload the full version of our Global Marshall Plan at  www.tikkun.org/gmp).

Please join us in developing this path rather than in the futuile path of domination that will only confirm the fears of the most paranoid elements of all sides.

You dont have to believe in God or be part of a spiritual or religious tradition or practice to be  a "spiritual progressive." You are a spiritual progressives by our definition if you want institutions, social practices, government policies, corporations, our educational system, our legal system to be judged "efficient, rational or productive" to the extent that they maximize our capacities to be loving, caring for each other and the earth, supporting generosity instead of domination, and responding to the universe not solely as "a resource" for human purposes but with a sense of awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and preciousness of life itself and the universe in which it has evolved!

Please join the Network of Spiritual Progressives atwww.spiritualprogressives.org (when you join you will get a one year free sub to Tikkun magazine). 

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun, co-chair with Indian environmental activist Vandana Shiva of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, holds a ph.d. in philosophy and a second ph.d. in psychology and was principal investigator of research on stress for the NIMH. He has written 11 books including 2 national best sellers (Jewish Renewal: A Path of Healing and Transformation and The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right). He is rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls in Berkeley and San Francisco, California. 

Uri Avnery says: Israel must recognize Hamas’ government in Gaza

Courtesy: Tikkun Magazine

Who started the deadly tit for tat? To the Israelis it is clear − it started with the abominable fire on the school bus. To the Palestinians it is clear − it started with killing a senior Hamas official. And before that it was … and before that it was … and before that it was…

In his old age a man returns to second childishness, Shakespeare said. Something similar is happening to the State of Israel.

The new round of hostilities along the Gaza Strip was terrible. A missile was fired at a school bus, critically injuring a teenage boy. At least 15 Palestinians were killed in the retaliation, including civilians, women and children. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis had to hunker down in bomb shelters in constant fear. And all as a result of a childish policy.

Who started? To the Israelis it is clear – it started with the abominable fire on the school bus. We had to retaliate to that. To the Palestinians it is clear – it started with killing a senior Hamas official. We had to retaliate to that. And before that it was … and before that it was … and before that it was…
And how will it end? Today there seems no end to it. Each side insists on not letting the other side fire the last shot.

The first childish decision was ours – Israel must on no account recognize the Hamas government because Hamas is a terror organization, which does not recognize the Jewish democratic state. Because Hamas is this and that.

This is complete – and fatal – nonsense. Hamas really is this and that, but it is the only government in Gaza. We tried to bring it down and as a result it grew stronger. Moreover, secret WikiLeaks documents recently published reveal that a senior Israeli defense official told an American diplomat Israel is interested in maintaining Hamas’ rule in Gaza in the short term, because any alternative reign would be worse.
If so, what is this bloody game for? Why continue bluffing the Israeli public when the solution is simple? Israel must recognize Hamas’ government in Gaza de facto, as an existing reality. Israel must negotiate with the existing government over practical matters that require an arrangement.

There is no point in achieving another fuzzy tahadia (calm ), with the help of another shadowy third party, with no details and no official agreement. We need an official cease fire, fixed in a written document, setting procedures to sort out complaints. We need an agreed, manifest, reliable third party to supervise this process.

Israel’s entire approach to the Gaza Strip is anachronistic. The blockade, intended to persuade the population to topple the Hamas government, failed and has turned into a stumbling-block. We must cut ourselves off from Gaza once and for all, and this means allowing Gaza to open itself in all the other directions – opening the Gaza port, airport and border with Egypt.

Israel has proved it can prevent bringing in weapons in other more effective ways. This also pertains to the next flotilla barreling our way. Let it sail in peace wheresoever it may.

This is common sense. Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy also hinted as much. Anything else is stupid, childish, one-upmanship games – he started, let him stop first, and the like. To put it simply – fatal stupidity.
Benjamin Netanyahu was also gripped by second childishness when he began his campaign to avert the oncoming “diplomatic tsunami” – world recognition of a Palestinian state on lands captured by Israel in 1967, with East Jerusalem as the capital.

Netanyahu, who believes one word is worth a thousand acts, is planning to turn a few more villages over to Palestinian rule, convene another Madrid-style international conference and persuade one more state to vote against recognition of the state in the UN.

How many times can we repeat these childish tricks, especially when the world’s answer is expected to be a simple cry: “Israelis, we’re fed up with you!”

Uri Avnery is chair of Gush Shalom, the pre-eminent peace activist organization in Israel.

