Confessions Of A J Street Convert
by: Jeff Pozmantier on November 11th, 2011 | 9 Comments »
My self-discovery occurred on a drive to Austin two years ago. (It also occurred during my teenage years, but that’s a story for a different and possibly older audience.) After listening to a deeply unproductive discussion between several Palestinians and Israelis on a local radio station, one that was more the equivalent of a wrestling match than a debate, I had an epiphany.
Well two epiphanies: My tire was definitely flat and I was going to need to summon my “inner mechanic” along the side of the freeway. Plus, several minutes after the tire epiphany, while contemplating what to do about AAA’s two hour wait time, my mind wandered — in an intellectual not an Alzheimer’s sense — to a recent conversation with a local Jewish organizational official. Not because he promised that he could change my tire whenever I needed him to, although offering to fix flats might be an ingenious way for Jewish organizations to get a few extra bucks, but because his wait time was similar to AAA’s, if only I added two more zeroes and substituted years for hours: Fixing my tire might be possible in two hours andIsrael-Palestine peace might be possible in 200 years. I didn’t like either set of odds.
Why wait?
I realized that it was time to stop complaining about tires that don’t last long enough and people that are happy to wait forever. It was time to start doing something about both.
So I changed the tire myself. Then I considered possible ways to get to Israel and Palestine to accomplish my new mission: meeting with some of the key people who seemed to specialize in relating narratives and adopting short term tactics that brought them no closer to a resolution and also the ones who preached the necessity of a near term resolution. If I could get the meetings I wanted, my schedule would, quite self-evidently, be full. (I also realized about an hour later that my inner mechanic was not a very good tire changer so I pulled into a Sears and used the time to check flights to Tel Aviv.)
A few months later, I joined thirty J Street members in a series of meetings with various Israeli and Palestinian politicians, military officials, community leaders, and business people. We also toured Israel, Jordan and the West Bank. Which led to this discovery: The Jewish Federation trip I had been on the year before was, in some very important ways, like a first course.
It was an adult Birthright trip, only with much better lodging , food and choice of adult beverages. Also, while the Birthright trips and Occupy Wall Street prefer an economic model where no money is required to participate, the Federation trip organizers, and my wife, at least while shopping for all of our relatives, friends, neighbors, and what must have been all of their relatives, friends and neighbors, clearly had more interest in the fruits of capitalism.
That’s no criticism: My connection to Judaism and Israel was certainly enhanced. I was able to make some wonderful new Jewish friends in the three or four seconds of free time we had between the touring-eating-dancing-touring some more-eating some more-dancing some more-schedule. (Which culminated in a brilliantly implemented group fundraising EST session at an air force base one hour from our hotel. It’s hard not to raise your Federation pledge when you’re surrounded by military officials and 165 group members who are waiting on you to relay your MEANINGFUL TRIP MOMENT before they can get their dinner and bus ride back.)
Except for the lack of a Starbucks or Via instant coffee packets to help get me started in the morning, I have absolutely no regrets.Without the Federation trip, my interest in Israel and the Palestinian issues would not have been stimulated.
However, my closer attachment to Israel (and deeper interest in the issues) was formed on the J Street trip the following year. The interactions with Israeli and Palestinian politicians and security officials, and visits with people on both sides affected by the conflict, better framed the stumbling blocks and issues that needed to be resolved. But our West Bank sojourn in the latter part of the trip moved an academic and intellectual exercise in hotels and government buildings into the real “unreal” world of Hebron, a city that demonstrates daily how a dash of evil actions and splash of bad intentions can combine to create a truly dystopian society. Here, and other places similar to this, where Israelis and Palestinians share some degree of administrative or security control either in that city or in the surrounding areas, are where Palestinian and Israeli hatred and misunderstanding can breed and spread and act as an impediment to any final resolution.
All of the discussions and first hand observations helped me understand that it was possible, as a Jew, to have conflicting views on Israel and to even disagree publicly, but still remain a loyal fan of Israel with a desire to move Israel closer to the country envisioned by its founders. That will require Israel to reach a two state agreement with the Palestinians before Israel is forced to take steps that end its democratic nature.
Upon returning to Houston, I soon learned how easy it is to make statements or give speeches that are simultaneously interpreted as self-hating, brave, naive and loyal. That intra-Jewish battle was played out in a meeting I held with a large group of right-wing (but only on Israel) community leaders and others who felt some discomfort with various Israeli actions, but who were afraid to speak out unless they had the protection of a closed meeting where frank dialogue was encouraged.
Except I was too frank for some.
When I asked for the group to discuss various “hot button” topics, including the strategic benefit to Israel of allowing settlements in the West Bank, settlements most of the world other than Israel considers to be illegal,I received not a reply but a series of talking points: ‘Well, you know, the Palestinians are educated to hate Jews. Well, you know, the Palestinians won’t even recognize Israel. Well, you know, Israel is willing to meet, but the Palestinians won’t. They just want to drive Israel into the sea. Well, you know, the world treats Israel with a double standard. There’s rampant Arab racism and sexism, few civil rights and certainly no democracies. And Israel is attacked? And what about the missiles and rockets from Gaza? That’s not exactly a love note. Shame on you and other self-haters.’
I was off to an interesting start.
So, I pushed back in a self-hating kind of way: I decided to stipulate that everything just said may be one hundred percent accurate, but that the absolute correctness didn’t matter. (Maybe I was slowly returning to my formerly supportive Before J Street days before I was, through my naivety, swept up in some sort if pro-Palestinian orbit?) How could correctness not matter?
