This afternoon we were hosted for lunch by Avremi Adamov, an Israeli businessman and signatory of the Israeli Peace Initiative, at his home. The Israeli Peace Initiative is a framework for a peace plan put together by former members of Israel's security establishment, current business leaders and some others. The plan was made public at the beginning of April and was intended as a response to the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. Joining us were Koby Huberman, one of the founders, Akiva Eldar, a Haaretz journalist, Tamar Herman, a political science professor at Hebrew University, and Efrat Elron, an organizational psychologist. While Mr. Eldar (who I have been reading for years), Ms. Herman (founder of the Israeli Peace Index) and Ms. Elron spoke quite eloquently of the initiative and their roles in it, Mr. Huberman's comments drove home something very important.
In explaining that the plan has significant "support" from the Israeli public, he explained the polling they conducted. The poll did not ask whether Israelis supported or favored certain positions. Instead, respondents were asked two questions. First, whether they could "stomach" the positions put forth in the initiative. And second, if people could not "stomach" the positions, whether they had both the energy and the legitimacy to challenge it.
In other words, the founding members of the initiative were not pandering and did not seek to present a "popular" plan, but a plan they believed would be realistic and which they could persuade the Israeli public to accept. To me, this is what leadership is all about.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Is Time Running Out?
On Tuesday, we headed to the West Bank to meet with Palestinians and hear firsthand what the occupation is like. We drove through a checkpoint right outside of Jerusalem and entered Bethlehem.
We parked the bus and walked a bit along the security wall Israel built as part of its disengagement from portions of the West Bank. The security wall/fence has been credited with virtually eliminating suicide attacks emanating from the West Bank. It has also cutoff Palestinians from their land and worked to make daily life in the West Bank even more difficult. Israel currently retains 60 percent of the West Bank, known as Area C,in which Palestinians are not allowed to enter. Areas A and B are reserved for Palestinians, who cannot enter Israel, except for a very few, and even they must navigate a Kafkaesque bureaucratic regime. Israel retains "security" control over Area B, and while the Palestinians have "security" control over Area A, Israel makes incursions into Area A on a regular basis.
We spoke with Sami Bahour, a Palestinian-American who showed us the half dozen permits and id cards he needed to be able to visit Jerusalem, about 10 minutes away. He also related his 15 year effort, ultimately successful, to obtain residency status from Israel - not to live in Israel, but to live in the West Bank. Until that point, he was forced to leave and return to the West Bank every three months, never sure that he would be permitted to return. (The next day, we had lunch with him and other business leaders in Ramallah, and heard how the occupation stifles their economic growth.)
We spoke with another Palestinian, Ali Awad, the leader of a "popular resistance movement," the term he uses for non-violent resistance. He had been jailed for 4 years, and his brother had been killed by an Israeli soldier. He is part of a movement of bereaved families - Israeli and Palestinians who have lost family members in the conflict - who seek peace.
The sense I got from both of these men was that they had enough of Israel, enough of the occupation, and enough of negotiations which have failed to get them their state, and that they were determined to stay their non-violent course. But they clearly signaled that it was only a matter of time before they started demanding, not independence, but full civil rights as citizens of Israel.
Which brings me to Ami Ayalon, former Shin Bet director and former Commander of the Israeli Navy. We met him for dinner in Tiberias last night and afterwards he presented us with his analsyis of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. (For those who don't know, Israel and the US maintain relations with Fatah. Hamas, however does not recognize Israel and calls for its destruction. Neither Israel nor the US will speak directly with Hamas. Now that these two Palestinian factions have reconciled and formed a unity government there is a serious question of what sort of relations and cooperation Israel and the US will have with the Palestinians.)
Ayalon presented one possible scenario, one in which Israel advances no initiative of its own and the Palestinians go to the UN and seek international recognition of an independent state along the 1967 borders. In this scenario, Israel would face condemnation by much of the world, as well as economic and other sanctions, and eventually renewed violence. This he called the "realistic" scenario.
He presented a second scenario, which he termed "pessimistic." In this scenario, the Palestinians simply conclude that a two-state solution is not achievable and demand full citizenship rights in Israel - exactly what Bahour and Awad were signaling. This could very well spell the end of the Zionist enterprise.
Ayalon posited a third way. Here, he spoke of the need for Israel to formulate its own initiative. In this regard, he and other former members of the Israeli security establishment, have put forward what they have termed the Israeli Peace Initiative, which provides for the creation of independent Palestinian state roughly along the 1967 borders.