Israel and Gaza: Enough is Enough

Israel and Gaza: Enough is Enough
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
 http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/12349

All the usual suspects are cheering on their respective sides in the latest struggle between Israel and Palestine being fought out at the expense of some Israeli and more Palestinian civilian lives. I’ve been overwhelmed with sadness at the tragic loss of lives and harm to the bodies of Israelis and Palestinians, and outraged at all those who continue to justify their side and demean the other, implicitly cheering on the violence even as they officially deplore it! Enough is enough. Stop the violence immediately!

First step: the international community, led by the U.S., should impose an immediate cease-fire on all sides of the struggle, and should introduce an international peace force to restrain and if necessary arrest anyone involved in any side of this struggle who is acting to continue the violence. That force should be equally charged with arresting any military figures on the Israeli side or guerrilla forces on the Palestinian side that are attempting to engage in hostilities.

Second step: hold an international conference to create a politically and economically viable Palestinian state living in peace with Israel (details on what that would look like are in my bookEmbracing Israel/Palestine which you can order online at www.tikkun.org/eip, or on Kindle format at Amazon.com).
Third step: begin a truth and reconciliation process to coincide with implementing the creation of a politically and economically viable Palestinian state.


So how do we get there, given the apparent willingness of everyone from Obama to the most liberal Dems in the Congress to want to be seen as giving Israel carte blanche to do what it will to punish Hamas, and even the normally predictable peace voices are keeping a very low profile?

We have to move the focus from who did what to whom and how badly should we feel to the more significant question: how do we use this moment to push beyond the usual cacophony of righteous believers in the goodness of their side’s cause so that we can realize that the issue for all humanity is how to put love, kindness and caring for each other and for the earth on our collective agenda, realizing that the human race simply cannot allow itself to be distracted by outrageous and endless vicious nationalist struggles.

Yes, there are steps that could be taken to guarantee a lasting cease-fire. Israel could offer to end the blockade of Gaza (which in any event has been ineffective in keeping Hamas from gaining long-range missile capabilities) and end all drone over flights in both the West Bank and Gaza and all targeted assassinations in exchange for Hamas agreeing to allow international monitors search all forms of entry to Gaza to prevent that military hardware from being imported and simultaneously agreeing to prevent all future bombardment of S’derot and any other Israeli targets and to punish those engaged in rogue actions of that sort (e.g. Islamic Jihad or whoever else tries to provoke war by shooting at Israel from Gaza). This same force should be policing West Bank settlers some of whom are committed to disrupting any peace process that might lead to a reduction in the West Bank settlements.

But no such moves are likely to work without a fundamental change of attitude: a new approach of compassion for each side by the other, the adoption of a zero tolerance of war as a solution to anyone’s problems, and the replacing of the strategy of “we’ll show them how tough we are” attitude that I call a strategy of domination with a new strategy of generosity (“we’ll show them how much we can care for them beyond all reasonable expectations”). Cancel the endless attempts in the media for each side to try to prove that their side is the righteous victim and the other side the “evil other.” Most important: we need to develop a societal wide therapy to help Israelis overcome their greatest fear: the fear of being seen as a “fryar,” someone who is too optimistic about the decency of other human beings and the potential or turning enemies into friends. Until this Israeli pathology is overcome, no amount of rationality is likely to emerge in Israeli discourse or poltics.

The first steps in this process: it is time the Israelis acknowledge the cost of their Occupation and denial of fundamental democratic and human rights on the Palestinian people. Much of the Israeli media gives little attention to the ongoing violence directed at Palestinians, such as outright stealing of land from Palestinian farmers, IDF suppression of non-violent demonstrations against the Occupation, and holding Palestinians without charges. Targeted assassinations now carried out by drones whose daily presence in the skies over Gaza make that tiny area the world’s largest outdoor prison. Ironically, except for the tiny percentage of Israelis who read Ha’aretz, most Israelis don’t even have a clue about what the daily oppressive reality is like for people in the West Bank, much less for the million plus human beings living in Gaza.

The majority of Israelis go about daily life oblivious to the suffering that the status quo generates until Palestinians launch their (thankfully mostly ineffective) missiles against hapless citizens in S’derot and other southern Israeli towns. And when Israelis flex their overwhelming military muscles, the leaders (sic) of the organized Jewish community in the U.S. jump into line, screaming that Israel’s existence is in danger (a complete fantasy) and that the U.S. must support its “ally” (which meanwhile is scheming how to drag the US into a war with Iran).
While it is true, as Palestinians and their global supporters purport, that Israel can (and does) murder far more Palestinians than Hamas murders Israeli civilians, nonetheless, the murder of civilians on either side only builds resentment and entrenches both sides in their self-righteous indignation. As civilians on both sides hide in terror (one in their bomb shelters, the other hiding wherever they can), their political leaders play a game of chess to promote their position and prolong the fighting. When in actuality, neither Hamas nor the Netanyahu government wants peace.


