At J Street, Yoffie Garners Boos, Applause
By Nathan Guttman
It is not every day that Rabbi Eric Yoffie gets booed by a lefty crowd. But that is one of the risks when standing up as a keynote speaker at the J Street conference.
Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and a leading dovish vote in American Jewry, was one of the earliest critics of J Street. He came out, in an article published in the Forward against J Street’s opposition to the Israeli military operation in Gaza last December.
On Monday, Yoffie stepped into the lion’s den, sharing the stage with J Street’s Jeremy Ben-Ami for a town hall-style discussion moderated by the Forward’s editor Jane Eisner.
The boos had nothing to do with Yoffie’s disagreement with J Street over the Gaza war. They came after he condemned South African jurist Richard Goldstone for his report accusing Israel of war crimes during the Gaza war. “Richard Goldstone should be ashamed of himself,” Yoffie said. The audience didn’t like the harsh tone, although J Street as a group also expressed reservations about the Gaza report.
July 28, 2009, 1:41pm
Supporters of Disengagement Rethink Their Stance
By Nathan Jeffay
It has been the big question Israeli politicians and analysts have been asking ever since the 2005 disengagement. If Israel could turn the clock back and rewrite the past, would it have left Gaza? According to a new poll, the public hopes not.
Research by the public opinion company Maagar Mochot found that some 68% of Israelis who were in favor of the disengagement regret their stance. The poll did not question people who were against disengagement on any change in their views. The figure seems to vindicate analysts who have suggested that Israelis began to regret the disengagement as a result of rocket bombardment of Southern Israel from an IDF-free Gaza.
While people were not asked for their reasoning, there is a strong hint that it is connected with rocket fire. Only 11% of respondents — those who favored and opposed disengagement — do not see disengagement as the cause of Southern Israel coming under bombardment by Gazan rockets.
Overall, 25% of respondents said that disengagement was justified and 55% said it was a mistake. Now, as you may expect, the regard disengagement as a mistake. But interestingly, among Labor voters, the belief it was a mistake was still relatively widespread: 23%.
Perhaps the most fascinating statistic was that for Kadima voters. One in four Kadima voters — 24% to be precise — see disengagement as having been a mistake. If you recall, the very reason for establishing Kadima was to facilitate the disengagement. Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister for Likud, could not secure his party’s support for disengagement and so he split off and set up Kadima to drive the measure through.
Of course, how to interpret this depends on your attitude towards Kadima. If you see the party as a fleeting centrist party founded on a single issue which, like other Israeli centrist parties will fade away, this will suggest that the process is underway as voters aren’t even agreed on the founding issue anymore. But if you think Kadima is here to stay, the very fact that the party can count among its voters people who don’t even agree with its founding idea indicates that it can adapt and survive in new times.
April 3, 2009, 2:54pm
'Seven Jewish Children' — Provocative Playlet or Agitprop?
By Allison Gaudet Yarrow
Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza” is inciting more controversy stateside since it jumped the pond.
Last week, Washington’s Theater J, staged two free readings of the 10-minute playlet that the The Washington Post called “a beautifully crafted cheap shot” and “an effort to compress to black-and-white a question of conscience of infinite complexity.”
Churchill’s work has spurred a couple of critical copycats. Robbie Gringras’s “One Israeli Child” and Deb Margolin’s “The Eighth Jewish Child” mimic Churchill’s format, yet represent opposing political views. Theater J’s director Ari Roth, added the readings of these scripts in addition to “Seven Jewish Children,” and engaged actors and audience members alike in post-show debates.
Before the scripts were read at Theater J, The Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg (a Forward alum) argued with Ari Roth about “his decision to provide Churchill’s play with Jewish oxygen” while Theater J posits its mission is to “celebrate the social vision that [is] part of the Jewish cultural legacy.” Roth stands behind his decision. From their conversation on Jeffrey Goldberg’s blog:
JG: [Churchill] says that we’re “better haters.”
AR: Jeffrey, Jeffrey –
JG: That’s Shylock, right?