It's not at all clear which if any of these scenarios will play out. But clearly the status quo will not hold, and so I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
We parked the bus and walked a bit along the security wall Israel built as part of its disengagement from portions of the West Bank. The security wall/fence has been credited with virtually eliminating suicide attacks emanating from the West Bank. It has also cutoff Palestinians from their land and worked to make daily life in the West Bank even more difficult. Israel currently retains 60 percent of the West Bank, known as Area C,
We spoke with Sami Bahour, a Palestinian-American who showed us the half dozen permits and id cards he needed to be able to visit Jerusalem, about 10 minutes away. He also related his 15 year effort, ultimately successful, to obtain residency status from Israel - not to live in Israel, but to live in the West Bank. Until that point, he was forced to leave and return to the West Bank every three months, never sure that he would be permitted to return. (The next day, we had lunch with him and other business leaders in Ramallah, and heard how the occupation stifles their economic growth.)
We spoke with another Palestinian, Ali Awad, the leader of a "popular resistance movement," the term he uses for non-violent resistance. He had been jailed for 4 years, and his brother had been killed by an Israeli soldier. He is part of a movement of bereaved families - Israeli and Palestinians who have lost family members in the conflict - who seek peace.
The sense I got from both of these men was that they had enough of Israel, enough of the occupation, and enough of negotiations which have failed to get them their state, and that they were determined to stay their non-violent course. But they clearly signaled that it was only a matter of time before they started demanding, not independence, but full civil rights as citizens of Israel.
Which brings me to Ami Ayalon, former Shin Bet director and former Commander of the Israeli Navy. We met him for dinner in Tiberias last night and afterwards he presented us with his analsyis of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. (For those who don't know, Israel and the US maintain relations with Fatah. Hamas, however does not recognize Israel and calls for its destruction. Neither Israel nor the US will speak directly with Hamas. Now that these two Palestinian factions have reconciled and formed a unity government there is a serious question of what sort of relations and cooperation Israel and the US will have with the Palestinians.)
Ayalon presented one possible scenario, one in which Israel advances no initiative of its own and the Palestinians go to the UN and seek international recognition of an independent state along the 1967 borders. In this scenario, Israel would face condemnation by much of the world, as well as economic and other sanctions, and eventually renewed violence. This he called the "realistic" scenario.
He presented a second scenario, which he termed "pessimistic." In this scenario, the Palestinians simply conclude that a two-state solution is not achievable and demand full citizenship rights in Israel - exactly what Bahour and Awad were signaling. This could very well spell the end of the Zionist enterprise.
Ayalon posited a third way. Here, he spoke of the need for Israel to formulate its own initiative. In this regard, he and other former members of the Israeli security establishment, have put forward what they have termed the Israeli Peace Initiative, which provides for the creation of independent Palestinian state roughly along the 1967 borders.
It's not at all clear which if any of these scenarios will play out. But clearly the status quo will not hold, and so I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Israel must choose between peace and a racist state - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
Israel must choose between peace and a racist state - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
Here's an op-ed from Sefi Rachlevsky, one of the Independence Hall Movement members we met with earlier in the week. This piece covers the major theme he presented to us - What Does Israel Want?
Here's an op-ed from Sefi Rachlevsky, one of the Independence Hall Movement members we met with earlier in the week. This piece covers the major theme he presented to us - What Does Israel Want?
Posting Update
Falling behind on some posts. I hope to catch up at some point today. In the last couple days, we've spent time in the West Bank meeting with Palestinians. Yesterday we were with Prime Minister Salaam Fayad in Ramallah, and later lunched with a group of Palestinian businessmen, including one who put me in touch with a former law professor active in Palestinian and human right issues. Last evening we had dinner on the shore of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) with former Shin Bet and friend of J Street, Ami Ayalon. Today we will be touring the Lebanese border with Israeli journalists covering security affairs. I'll be filling in the details of the last two days later.
In the meantime, here are some stats on who's visiting Blog Zahav:
I don't know anyone in Iran and would be interested to know how they came upon the blog. So if you are in Iran and are reading this, shoot me a comment.
In the meantime, here are some stats on who's visiting Blog Zahav:
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
| |||
|
I don't know anyone in Iran and would be interested to know how they came upon the blog. So if you are in Iran and are reading this, shoot me a comment.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Daniel Gordis's War on Adverbs
Daniel Gordis is Senior Vice President of the Shalem Center and a Senior Fellow. The author of numerous books on Jewish thought and currents in Israel, his most recent book Saving Israel: How the Jewish State Can Win a War That May Never End won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. He also stole 75 minutes of my time in Israel.