Hamas wants to subvert the P.A. efforts to get Palestine a higher status at the U.N. because that would make Hamas less viable in the coming Palestinian national elections. Its willingness to continue these symbolic (and more recently less symbolic and more substantive) launchings of missiles against Israeli targets are not aimed at winning anything. Though some may justify them morally as the response of the powerless to the ongoing evil of the Israeli occupation and its murderous day-to-day reality, we must also note that it is a cynical ploy by Hamas to undermine the Palestinian Authority’s past seven years of non-violence and seeking accommodation with Israel. At the same time, Palestinian non-violence is the last thing the Netanyahu government wants, hence its provocative policies and statements as it continues dunam by dunam to undermine the possibility of a two state solution that it deceptively claims to still support, and now escalating the violence against Palestinian civilians as its calling card for the forthcoming Israeli elections. Netanyahu is willing to endanger the lives of Israelis by failing to reward Palestinian non-violence from the P.A. but instead escalating violence against Gaza. It’s his ticket not only to reelection, but also to his legacy as “the Prime Minister who stood firm against outside pressure.”

Nothing Israel can offer short of ending the Occupation now and creating a politically and economically viable Palestinian state (along terms I’ve outlined in chapter 9 of my 2012 book Embracing Israel/Palestine) will change anything. A cease-fire will lead to continuation of an awful status quo. Yet the kind of generous offer I propose in my book is not going to happen until there is a much larger change in the consciousness not only of Israelis and Palestinians but of their champions and cheerleaders around the world.

In short, what is needed is a new global ethos of recognizing that our well-being depends on the well-being of everyone else alive today and the well-being of the planet as well. The path to homeland security for everyone and every country is a path of generosity. And that generosity has to take form both in consciousness and in action. Consciousness that is learned by hearing each other’s stories so that we are able to see the world from the others’ perspective. In Israel and Palestine, that must involve learning about each other’s histories to provide compassionate understanding for the current situation.

The action form: the U.S. should take the leadership with the other advanced industrial countries (the G-20) to launch a domestic and global Marshall Plan aimed at giving 1-2% of each country’s Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty to once and for all end global poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care and to repair the damage done to the global environment. Such a program, financed from the trillions saved in military spending, and in part by a 1% Tobin tax on all global money transfers of more than a million dollars. This strategy would provide the world with a far more effective path to safety and security. If implemented in a true spirit of generosity, such an action would break the depressive certainty that every country has that no one cares about anyone else but themselves, and thus open the hearts of people in the Middle East who remain stuck in various demonizing visions of who the other “really is.”

To implement such a strategy, it will take average citizens around the world, like you and me, not only to demand an end to this senseless violence, but also to insist that our own countries reject the strategy of domination and adopt the strategy of generosity. As a symbolic statement of our support for this direction, I urge you to use this Thanksgiving to raise this idea of generosity and caring for others as the foundation for our global survival and as the only practical and realistic path to end the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians!!! And lovingly tell the partisans who will insist that what is needed is more support for the violence of one side or the other that their approach is really destructive to the well-being of the very people they claim to be serving, because the endless cycle of violence does damage both to the bodies and spirits of both Israelis and Palestinians. And then, if you can develop this capacity of compassion within yourself, provide empathy for the depth of their pain (try to understand their story – the story of those who will put you down for being too idealistic – because they too are in pain and can only be moved when their pain in listened to and understood). And then engage with them in visualizing a way to bring a lasting peace that doesn’t involve annihilating or expelling the other from the Holy Land! And recognize that the realists who insist that caring for others is unrealistic are actually the reason why we’ve never been able to eliminate war, poverty and oppression. So affirm the centrality of love and generosity, because in fact these provide the foundation for the only strategy that can possibly work.

To assist in this process, please read the following prayer or meditation early in the Thanksgiving meal, and then be prepared to face those who seek to minimize the seriousness of your statements or to tell you how unrealistic it is or how inappropriate since they don’t want to think of anything serious. Tell them that it’s time for them and for the world to be less “realistic,” (to the extent that realists allow “that which is” to shape their vision of “that which could be”) and more visionary, else we are condemned to endlessly repeat the self-destructive behavior being manifested in the current struggle in the Middle East. The path of the so-called “realists” has led to endless wars and destruction. Enough is enough! It’s time to stop being realistic and instead start insisting on the kind of world that we, and all humanity need and want. After Thanksgiving, contact your Congressional reps and tell them that you want the US to change its role from lead cheerleader for Israel to actually being substantively pro-Israel, understanding that the only way to be pro-Israel is to also be pro-Palestine, because the fate of both peoples is eternally interlocked and interdependent.