AR: I want your very, very smart blog readers to understand that the way to discuss this play is not to lift lines from the last page and a half of it. That is not how to fully experience and understand the meaning of any drama. I can’t cede this to journalists who don’t love theater enough to understand what’s going on here. That is not a sophisticated way to regard art, by picking out a sentence here and then going apes—t over it!
JG: It’s not just a sentence.
AR: She could have said worse.
JG: Oh, that’s a great standard to have. She could have said worse.
AR: This is why you don’t work in the American theater.
JG: This isn’t even the line that insinuates the blood libel.
The Forward had hoped to post a YouTube video of a staging of “Seven Jewish Children,” presented by Rooms Productions in Chicago, but the clip was removed Friday morning. Instead of charging admission, the Chicago production facilitated donations to the British charity, Medical Aid for Palestinians, at Churchill’s request.
February 12, 2009, 3:49pm
Valentine's Day Exports From Gaza
By Nathan Jeffay
They say that love conquers all. Well, it can apparently do what neither Palestinian violence nor international diplomacy have managed: lead to a lifting of Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
It’s almost Valentine’s Day, and Dutch romantics are seemingly set on giving carnations to their sweethearts (despite the fact the rest of the world pines for Dutch tulips). But the Gaza blockade threatened to cause a carnation shortage because, at peak periods like these, the Dutch flower market relies on imports from the Middle East.
Somehow, this plight touched the Israeli government, which earlier today released a statement that read:
“[I]n the first time in over a year, and at the request of the Dutch Government, Israel has approved and will facilitate the export of 25,000 carnations from Gaza to the European market.
The flowers will be shipped tomorrow morning via Kerem Shalom cargo terminal and are scheduled to arrive in Europe by Valentine’s Day.”
January 26, 2009, 4:11pm
Human Rights Watch Head Surveys the Gaza Battlefield
By Daniel Treiman
Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, paints a not very pretty picture of Israeli actions during the latest Gaza war.
Writing in Forbes, he scores the IDF on the following points:
January 26, 2009, 11:00am
J Street’s Disappearing Gaza Statement (UPDATED)
By Daniel Treiman
UPDATE: As of a little bit after noon, the J Street statement in question is back online.
UPDATE II: Isaac Luria of J Street e-mails that the “text was down due to a technical error. It’s back up, as you’ve noted. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.”
J Street, the dovish new Israel lobbying group, launched last year to great fanfare. On the left, there were high hopes that J Street would be an “alternative Aipac” — a bold new endeavor that would finally give Jewish doves a voice inside the Beltway. On the right, there were those who questioned the veracity of the first half of J Street’s self-description as “pro-Israel, pro-peace.”
Israel’s Gaza offensive was the first serious Israeli-Arab conflagration to come along since the group was launched. So it’s no surprise that when J Street spoke, there were plenty of folks — friends, foes and fence-sitters alike — eagerly waiting to see what tack it would take. Sure enough, J Street managed to make quite a splash, sparking a ferocious intra-communal debate that played out on the blogosphere and in the pages of the Forward.
In its initial response to Israel’s air-strikes in Gaza, J Street put out a December 27 statement from its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami. He warned that the air-strikes “will deepen the cycle of violence in the region” and called for “an urgent end to the new hostilities.”
It was a second statement, however, that really seemed to strike a nerve. That statement —based upon an earlier e-mail missive sent out by J Street’s online director, Isaac Luria — reiterated the earlier call for an end to the violence. Its rhetoric, however, went further. It explicitly criticized Israel’s actions on moral — as opposed to essentially pragmatic — grounds, and seemed to compare, or at least refused to contrast, Israeli actions with those of Hamas:
Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong. While there is nothing “right” in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing “right” in punishing a million and a half already-suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists among them.
And there is nothing to be gained from debating which injustice is greater or came first. What’s needed now is immediate action to stop the violence before it spirals out of control.
That language drew a sharp rebuke from Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism and arguably the Jewish communal establishment’s most high-profile dove. “These words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve,” he wrote in an opinion article for the Forward.