I knew of his neo-con perspective ahead of time, but was expecting an attempt at dialogue. You know where each side gets in a word or two. Up until then, we had had many meetings with some not inconsequential figures in Israel -- President and Nobel Prize winner Shimon Peres, Israel Prize winners,Yehuda Bauer and David Harel, and Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor. To a man, each of them solicited questions from us and gave them due consideration. Not Dr. Gordis.
Dr. Gordis filibustered for a full 60 minutes of a planned 60 minute meeting. When he finally took a question or two, he continued the filibuster for another 15 minutes until the meeting concluded.
Dr. Gordis began his comments by deconstructing J Street's statement on the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, in which J Street basically raised a lot of questions. It can be read here. It turns out that Dr. Gordis is no fan of adverbs, with particular distaste for the word, "obviously." Seriously.
He questioned J Street's use of the word in the following paragraph:
Overcoming the split between Fatah and Hamas, and between the West Bank and Gaza, has always been a precondition for final resolution of the conflict. In fact, many who oppose a two-state deal have, in recent years, done so by arguing that divisions among the Palestinians make peace impossible. Obviously, reconciliation reduces that obstacle – but now skeptics of a two-state agreement have immediately stepped forward to say that a deal is impossible with a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas. (Emphasis is mine.)
Dr. Gordis said there was nothing obvious about the statement that reconciliation reduces the obstacles to a two-state solution. Perhaps. But that's not what the statement said. It said reconciliation reduces that obstacle, meaning the obstacle referenced in the prior sentence, i.e., divisions among the Palestinians. It should be obvious to everyone that reconciliation reduces - in fact, negates - division. It was a stupid point for him to try to make in the first place, made worse by the fact that he misread the statement. And the baytzim on this guy to call into question the care with which the statement was written! I apologize for taking your time up with this minutiae, but that's how Dr. Gordis fashioned his argument. Of course, his filibuster prevented anyone from pointing that out.
But he wasn't done with his war on adverbs. See, he's such a scholar that he runs a word search to make sure that his writings don't include "of course" or "obviously." Not sure of his position with respect to "clearly" and "plainly." But his seventh grade English teacher must be proud. After all he did win the 2009 National Jewish Book Award.
Then there was the matter of J Street's self-assuredness that caused him to question whether the group belonged inside the pro-Israel tent. Clearly (apparently?) Dr. Gordis's blinding arrogance not only robbed me of my morning, but himself of any sense of irony. And without the self-assured Jew, who exactly is going to fill this pro-Israel tent? Had been hoping to ask him that.
Dr. Gordis then proceeded to construct straw man arguments and he quite impressively knocked each one down. Do you think Israelis like sending their kids to the army? Do you not think Israel has real enemies?
Why Dr. Gordis decided to address us, I can't say for sure. I imagine (almost forgot, he attacked John Lennon's universalism), citing his meeting with J Street, he will tell people that he gave us a chance. If he tells you that, don't believe him. And tell him I want my morning back.
Editor's Note, May 29: The entry above was posted on May 3, 2011, prior to Gordis's May 27 piece in the Jerusalem Post. I'll leave it to the reader to decide if my impression as to his reason for meeting with us was correct.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Ezrahi and Bauer - with Correction
Less than two weeks ago, a group of prominent Israeli intellectuals gathered outside Independence Hall in Tel Aviv, where Israel declared independence in 1948; next week will mark the 63rd anniversary. On April 21, the group known as the Independence Hall Movement declared their support for an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders.
This afternoon we had lunch with four of the movement's members, two of whom have been awarded the Israeli Prize for excellence in their fields. Because its late and I'm tired, I'll tell about just two of them.
The first to address us was Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University. Professor Ezrahi wrote a book entitled Rubber Bullets, which should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the Israeli political psyche. Had I known we'd be meeting with him, I'd have brought my copy for him to sign. He spoke quite directly and passionately almost to the point of being indignant. (My sense of him is that if he read this, he'd say he was well past the point of being indignant.) So let's get started.
Ezrahi began by saying that J Street has been a "source of light for Israel." Having spent time in the United States, he remarked about the "impossibility of confronting American Jews with criticism" of the Israeli government. He called the Netanyahu government the most anti-peace government in Israel's history. Having served 25 years as a military strategist, he is well-acquainted with the upper echelons of Israel's military who he said had "deep anxiety" regarding the current government.