The Thanksgiving Meditation, Prayer or Guided Visualization

Today we give thanks to this incredible universe for all the beauty, the goodness and the miracles that surround us every day and to which we have given too little conscious attention. And we celebrate the ability to be with friends, neighbors, family or others on this holy day of joyful appreciation of all the good in our lives.
This is the right moment, then, for us to also put forward our prayers or intentions for a world of peace. We who recognize that our ability to live today enjoying all the benefits of North America was achieved in part through a genocidal struggle against the native peoples of this land are not willing to live through another period in which other peoples may be losing their lands to settlers or oppressive colonization.

This year it is hard not to be dismayed at the murdering that goes on between Israel and Palestine, and the suffering of both Israelis and Palestinians. This Thanksgiving some of us commit ourselves to doing all we can to stop the conflict and to start the process of non-violent, open-hearted reconciliation and peace. We reject the advice of the “political realists” who tell us that this struggle will go on forever, at untold levels of human suffering. Instead, we urge our own government to work with others to impose a cease-fire, and then to convene an international conference of the most powerful and spiritually responsible countries that can act together to build the new consciousness our planet so badly needs.

Some of us, whether or not we believe in God or Goddess or Spirit, are Spiritual Progressives—that is, people who want the world to be reorganized in ways that promote love, kindness, generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of all that is. We spiritual progressives believe that the real source of strength for any country or people will come from the degree to which its neighbors and the people of the world see that country as a source of generous love, social justice, peace, non-violence and generosity toward all and environmental sanity toward the earth.

So on this Thanksgiving we call upon the world to actively involve itself with bringing peace and prosperity to all places where violence and wars continue to be waged. We call upon the advanced industrial countries to launch a domestic and global Marshall Plan by dedicating 1-2% of the GDP of the economically advanced industrial countries of the world, the G-20, to be used to eliminate poverty, homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health care, and to repair the global environment—to be paid for by the trillions of dollars that will otherwise be spent on militarism and attempts to dominate and control the world. We know that this approach will require major political changes, and that is why we support the Network of Spiritual Progressives’ “Money out of Politics” campaign that goes way beyond affirming that corporations are not people and money is not speech. The ESRA also bans all private and corporate monies from national and state elections (check it out atwww.spiritualprogressiives.org). And we affirm the Unity of All Being, the oneness of all with all, and the fundamental interdependence of us who are celebrating Thanksgiving with all other people on the planet and commit ourselves to save this planet from environmental destruction.

And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, we affirm our dedication to being unrealistic for peace, social justice, environmental sanity, and a world based on love, caring, kindness and generosity. In so doing, we will make realistic what at first seemed to be unrealistic. And so it is. Amen.


–Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of the Jewish and interfaith quarterly Tikkun magazine (in print by subscription and on line at www.tikkun.org), chair of the interfaith (and atheist-welcoming) Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley and San Francisco California www.beyttikkun.org. ,

Author: Embracing Israel/Palestine, The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right, Spirit Matters, The Politics of Meaning, with Cornel West: Jews and Blacks–Let the Healing Begin, The Socialism of Fools: Anti-Semitism on the Left, Surplus Powerlessness: The Psychodynamics of Daily Life and Work and more

Why the future of American Judaism as we know it depends on the survival of the Jewish state? This article is a must read for all those who want to understand Jews and Israel, it is one of the most comprehensive articles I have read and gives an insight into understanding Jews. The story is not only of Jewish people, but most other minorities can relate with this experience:   http://israel-palestine-dialogue.blogspot.com/2012/08/no-jewish-people-without-israel.html

I have written my own piece at Huffington post - Who am I to worry about Israelis and Palestinians? What inspires me to be involved in the Israel Palestine conflict? The following is the story of my struggle to see a cohesive world, the story will take you through different emotions but at the end, I hope you feel a sense of completeness of the story. Due to its length, it is a three part article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-ghouse/israel-and-palestine-moving-forward_b_1258261.html

Here are some of the most powerful excerpts from the article below.

The following Paragraph is precisely my understanding and reasons for the support of Israel, mind you not at the cost of Justice to Palestinians but with fairness to all the ones in the conflict.  I am baffled with the similarity of my articulation for the last several years and the following piece that has just appeared on August 20. 2012.

“That newfound confidence has historical antecedents, of course: American Jews’ confidence resembles that of the Jews of Cordoba—who were forcibly converted, burned alive at the stake, and summarily expelled in the Spanish Inquisition. The Jews of Berlin in 1930 also believed they had found the ultimate enlightened home, that the dark days of Europe would never return. And in the space of but a few years, German Jewry was erased.”

