Dr. Tony Klug asks "Are Israeli Policies Entrenching Anti-Semitism Worldwide?" in the May/June Tikkun. Join us Monday night, May 3, for a Phone Forum with Klug, or listen to the recording later.

Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law prof and well known civil liberties lawyer, wrote a fierce attack this week on Judge Goldstone, and those rabbis who supported him in his efforts to have a bar mitzvah for his grandson in their home country of South Africa that he could attend, without major protests from rightwing Jews that would draw all the attention away from the boy and towards himself. Dershowitz singled out our own Michael Lerner as the rabbi most worthy of criticism, for honoring Goldstone with the Tikkun Award. (If you haven’t followed the whole saga of Goldstone’s UN report on Israel’s Gaza invasion, see Tikkun‘s interview with him).

However, the protests against the protests worked, the South African Jewish community saw sense, and Goldstone was able to attend the ceremony (see Haaretz‘s report, and Goldstone’s thanks to Lerner on our site).

Richard Silverstein took apart Dershowitz’s post on his blog yesterday, showing how many outright inaccuracies and distortions he had perpetrated. If you want a full description of the Goldstone Bar Mitzvah affair go here.

Comments from two women today at Tikkun. This by email:

I just read about your award for goldstone [sic] and I’m disgusted and nauseated. I’m sorry that I don’t subscribe to your rag, because I can’t terminate my (non-existent) subscription, which I would most certainly do. … the award is a large dose of Jewish self-hate.

This comment just went up on our site:

I am so pleased to read this email from Judge Goldstone. The Jewish persecution of this Jewish judge, who so clearly operates within the best traditions of Judaism, has been disturbing to watch. I commend Tikkun for singling out Judge Goldstone for the Tikkun Award: I feel certain that it is important for him to know that he has the support of righteous Jews. David Shasha’s recent article, “What Israel means to me,” helps to put the shameful treatment of Judge Goldstone in its proper context. I hope all Tikkun readers will consult it.

Clearly both women care deeply for the future of Israel. The question is, how is that future best secured? By challenging Israel to abide by the highest Jewish and universal standards of ethical conduct, or by excoriating those who call for Israel to do so, as Dershowitz for example does in his post? The May/June Tikkun, out tomorrow, carries a major article that answers that question boldly. It’s by Tony Klug, the well-known English commentator on the Middle East, and it’s called Are Israeli Policies Entrenching Anti-Semitism Worldwide? Some quotes:

Even posing the question is painful, for after all the suffering anti-Semitism has caused the Jewish people over the centuries, the last thing we need or deserve is to have it become a permanent state of affairs. Nonetheless, the proposition that the State of Israel, which was conceived as a way of normalizing relations between Jews and all other peoples, might instead be normalizing anti-Semitism is not one we can simply close our eyes to in the forlorn hope that it will go away of its own accord….

Our starting point – regrettably not a controversial one – is that there has been a disturbing rise of anti-Jewish sentiment around the world in recent years. Reports of this rise may occasionally be exaggerated or distorted, but they are not invented out of thin air. But why has this come about?

Klug outlines the various theories that try to account for this, including the influence of alleged “self-hating Jews.” When he gets to the actions of Israel’s government itself, he writes:

Shorn of the hysteria, and with exceptions, a lot of the opposition to Israel’s actions has little or nothing to do with it being a Jewish state. Had it been a Hindu or a Buddhist state, for example, the Palestinians would have been no less embittered if the state in question had dispossessed them and then proceeded to dispossess them further. And it would still have attracted the opprobrium of people around the world, plenty of Jews included, who held a commitment to basic justice and fairness and the right to self-determination – the very attributes that, at an earlier point in time, underpinned widespread sympathy for a Jewish state.

Read it all here, and join us on Monday night when I will interview Tony Klug on the Tikkun Phone Forum. It’s a free call for our subscribers and members who keep us afloat, and if you haven’t subscribed to Tikkun, or joined the NSP, or donated, please do! Our survival depends on you. The call is at 6 PM Pacific time, 9 PM Eastern, and that means Tony will be speaking to us at 2 AM from England — but he assures me he’s a night owl.

Call 1 888 346 3950 and ENTER CODE 11978#. Details here. If you miss the call, you can listen to a recording here later, when our volunteer has edited it and posted it as an MP3.