Ezrahi said that Netanyahu was not acting in a Zionist fashion. Zionism he said compels one to take initiative and control over one's own future. To limit yourself to reacting to someone else's initiative is to be a victim, the opposite of Zionism. To be against the Netanyahu government, he said, IS to be pro-Israel. Full stop.
When asked (by me) how to answer the question we often face from Israelis and Americans alike - what gives us standing to criticize the government of Israel - he said not to be defensive (not that I ever have been and I'll relate my answer, which was quite similar to the points he was now making, in another post) and that the right wing American Jews worked hard to undermine the Rabin government during the 1990's.
Next, was Yehuda Bauer, a professor of Holocaust studies, also at Hebrew University. While more genteel than Ezrahi, he was just as impassioned and just as dismissive of the Netanyahu government. Professor Bauer fist described the Zionist position - a Jewish national home, with international recognition, and a solid Jewish majority. Bauer flatly stated that the current government was "creating a clear anti-Zionist state." He said that radical Zionism has become radical anti-Zionism. Picking up on our standing to criticize the Israeli government, he declared that we have not only the right, but the duty to so, and that if we do not stand together, American Jewish critics of the Israeli government and Israeli critics, we will lose the fight. Finally, he stated that the U.N. is not an anti-Semitic body, that Israel cannot do with out it, and that to try would be self destructive. Powerful stuff. From people who know.
Correction: Upon reviewing my notes this morning, I realized that I mis-attributed the statement that being against the Netanyahu government is to be pro-Israel. While that was certainly the tenor of Ezrahi's presentation, the line was actually uttered by another member of the movement, Sefi Rachlevsky, who also addressed us at the lunch.
This afternoon we had lunch with four of the movement's members, two of whom have been awarded the Israeli Prize for excellence in their fields. Because its late and I'm tired, I'll tell about just two of them.
The first to address us was Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at Hebrew University. Professor Ezrahi wrote a book entitled Rubber Bullets, which should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the Israeli political psyche. Had I known we'd be meeting with him, I'd have brought my copy for him to sign. He spoke quite directly and passionately almost to the point of being indignant. (My sense of him is that if he read this, he'd say he was well past the point of being indignant.) So let's get started.
Ezrahi began by saying that J Street has been a "source of light for Israel." Having spent time in the United States, he remarked about the "impossibility of confronting American Jews with criticism" of the Israeli government. He called the Netanyahu government the most anti-peace government in Israel's history. Having served 25 years as a military strategist, he is well-acquainted with the upper echelons of Israel's military who he said had "deep anxiety" regarding the current government.
Ezrahi said that Netanyahu was not acting in a Zionist fashion. Zionism he said compels one to take initiative and control over one's own future. To limit yourself to reacting to someone else's initiative is to be a victim, the opposite of Zionism. To be against the Netanyahu government, he said, IS to be pro-Israel. Full stop.
When asked (by me) how to answer the question we often face from Israelis and Americans alike - what gives us standing to criticize the government of Israel - he said not to be defensive (not that I ever have been and I'll relate my answer, which was quite similar to the points he was now making, in another post) and that the right wing American Jews worked hard to undermine the Rabin government during the 1990's.
Next, was Yehuda Bauer, a professor of Holocaust studies, also at Hebrew University. While more genteel than Ezrahi, he was just as impassioned and just as dismissive of the Netanyahu government. Professor Bauer fist described the Zionist position - a Jewish national home, with international recognition, and a solid Jewish majority. Bauer flatly stated that the current government was "creating a clear anti-Zionist state." He said that radical Zionism has become radical anti-Zionism. Picking up on our standing to criticize the Israeli government, he declared that we have not only the right, but the duty to so, and that if we do not stand together, American Jewish critics of the Israeli government and Israeli critics, we will lose the fight. Finally, he stated that the U.N. is not an anti-Semitic body, that Israel cannot do with out it, and that to try would be self destructive. Powerful stuff. From people who know.
Correction: Upon reviewing my notes this morning, I realized that I mis-attributed the statement that being against the Netanyahu government is to be pro-Israel. While that was certainly the tenor of Ezrahi's presentation, the line was actually uttered by another member of the movement, Sefi Rachlevsky, who also addressed us at the lunch.
Update: Comments
Shook a few comments out of you guys. The traffic here has increased a lot over the past few days, so thank you for visiting. It's more fun when people actually read what you write. Apparently, however, my posts haven't crossed the left/right divide, otherwise I'd have expected some angry and misspelled rants by now. Don't be shy about forwarding any of the posts, especially, my next one, to those who can't tolerate any criticism of the Israeli government.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)