 “In ways we do not sufficiently recognize, Israel has changed the existential condition of Jews everywhere, even in America. Without the State of Israel, the self-confidence and sense of belonging that American Jews now take for granted would quickly disappear.”

A home is where on drops all the guards and feels a sense of comfort and security. I have expressed the same sentiments in many of my writings including the one at this blog.

“Israel, like it or not, is not just a homeland to Israelis. It is also a “state unto the Diaspora”; the state that, even from afar, secures the life and instills the passions of Jews all over the world.”

Indeed, that is the case with most immigrants, they feel home where they were born and their ancestors came from. Most of the first generation Indians call India their home, like wise it is the same with British, Irish, Italian, German, Japanese, Pakistanis, Arabs, Mexicans, Chinese, Iraqis and others. For the first Generation of Jewish people after Israel was created, even though they were born here, Israel is home to them. It is the second generation and the ones after that whose sense of home is in America, the second generation continues to struggle but for the third generation and up - it is America first, America is home. There will be nothing else in their psyche, other than what would be injected into them. 

“But then, as this thinking goes, if Israel refuses to budge, it is Israel that is responsible for the impasse. Faced with a choice between loyalty to their humanitarian values or to their parents’ Zionism, they have chosen the former.”

I love the above it, "Loyalty to their humanitarian values" - is a profound statement applicable to 2^nd generation of Muslims, Jews, Immigrant Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, Buddhists  and other immigrants. This is inherent in all humanity no matter where we live. I consider that an American Value. Unlike all other nations, Americans values are egalitarian, humanitarian and about treating others fairly and equitably. Its part of American psyche and I am blessed to have that sense flow through veins.

“Sensitive to the underdog everywhere, and with a deep-seated belief in fairness, they insisted and continue to insist upon balancing the scales. The Palestinians, they decided, needed a state.”

This is the core value of all religions, but a very passionate value of America. It is the case with all Americans who are born here. Indeed the follow paragraphs also represent Muslims, and other immigrants in America.

“But amazingly, 50 percent of those 35 years old and younger said that Israel’s destruction would not be a personal tragedy.”

“Ours is the first generation in which the centrality of Zion in Jewish dreams is beginning to fade. It is fading rapidly, and we know why. Part of it has to do with the fact that Israel’s supporters have framed the conversation about the Jewish State in terms of the conflict with the Palestinians. Even among knowledgeable and committed Jews, an oral Rorschach test in response to the word “Israel” evokes responses such as “checkpoints,” “occupation,” or “settlements”—as though the conflict were all that Israel is about.”

I hope a day will come in the world, where everyone feels home wherever they are. It is a two sided effort.  I am passionate about justice and freedom and Israel Palestine is an issue that I hope to contribute to bring security to Jews and justice to Palestinians.

Mike Ghouse is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day - www.Isrealepalestinedialogue.com

No Jewish People Without Israel

Why the future of American Judaism as we know it depends on the survival of the Jewish state

By Daniel Gordis|August 20, 2012 7:00 AM|

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/109429/no-jewish-people-without-israel?all=1

\Why do Jews lie at the Passover Seder? Across the world every year, we Jews recite the famous line: “Next year in Jerusalem.” But how many American Jews actually mean it? The vast majority of them clearly do not plan to live in Israel, which is the liturgy’s obvious meaning. Why, then, proceed with the charade? On this pivotal night, why celebrate freedom by uttering a lie?

Truths come in different forms. “Next year in Jerusalem” is not about a plan, but about a dream. And uttering this phrase has long been the Jewish people’s way of keeping in mind both an ethereal ideal and a common national yearning. Jerusalem served as a compass during prayer, but, more importantly, it made for flights of national fancy. For two millennia, as Jews imagined their people’s future, one place occupied center-stage. That place was Zion.

As is increasingly apparent, however, the times are changing. Ours is the first generation in which the centrality of Zion in Jewish dreams is beginning to fade. It is fading rapidly, and we know why. Part of it has to do with the fact that Israel’s supporters have framed the conversation about the Jewish State in terms of the conflict with the Palestinians. Even among knowledgeable and committed Jews, an oral Rorschach test in response to the word “Israel” evokes responses such as “checkpoints,” “occupation,” or “settlements”—as though the conflict were all that Israel is about.

In response to that, a younger generation for whom war is anathema and occupation is morally unbearable has begun to drift away. Part of that is understandable, but only to an extent. For even when faced with the tragic and interminable conflict with the Palestinians, is it too much to hope that Jews would still find much worth celebrating when they think of Israel? When the revival of Jewish sovereignty in their ancestral land evokes only images of war, and the ingathering of exiles after 2,000 years evokes no awe, when the rebirth of the Jewish language elicits little sense of wonder, Jews have lost sight of the real significance of Israel’s re-creation.

