Tikkun Magazine, September/October 2009
We at Tikkun are delighted to welcome J Street into the community of organizations that have been working for peace and reconciliation between Israel and Palestine for the past several decades. We endorse its efforts!
J Street plays a particularly important role as a lobbying group, and with its allied PAC it can raise money for candidates who support Middle East peace.
So you can understand why we are deeply disappointed that its leaders rejected our requests to co-sponsor the conference they are planning to hold in Washington, D.C. What they told us was that other groups with which J Street is aligned had nixed my personal participation and the co-sponsorship of Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives.
Our first response was to reassure them that we are fully aligned with their stated goals-supporting U.S. efforts to bring about a two-state solution, opposing military solutions, and providing a voice for the many Americans who want to change American policy so that it more fully pushes for peace.
But no reassurances were sufficient. One member of our editorial board spoke to J Street leader Jeremy Ben-Ami and reported back to us, "He acknowledged that you would bring some positives but he is convinced that your involvement would signal that this effort is not the fresh and new approach that he wants people to take as the ‘brand' of their conference." That editorial board member reminded us of how the liberals who ended the war in Vietnam often distanced themselves from the radicals who opposed the war from the start. What made the earlier anti-war activists appear "radical" is that a) they had opposed the war before the mainstream was ready to hear that message; b) unlike the later liberal opposition leaders, who said the war wasn't in "the interests of the United States," the radicals had opposed the war in Vietnam because it was immoral for the United States to kill millions of people to achieve American political and economic goals; and c) the radicals had challenged liberals and made them feel uncomfortable by raising these issues, and that discomfort persisted even after the liberals had changed their minds and been forced to acknowledge the strength of many of the radicals' points. The liberals never forgave the radicals for embarrassing them and pointing out the moral inconsistencies in the liberals' previous positions. These same dynamics affected peace activists who opposed the Iraq war (and may account for why none of them were included in the Obama White House or Hillary Clinton's state department). And it was the same dynamic that led many Democrats in the 1940s to remain hostile to and label as "premature anti-fascists" those on the Left who had in the 1930s urged the United States to actively oppose the growth of fascism in Europe when U.S. economic and political elites were still fantasizing that maybe Hitler, if left on his own, would attack and destroy communist Russia, a goal that they would have been seen as far more important than saving the lives of Jews.
Tikkun magazine has been the outspoken pro-Israel critic of Israeli policy toward Palestinians since our inception in 1986. And ever since 1986, when we ran our editorial "The Occupation: Immoral and Stupid," we've been actively challenging the American Jewish community, world Jewry, and Israelis to recognize that the oppression of Palestinians is not only pragmatically bad for the future survival of Israel (and for the way that it has generated increasing levels of anger at world Jewry who have refused publicly to actively distance themselves from Israeli policies and behaviors like the recent re-invasion of Gaza), but it is also ethically unacceptable and a perversion of Judaism. In fact, we've even suggested that the Jewish community has replaced God with a fervent worship of the sanctity of Israel and the Holocaust; abandoned Judaism's firm commitment to "love the stranger" and "justice, justice shalt thou pursue," and replaced it with an idealization of an Israeli-style "tough Jews"; and become "realistic" when the task of the Jews was always to proclaim the need to heal and transform rather than accommodate to the powerful. And we've suggested that all this has been responsible for the loss of interest in Judaism by many of the most ethically and spiritually sensitive young Jews in the Western world.
During our first national conference in New York in 1988, we were proud to present the voice of the Palestinian professor of literature and theorist of culture Edward Said. And ever since, in Tikkun and in our public events, we've given voice to those Palestinians who have sought peace and reconciliation. We've insisted that the Occupation must end, not only because it weakens Israel's capacity to defend itself and is leading to increased anti-Semitism globally, but also because it is morally wrong and because we genuinely care about the suffering of the Palestinian people (while caring equally about the suffering of Israelis that the continuation of the Occupation makes inevitable).