J Street, for its part, made no apologies for its statement. In fact, in a December 31 statement responding to Yoffie’s article, Ben-Ami struck a note of defiance, explaining that J Street “takes serious issue” with Yoffie’s article:
It is hard for us to understand how the leading reform rabbi in North America could call our effort to articulate a nuanced view on these difficult issues “morally deficient.” If our views are “naïve” and “morally deficient”, then so are the views of scores of Israeli journalists, security analysts, distinguished authors, and retired IDF officers who have posed the same questions about the Gaza attack as we have.
Now, however, that second statement, containing the language Yoffie called “naïve” and “morally deficient,” has vanished from J Street’s Web site. Go to the url, and you get the following message: “Access denied… You are not authorized to access this page.” It has been gone for at least the past several days.
January 7, 2009, 5:12pm
‘Joe the Plumber’ Puts Down the Plunger, Heads to Israel
By Gabrielle Birkner
“Joe the Plumber” won’t be unclogging any toilets, at least not while war is raging in Gaza. Samuel J. Wurzelbacher — the Ohio plumber and would-be country music star who became a fixture of John McCain’s presidential campaign — is heading to Israel for 10 days as a war reporter for the conservative Web site Pajamas TV. There will be no pretense of objectivity. CNN reports:
“The famous plumber will be focusing on the Israeli perspective on the situation. ‘It’s tragic, I mean it really is,’ Wurzelbacher told CNN affiliate WNWO ‘I don’t say that in any little way. It’s very tragic, but at the same time what are the Israeli people supposed to do.’
Wurzelbacher told WNWO he’s not worried about the potential dangers of his new gig. ‘Being a Christian I’m pretty well protected by God I believe. That’s not saying he’s going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance,’ he told the CNN affiliate.”
One of the last times Wurzelbacher spoke publicly about the Jewish State — specifically in regard to Barack Obama’s positions on it — he was taken to task by Fox News’s Shepard Smith.
January 6, 2009, 9:12pm
Obama Breaks His Silence on Gaza, but Doesn’t Say Much
By Daniel Treiman
The Associated Press reports:
President-elect Barack Obama broke his silence on the crisis Tuesday, saying that “the loss of civilian life in Gaza and in Israel is a source of deep concern for me.” He declined to go further, reiterating his stance that the U.S. has only one president at a time.
Obama had been withholding comment on Gaza, with an aide explaining that President Bush is still responsible for American diplomatic policy. “During this transition period, we are not engaging in any action that could send confusing signals to the world about who speaks on behalf of the United States,” the aide said.
In the meantime, supporters of the Palestinians and of Israel were left stewing over Obama’s silence, angry at him for not speaking out. Of course, each side wanted him to say opposite things.
Many Arabs, of course, wanted Obama to call for an end to the Israeli offensive. “We want him to say something at least to stop the bloodshed,” said Suhail Natour, a Palestinian activist in Beirut told The Chicago Tribune. “Waiting until the 20th, with the bloodshed continuing, I don’t think is an acceptable way of confirming a new policy in the Middle East. Silence on this means complicity.”
Meanwhile, some pro-Israel activists — particularly those from the right end of the political spectrum — have criticized Obama for not weighing in on Israel’s side.
Reuters reports:
Morton Klein, president of the pro-Israel Zionist Organization of America, noted that Obama spoke out on Mumbai.
“And he’s acting almost as if he’s president when it comes to the economy, right? He’s not screaming ‘there’s only one president’ when he’s talking about the economic stimulus package,” Klein said.
Obama’s latest comments are sure to satisfy no one. Then again, anything he could have possibly said would have been sure to offend someone.
July 31, 2008, 11:00am
Hamas Beards vs. Fatah Moustaches
By Daniel Treiman
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Hamas has resumed its policy of shaving mustaches of political opponents to humiliate them, Fatah officials said Wednesday.
Hamas resorted to this form of punishment in the past after arresting senior Fatah representatives in the Gaza Strip, the officials said.