But this is precisely where we find ourselves. Young Jews today, discouraged by Israeli policies that they cannot abide, either explicitly or tacitly join those who condemn the Jewish State. But they do not recognize that the de-legitimization of Israel will affect them, too, that they, too, have a personal stake in Israel, no matter how discomfited they may be by some of its policies. What happens to Israel will affect not only Jews in Beersheva or Tel Aviv, but Jews in New York, Boston, London, and Buenos Aires. Why that is the case has to become part of the Zionist conversation, which can no longer be only about Palestinians and occupation, borders and war.

***

Evidence that a new conversation about the Jewish state is long overdue is everywhere. The distance between Diaspora Jews (mostly, but not exclusively, American Jews) and the Jewish state is painfully apparent. A recent study asked American Jews if the destruction of Israel would be a personal tragedy for them. The study asked about the destruction of Israel, not its gradual disappearance or slow withering away. Eighty percent of Jewish Americans 65 years of age and older said that Israel’s destruction would, indeed, be a personal tragedy for them. But amazingly, 50 percent of those 35 years old and younger said that Israel’s destruction would not be a personal tragedy. Similarly, a 2011 study of American Jews showed that the younger the cohort, the lower their support for Israel.

The same phenomenon began to surface even among young rabbinical students; outside the Orthodox community, increasing numbers of mainstream Zionist rabbinical students reported that expressing support for Israel on their campuses had become a lonely proposition.

In an era in which American Jews can proudly espouse any political position they wish, why are so many young American Jews turning away from Israel? Why has Zion shifted away from the core of their national sensibilities and dreams? The most obvious reason, as stated, is the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. These young people have no memory of Israel’s past fragility, or of a time before the international community’s endorsement of Palestinian national aspirations. Israel’s re-creation and even the 1967 and 1973 wars, when the Arab nations pledged to “push the Jews into the sea,” are ancient history.

Today, what these young Jews see is a power imbalance. One side is an internationally recognized democracy with nuclear weapons, a world-class army, and a robust economy. The other side has none of these. In what is a radical departure from the mindset of their parents, these young Americans’ earliest memories of Israel are of the Intifada, of heavily armed Israeli soldiers arrayed against young Palestinian boys “only” throwing rocks. Sensitive to the underdog everywhere, and with a deep-seated belief in fairness, they insisted and continue to insist upon balancing the scales. The Palestinians, they decided, needed a state.

Palestinian statehood, however, has been slow in coming. To be sure, some of these young American Jews understand the impasse stems from the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel and continuing insistence that any political settlement with the Israelis allow for the return of the now-millions of people classified as “refugees” by UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). Israel, in turn, understands that with the immigration of those original refugees and their descendants the state would cease to be Jewish—which is precisely what the Palestinians intend.

At the same time, these young Jews have also intuited that the Palestinians will not change. Therefore, because they cannot bear a conflict that simply cannot be resolved, they conclude that something has to give—and if the Palestinians will not give, then that something has to be Israel. But then, as this thinking goes, if Israel refuses to budge, it is Israel that is responsible for the impasse. Faced with a choice between loyalty to their humanitarian values or to their parents’ Zionism, they have chosen the former.

That point, of course, is not new. Peter Beinart, former editor of The New Republic and author of the recent book The Crisis of Zionism, has made the point extensively; perhaps the most quoted line from his much-discussed New York Review of Books article was his assertion that “For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.”

True though Beinart’s comment may be, what is significant is that something else has changed, too. Many of these younger Jews now also believe they simply do not need Israel any longer. Having matured in the Shoah’s long shadow, their parents and grandparents still perhaps feel marginally vulnerable in America. These young people do not. They feel safe and do not fear anti-Semitism. Why, they therefore ask themselves, express fealty to a country they do not need and that often makes them feel ashamed?

As much as this perspective sounds like a radical shift, it is far more ancient than we might imagine. Indeed, its seeds were sown many centuries earlier, as early as the Bible’s redaction. Confronted by the possibility of losing sovereignty in their ancestral homeland (which is precisely what happened), the creators of the Jewish tradition taught the possibility of a flourishing Diaspora even without autonomous Jewish life in the land of Israel. As Jacob Wright of Emory University write in a much-discussed essay, “A Nation Conceived in Defeat”:

Anticipating the coming doom and destruction, these authors set about the task of their people’s preservation. They did so … by unhinging the concept of “nation” from that of “state.” Hence, while defeat may have destroyed Israel’s state, it came to play a key role in the creation of Israel’s identity as a people.