I gave my thoughts on my naivety:Because Israel needs Palestine to have its own state as badly as the Palestinians want to have their own state. Scoring talking points and weighing who is more or less right gets us back to scoring talking points and weighing who is more or less right, not forward toward a peace agreement.
I then asked how many in the group wanted Israel to retain strong support from America and the Jewish Diaspora but feared that a lack of resolution of the Israel-Palestine issues could impair that.
A few “yes, but not any time soon” replies spurred me on:So, if we agree that the lack of a peace agreement is a risk, even an unlikely risk, shouldn’t we encourage Israel to focus on the steps Israel needs to take to eliminate the risk completely?
I further explained: The reason I am a J Street fan is because J Street works to address my fear for Israel’s survival as a democracy, my fear that Israel’s actions are distancing itself from America and the Jewish Diaspora and my fear that Israel doesn’t recognize the need for more strategic and urgent moves to reach a peace agreement. J Street recognizes, as do many Israelis, that demonizing the Palestinians moves us not one step closer — in fact, it moves us many steps back.
My comments likely didn’t (and will never) change the minds of those professional tacticians who remain convinced that to defend Israel means to defend stasis or that to defend Israel means to beanti-Palestinian. But I am convinced that my journey was (and will contune to be) well worth every ‘self-hating’ step along the way. And it is a journey that every real supporter of Israel needs to take.
Although I applaud your willingness to open your mind to the realities of the situation that don’t get much play in the American mainstream media, I’m a bit troubled by your reasons for opposing the occupation (I’m assuming you do oppose the occupation, since this seems implicit in your article). All of them revolve around how the occupation is damaging to Israel, hindering its survival as a democracy and so on.
It is Palestinians, however, that have suffered far more from the occupation than Israel. I think that “distance” between Israel and us Diaspora Jews is a pretty minor problem compared to the ongoing violations of international law and the brutal oppression of the Palestinian people that manifests itself as enormous resource expropriation, housing demolitions, checkpoints, land theft to make way for settlements, years of imprisonment without trial, forced expulsion at times, the transformation of Gaza into a virtual prison, the continued exile of millions of Palestinians and their families from their homeland, and so on.
It’s deeply disturbing to me that someone, when expressing opposition to the occupation, would apparently ignore this and instead focus on the Israeli government’s horrific treatment of the Palestinians as something that is damaging to Israel. It’s actually fitting that you’re drawn to J Street, since I find one of the most repulsive aspects of what is essentially AIPAC-lite to be that it generally takes the same approach to the issue; for example, Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti tried to arrange a BDS debate with J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami and was told “We want to keep this debate inside the Jewish community” (http://maxblumenthal.com/2011/04/omar-barghouti-j-streets-ben-ami-has-jews-only-policy-on-bds-debates/).
I have to back up Jeff on this. Although I too wish to see the occupation and its attendant oppression against the Palestinians end, my primary motivation is for the well-being of my relatives and my people in Israel. Leaving aside the fact that Palestinians themselves have more than once sabotaged a peaceful resolution on offer and are therefore not 100% innocent, it is in the self-interest of Jews that a reasonable two-state solution be achieved. I’m sorry that this is not enough for Steve.
Steve, guys like you crack me up. Ok, here goes, and I’d really love an answer. Since in your mind this is all Israel’s fault it follows that if Israel only does A, B, and C. This would all be wound up by next Tuesday. Lets leave aside the concept that the Arabs are a bunch of tip toe through the tulips people who would never hurt a fly and are pushed into this by the Judeo-nazis. What is the plan. Your brilliant plan that you would enact if you were the PM of Israel.
Bill, are you aware that nothing you wrote is even vaguely relevant to my comment on this article? You seem to be suffering from a complete lack of basic reading comprehension skills.
Perhaps next time, if you are actually capable of something resembling intelligent thought, you could specifically quote the part of my comment in which I wrote something about “Judeo-nazis” (just to address the most inflammatory part of the libelous garbage you’ve spewed).
You seem to be an advocate of BDS. Which seems strangely reminiscent of Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Fuhrer. And “brutal oppression” of the palestinians can only by jackbooted oppression. Where am I wrong?
Maybe I was sick the day this was talked about in history class but I dont recall Hitler having a BDS plan. Also just as a friendly bit of advice ad hominem attacks are not really arguments against someones position.
If you don’t think boycotts and sanactions came in with the Nuremberg laws then perhaps a few books are in order
The Nuremberg laws don’t really resemble anything close to the BDS talked about in relation to Israel. There is no talk of making interfaith marriage illegal or forbidding people from flying the Israeli flag which are both key parts of the Nuremberg Laws. Also those laws were targeted at a group of people for being that group of people where as the BDS stuff is targeted at a group of people for performing a certain action. Thus they aren’t really all that similar at all other than the target in both cases are jewish. But one is because jews are jews and the other is because a certain group of jews behaves in a certain way. I imagine (though I dont know you so I could be wrong) you probably support sanctions against north Korea or Iran are those reminiscent of Hitler or because they aren’t jews then the similarity is lost?
Too cute by half Cameron. BDS is aimed at the existence of the state of Israel. Which post Babi Yar is the central enterprise of the Jewish people. The same has the Goldstone report precluding an Israeli right to self defense. So when the performance of the Israeli Philharmonic is disrupted and shut down in London don’t tell me its some sort of higher morality.