We are proud that Tikkun has become the primary intellectual expression of progressive Jews around the world, and the place where the discussions of Israel's future takes place. It was in Tikkun that Benny Morris first published his article about Israel's "New Historians" and provided evidence that the "Arab flight" in 1948 had been caused by Israelis' acts of terror against Palestinian civilians. In that article, he described how the Israeli army forcibly evicted close to 100,000 Palestinians from their homes, force-marching them to the West Bank and Gaza, where they set up what the Palestinians had hoped would be only temporary refugee camps but which have remained there for the past forty-two years. It was Tikkun that, according to Hillary Clinton's personal communication with me, first moved Bill and Hillary to understand and support the positions of the Israeli peace movement. It was Tikkun that provided the only place you could read in English the full text of Yossi Beilin's "Geneva Accord," which set the framework for peace that will eventually be negotiated.
When more centrist groups, fearful of offending anyone, kept their mouths shut, it was Tikkun that bought full-page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, etc. to challenge the recent Gaza war and call not only for an immediate ceasefire but for the Obama administration to present a positive picture of what a peace agreement should look like.
Tikkun continues to play a major role in creating the context in which others in the Jewish world and in American politics could feel safe in raising questions about Israeli policy. It was this public identity of Tikkun that was part of the reason that a young Barack Obama asked to speak at our 1996 conference in Chicago, and why over the years we have received literally tens of thousands of communications from Jews telling us that they felt they could be proud to be Jewish because of the presence of Tikkun in public space.
Tikkun's Call for a Universally Ethical Approach
Taking these stands ruffles many feathers. We will continue to take such stands because we think it important to frame our discourse not only in terms that will appeal to the inside-the-Beltway centrists, but also to the deepest ethical aspirations of Americans, Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Christians, Muslims, and secular humanists. Here are two examples:
1. We believe that peace-oriented organizations must not only talk about the "interests" of Jews, Israelis, or Americans, but must really take seriously the humanity of the Palestinian people and of Muslims. Much of the reason why even the more moderate Palestinians involved with the Palestinian Authority continue to insist, as many did at their recent Fatah confab in August, on their "right" to continue the "armed struggle" (even though de facto they have not been actualizing this "right" and are critical of Hamas for doing so) is that they experience themselves as being dehumanized, humiliated, and emasculated by the treatment they receive from Israelis and Americans and the way they are portrayed in a distorted manner in the Israeli and American media. So while Tikkun continues to urge them to adopt the strategy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., we also call for compassion for these people who often tell us that they experience themselves as living in a huge Israeli-policed concentration camp! Similarly, that kind of compassion is also needed toward Israelis, even toward settlers, because without that compassion in our discourse, we drive them toward a suicidal Masada complex more likely to lead to atomic war than to rational compromise. So integrating this concern into public discourse is at least as important as getting a few more members of Congress to sign on to toothless congressional resolutions calling for an end to settlements or a restarting of negotiations.
2. While we support an end to the expansion of West Bank settlements, we think it equally important to remind people that Palestinian suffering can only be alleviated when they get an immediate dismantling of the checkpoints (except for those separating Israel from the West Bank); a dismantling of the separation wall (except to the extent that it is built on the boundary of the pre-1967 Green Line); an end to the blockade of Gaza (but only in exchange for the ceasefire for twenty years that Hamas has offered over and over again); an end to the Occupation; and the creation of an economically and politically viable Palestinian state living in peace with Israel.
President Obama could play a decisive role in achieving this if-instead of using his power and prestige to obtain a bite-size gain about settlements-he used his considerable persuasive powers to lay out and popularize a vision of a full accord that would bring peace, justice, and reconciliation to both peoples and to the Middle East, replete with details.
At the present moment, the vast majority of people in both Israel and Palestine cannot imagine such an accord that would meet the basic needs of both sides. Without a clear vision of this sort, despair triumphs in both Israel and Palestine. It is changing this consciousness that is critical-and that is what the peace movement should be asking our president to do, and providing him with the guidelines of what ought to be acceptable to the needs of both sides.