Wright insightfully points out that while most ancient national narratives were constructed around great victories, Judaism took a different route: “It was not the moments of peace and prosperity, but rather the experiences of catastrophe that produced the strongest impetus for the composition of the magisterial history found in Genesis—Kings and the profound, disturbing messages of the prophets.”

In some significant way, therefore, the Bible’s take on Jewish history was essentially a preparation for exile. Even as the prophets warn the Israelites that their state may be doomed, and the suffering great, they also reassure them that their people will not end. Thepeople of Israel is eternal, as Jeremiah proclaims:

For I will forgive their iniquities and remember their sins no more. Thus said the Lord who established the … laws of moon and stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea into roaring waves. … If these laws should ever be annulled by me—declares the Lord—only then would the offspring of Israel cease to be a nation before Me for all time.

Is it possible, however, that that brilliant move by the redactors of the Bible, which once served a critical purpose, is now undermining Jewish commitment to Jewish sovereignty? In its time, the Bible’s move may well have equipped the Jews for survival throughout their exile. Today, however, the Jews do have a state. And that state is maligned severely and needs the Jews’ support more than ever. Ironically, this ancient biblical strategy has convinced many Jews that the Jews could survive even if the State of Israel does not.

***

In many respects, Zionists have flatly denied that ancient biblical assertion. Zionism’s claim has been that the Jewish nation cannot survive meaningfully without the Jewish state, that the ancient biblical strategy has become counterproductive and dangerous. The Zionists were right.

One cannot understand this, of course, without some historical perspective. Zionism did not emerge out of nowhere. Theodor Herzl did what he did and wrote what he wrote because Jewish life in the Diaspora had become, to use Hobbes’ phrase, “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The Jews were Europe’s victims-on-call. Of course, today’s American Jews are confident that they have found a home of an entirely different order. What happened back then, they assert, could not happen today. That newfound confidence has historical antecedents, of course: American Jews’ confidence resembles that of the Jews of Cordoba—who were forcibly converted, burned alive at the stake, and summarily expelled in the Spanish Inquisition. The Jews of Berlin in 1930 also believed they had found the ultimate enlightened home, that the dark days of Europe would never return. And in the space of but a few years, German Jewry was erased.

We cannot know, of course, what will or will not happen in America. But one thing we do know, even if it is not commonly expressed (because anyone who says it must expect to be accused of fear-mongering): The Jewish life that American Jews take for granted is actually dependent on the existence of the same Jewish state from which many young Jews now distance themselves.

This is the point that today’s younger generations of American Jews simply do not understand: American Jewish life as it now exists would not survive the loss of Israel.

There was an era not long ago in which American Jews tiptoed around America, nervously striving to stay beneath the radar. They evoked that image of the spies who reported back to Moses after surveying the Promised Land: “We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we appeared to them.” The American Jews who believe they could survive the loss of Israel do not remember that era. They take it as entirely natural that thousands of American citizens confidently ascend the steps of the Capitol Hill on the lobbying day at AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference. Do they ever ask themselves why virtually no one ascended those same steps between 1938 and 1945 to demand that the United States do something to save the Jewish people from extinction?

After all, there were millions of Jews in America the United States during that horrific period, and they knew what was happening. But American Jews of that generation lacked the confidence and the sense of belonging in America that this generation of students now takes for granted. When some 400 mostly Orthodox rabbis marched on Washington in the October 1943, President Roosevelt simply refused to meet them and departed the White House via a rear door. There were no mass protests, no caravans of buses to Washington to demand help for their European kin.

Jews today no longer think of themselves as a tiptoeing people. When Soviet Jews awakened and wanted out of their national prison, American Jews supported them, and the State of Israel made their rescue a national project. When an Air France flight filled with Jews was hijacked to Entebbe, the State of Israel rescued them, and American Jews were filled with unprecedented pride. When Ethiopian Jews were caught in the crosshairs of a deadly civil war, the State of Israel whisked them out, and American philanthropists continue to make them a key priority. Much of what fuels American Jewish pride is the existence and the behavior of the State of Israel.

In ways we do not sufficiently recognize, Israel has changed the existential condition of Jews everywhere, even in America. Without the State of Israel, the self-confidence and sense of belonging that American Jews now take for granted would quickly disappear.

This, then, is one of the great ironies of our era: The sense of belonging and security that leads many American Jews to believe that they do not need the State of Israel is itself a product of that very same State of Israel. And in moving away from devotion to the Jewish state, occasionally even opposing or undermining it, they are actually weakening the very source of the confidence that makes their political activism possible.