Hamas, for its part, accused the Palestinian Authority security forces of shaving the beards of detained Hamas officials in the West Bank.
To my great disappointment, The Jerusalem Post evidently didn’t even bother to reach out to Tom Selleck for comment.
June 24, 2008, 4:28pm
Hamas Hypocrisy
By Daniel Treiman
We’re less than a week into the supposedly six-month-long Gaza “truce” that Israel negotiated with Hamas, and already Palestinian militants are making a mockery of it.
Palestinians in Gaza fired a mortar shell into an empty area just before midnight last night. And then earlier today four rockets were fired into southern Israel, lightly wounding two. Islamic Jihad claimed credit for the rocket fire, explaining that it was retaliating for a pre-dawn Israeli raid in the West Bank that killed one of its commanders, along with a second Palestinian. The Israeli army says that the Jihad man was planning an attack, and that troops found explosives in his apartment.
How did Hamas respond to Islamic Jihad’s violation of the hard-won truce? Why, they blamed Israel, of course. The Associated Press reports:
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the rocket attack came because of “Israeli provocation this morning” and added that Hamas was “committed to the calm.” He said Hamas will talk with other factions and make sure they are committed, too.
Hamas is supposed to be enforcing the truce in Gaza, not making apologies for violations of it. The truce is limited to Gaza, and incidents in the West Bank shouldn’t be grounds for Palestinian factions firing rockets from Gaza. Indeed, while Hamas is busy blaming Israeli actions in the West Bank for Islamic Jihad’s rocket fire, Hamas itself has kept up its attacks on Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Today, Hamas’s military wing claimed credit for a West Bank shooting attack that injured three Israeli hikers on Friday, shortly after the Gaza truce took effect.
Then again, the notion that Hamas is untrustworthy is hardly news. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why Israelis are so glum.
For more analysis of the truce: From the center, Ha’aretz’s Yoel Marcus argued that the truce might provide a useful respite for Israel, even though it’s ultimately not a solution to the problem with Hamas. From the right, The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick calls the truce a “diplomatic and strategic capitulation to Hamas.”
February 14, 2008, 2:57pm
Ha’aretz to Hamas: We’re Not Gonna Take It
By Daniel Treiman
The dovish Israeli daily Ha’aretz takes a tough line on the ongoing Qassam fire from Hamas-controlled Gaza in an editorial titled “Restraint is not possible”:
If the limited military actions Israel is undertaking in an effort to bring an end to the Qassam rockets will not bring an end to the shooting; if the moderate states, and first and foremost Egypt and Jordan fail to contain Hamas — Israel will have no option but to embark on a broad military operation.
The Israel Defense Forces raison d’etre is to protect the country’s citizens from attack. Even if the success of a military operation is not guaranteed, that concern must not prevent the government from doing what is necessary in order to protect the lives of its citizens and the state’s border. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is political, and should always be pursued. At the same time, Israel must prove that the blood of its citizens cannot be forfeited — so that in the future, its neighbors will abide by the agreements to which they have committed.
Hat Tip: Marty Peretz
September 20, 2007, 4:02pm
Where Is the International Solidarity Movement Now?
By Daniel Treiman
Yesterday’s lengthy New York Times article on the plight of Gaza merchants — including an arms-smuggler named Muhammad — featured the following gem:
Hamas is working with the Egyptians to destroy unauthorized tunnels, Muhammad said, while the Egyptians, under pressure from the United States and Israel, have recently changed all the security officers along the border, replacing many of those who had been bought off by smugglers. Egypt, he said, is clearing almost 1,000 feet of houses from the Egyptian side of Rafah, a city cut in two by the border.
When Israel cleared Palestinian houses in Rafah to stop smuggling tunnels, there was an international uproar and many demonstrations. Will there be demonstrations in Egypt? Muhammad roared with laughter.
September 17, 2007, 5:30pm
He Who Rules Gaza...
By Daniel Treiman
…will quickly become unpopular.
Advertisements
Advertisements