Is our call for this kind of focus-not in replacement of what J Street is trying to do, but in addition to it, and not for J Street to do but for what the rest of us in the peace movement should do-a reason to exclude us from the coalition coming together to support J Street? That seems narrow-minded. But then again, the whole exclusion of Tikkun and the NSP from the J Street coalition as equal partners with all the other organizations seems, well, small-minded and petty-not appropriate for anyone who recognizes how badly we in the peace movement need a big tent.
The Kind of Centrist Politics that Does Not Work
This kind of exclusion bespeaks the kind of centrist politics that actually ends up being self-destructive. In my editorial on Obama in this issue of Tikkun, I show why it is this moderating of views that has caused Obama to be less, not more, effective, and the same will go for a peace movement that feels scared to include us. The reality is that Tikkun and the NSP have-together with Israel's Peace Now; Brit Tzedek; Yesh Gvul; B'Tselem; Jewish Voice for Peace; Rabbis for Human Rights; Uri Avnery and Gush Shalom; Women in Black; the Israeli Refuseniks; Haaretz columnists such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy; M.J. Rosenberg and the Israel Policy Forum; the Washington-based Foundation for Middle East Peace; Gershon Baskin's Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information; and dozens of local organizations in the United States and Israel-created the movement that J Street now is trying to convene in Washington, but without giving its progressive wing adequate voice.
Most of the people who will come to D.C. are people whose ideas were shaped in part by what they read in Tikkun, or by learning from others who had written in or read Tikkun. Many of the people listed on J Street's website are people who have written in Tikkun or are members of Tikkun's editorial board or the NSP's advisory board. Understandably, as people who have invested our lives in this struggle and suffered much abuse for doing so, it hurts our feelings when we are excluded by J Street. This is also our movement-Tikkun is the movement's most widely read journal and most frequently quoted international voice, and Tikkun deserves a place of respect in it, not only because it is the honest and just thing to do, but because the movement for peace and justice in the Middle East must be inclusive of all those who seek a two-state solution based on a spirit of generosity, compassion for both sides, and reconciliation.
So of course, we will be there at the J Street Conference. We will be there because we care too much about the success of J Street to watch it narrow the scope of its potential coalition in ways that will weaken it. We will be there because J Street needs the breadth of our members and our readers. We will be there because the coalition that J Street brings together needs to consider the perspective that Tikkun can bring to the table. And we will be inviting J Street to similarly be there with us next June 11-14 when we bring people to D.C. to support the forces of peace and justice-we will invite its members because we intend to do everything possible to gain more attention and support for J Street.
Our publisher made a point that has also been made to us by some members of our editorial board: "a prophetic voice is always viewed as disruptive and outside the mainstream-but prophetic voices turn the long arc of history toward justice, and we are seeing increasing recognition of your prophetic voice in the mainstream and the only way history will continue to bend is by prophets staying in front of the arc."
Tikkun has been that prophetic voice for the past twenty-three years, the most frequently quoted voice of a loving and Judaism-based critique of Israeli policy and the moral and spiritual failures of the American Jewish community. Inevitably, in the process, we've ruffled many feathers! We approach that critique with sadness, not with joy, both because we recognize that the Jewish people are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and because we know that recovery requires not only critique but also a massive dose of compassion. We continue to try our best to both articulate the critique and to emphasize the compassion and the love we have for the Jewish people, Israel, and God. And we are willing to acknowledge that providing space in our magazine for the prophetic critique while trying simultaneously to be supportive and compassionate has been a difficult balancing act, and that at times we've appeared too compassionate to some, too critical to others. So, in this season of repentance, we ask forgiveness for where we've made mistakes, even as we renew our commitment to being that prophetic voice.
Meanwhile, please help keep our voice alive by joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives as a dues-paying member (you then get Tikkun magazine as a benefit) at www.spiritualprogressives.org.
In an age in which print magazines are falling like flies-as readers' attention spans shorten and many turn to the Web, never asking themselves how progressive voices are going to be sustained if no one pays for them-we really need your support!