***

Yet another irony in today’s state of affairs ought to be noted: Even as Israel becomes more controversial among American Jews, Israel remains virtually the sole topic that can arouse the passions of American Jews.

An overlooked but important question is this: Without Israel, what would remain to make Jewishness anything more than some anemic form of ethnic memory long since eroded? About what else in Jewish life, besides Israel, do contemporary Jews feel outrage? Even those who are more critical of Israel react swiftly when Israel is unfairly abused in the international media or when it is attacked. Conversely, many American Jews feel profound shame and even anger when Israel does things they consider inexcusable. What else evokes such immediate passions?

In 2011, a proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco with clear anti-Semitic overtones did not even near the stir provoked by a naval raid on a flotilla thousands of miles away the year before. Do the discussions of whether or not JCCs should be open on Shabbat arouse nationwide debate? They do not. But the Israeli rabbinate, thousands of miles away, does.

Though many American Jews, especially the younger among them, now believe the loss of Israel would not be tragic, Israel continues to energize them in ways that no other issue does. When Israel’s chief rabbinate or some Israeli political party threatens to declare all Reform and Conservative conversions invalid, American Jews become enraged, even though that policy will affect very, very few of them. Why?

Despite proclamations by some American Jews that Israel is no longer central to their identity, and despite the claim by half of America’s young American Jews that Israel’s destruction would not be a personal tragedy, Israel still rankles them like no other Jewish issue. We ought not dismiss that observation lightly. We can explain it, or we can find it perplexing. But let us not lose sight of this undeniable reality: Without Israel, the primary energizing force in the Jewish world would disappear. And without that energy and passion, there is simply no way that anything remotely resembling Jewish life as we know it could survive.

Israel, like it or not, is not just a homeland to Israelis. It is also a “state unto the Diaspora”; the state that, even from afar, secures the life and instills the passions of Jews all over the world.

***

To all the above, there is a commonly recited response: “If the Jewish people survived in Diaspora without a Jewish State for two thousand years, how likely is it that a mere sixty-something years of sovereignty have eroded our ability to do so again?” To be sure, the argument goes, we do not wish to have to survive without a state, but if we have to, we can and we will.

But with due apologies to Lord Tennyson, it is not always true that it is “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Often, gaining something and losing it is worse than never having had it at all. And that is true of the re-created sovereignty the Jews have enjoyed for nearly two-thirds of a century. The counter-argument above simply misreads the way Jewish life has developed. Their confidence is misplaced, and it is very dangerous.

One can easily understand why American Jews would wish to declare their existential and emotional independence from the State of Israel. At least at first glance, it simply makes no sense that U.S. Jews should be dependent on an embattled country the size of New Jersey across the ocean, with a culture wholly unlike that which American Jews take for granted. But the dependence is real. The fate of American Judaism is intimately linked to fate of Israel, just as the fate of Israel is linked to and dependent upon the survival and flourishing of American Jews. Ours is the ultimate mutually interdependent relationship.

American Jews thus have an enormous personal stake in the fight against the de-legitimization of Israel. This is true even of young American Jews, even of those liberally inclined Jews who (often legitimately) see much about the Jewish state that bothers them terribly. A successful campaign to delegitimize –and possibly destroy – Israel could undo much more than the Jewish state. It could radically alter American Judaism as we know it.

No one would have to be killed, or exiled, or dismissed from their job. All that would have to happen is that Jews would suffer the second enormous blow to their People in the space of a century. With that, the Jews would become stateless like the Chechnyans, the Tibetans, or the Basques. They would tiptoe around the world once again, like Tibetans and Basques still do, waiting to see what history has in store for them next, with no sense that they can help shape that history. They would tiptoe around America, too, just like that generation of American Jews that could not speak out even as European Jewry was being destroyed.

The loss of Israel would fundamentally alter American Jewry. It would arrest the revival of Jewish life now unfolding in parts of Europe. And Israeli Jewry would be no more. The end of Israel would, in short, end the Jewish people as we know it.

The time has come for a paradigm shift in our conversations about Israel. We need to focus on what Israel represents, on its contribution to Jewish flourishing, on the importance of difference, and the human need for dignity. We need to focus on the ways in which a nation-state addresses the abiding human need to inherit and bequeath culture. Doing so could well convince the international community that it is time not to destroy Israel, but to create more Israels, including one for Palestinians. For Israel is more than a conflict, more than a “mere” country. It is actually a bold human experiment with great significance not only for Israelis and the entire Jewish people, but for freedom-loving human beings everywhere.

Excerpted and adapted from The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength by Daniel Gordis. Copyright © 2012 by Daniel Gordis. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, John Wiley & Sons. All rights reserved.