In a much anticipated speech, the charismatic president, on a fleeting visit to Jerusalem, charmed and enthralled the audience and the wider Israeli public throughout the land.

His strategy soon became apparent. First, establish your credentials with assurances about the future safety of the state, underlining its right “to live … in peace and security”. Lest there be any doubt, stress that “… the United States, your first ally which is absolutely committed to safeguard Israel’s security and existence … offers Israel every moral, material and military support”.

Then press the more sensitive buttons: “… peace cannot be worth its name unless it is based on justice, and not on the occupation of the land of others”. Full peace was contingent on the “achievement of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian People and their right to self-determination, including their right to establish their own state”.

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) have introduced a bipartisan bill that seeks to codify – in unprecedented fashion – another country’s ability to discriminate against American citizens of Arab and Muslim descent.

The bill, the U.S.-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2013, contains a provision that would allow Israel to enter America’s “visa waiver” program. This is a program whereby citizens of another country are allowed to enter the United States without a visa, making it easier for them to visit America.

The U.S. currently has this agreement with 37 other countries, and as Glenn Greenwald reports, all of these countries fully reciprocate, making it easier for American citizens to similarly visit without a visa.

However, the current bill would, for the first time ever, allow another country (Israel) to enter the “visa waiver” program without having to fully reciprocate. See, Israel regularly refuses entry to Arab- and Muslim-Americans, as well as those who are publicly critical of Israel’s geo-political policies. Since this is not something Israel is willing to relinquish – modulating entry of American citizens based upon their ethnicity or religious affiliation for perceived security reasons – something had to be done.

And so, for the first time, the U.S. is poised to allow Israel entry into the “visa waiver” program while still allowing it to discriminate against American citizens. Meaning: no full reciprocity. Meaning: the codification of discrimination against Arab- and Muslim-Americans by an ally nation.

In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker had basically had it up to here with the Israeli government. The (George H.W.) Bush administration had been trying to entice Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir into negotiations with the Palestinians but he kept adding new conditions to get the United States off his back.

To be acceptable to Shamir, any Palestinian interlocutors had to have no connections with the PLO, none with any associates of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and could not be from Jerusalem. Beyond that, the Israelis would decide which Palestinians were acceptable as negotiating partners based on their idea of merit (only pro-Israel Palestinians would do, apparently).

Baker was fuming but held his tongue until he went before the House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss Middle East prospects. But then something happened and, for perhaps the last time ever, a top U.S. government official told the Israelis what he really thought.

First Baker said that he had intended to say that he was ready for a new start with the just re-elected Shamir government but he changed his mind on the way to the hearing. “I have to tell you, that before I came to this hearing this morning, I was given a copy of some wire reports, one of which quotes one of the ministers in the newly formed government,” he said.

Maybe I’m old school. But I was brought up to be grateful to the United States for being the best and safest home Jews have ever had.

My grandparents were immigrants who knew how lucky they were that they escaped Europe back at the beginning of the 20^th century especially after their siblings, and their siblings’ families who stayed behind, died in the Nazi death camps (one survived and made it to Israel after the war).

My parents were typical Americans of the World War II era. They loved this country, they loved Roosevelt and although Israel played a big part in their lives, this was their country just like English was their language and Judaism was their faith.

Salomon's self-portrait

Sunday, April 7, marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. This solemn day is commemorated annually by Jews around the world, recalling that from June 1941 until the end of the Second World War in Europe in May 1945, one-third of the world’s Jewish population perished in a systematic campaign of annihilation. But instead of acknowledging the impact of this mammoth horror on why most Jews support Israel as a Jewish state, many critics and opponents of Israel today denigrate this connection, with some even denying or downplaying the reality or magnitude of the Holocaust.

Surprisingly, much about this history remains to be learned. A recent NY Times article tells us that researchers have discovered evidence of “42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe,” rather than 7,000 sites thought previously to comprise this world of enslavement and genocide.

Suskind & daughter

In another few years there will be virtually no living witnesses. “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Schindler’s List” are iconic portrayals, but many more dramas transpired as well. It shouldn’t surprise us that literary and cinematic remembrances still proliferate.

The life and death of a 26 year-old artist, Charlotte Salomon, reminds us of Anne Frank. Although not a diarist, Salomon documented her family background in Germany and her life as a refugee in vivid color paintings (known as gouaches), framed with bits of narration akin to a graphic novel, presented as if an illustrated script for an opera representing her life, replete with stage directions and musical suggestions. (Her stepmother had been an opera singer.) Real-life characters are given different names, and some plot elements may have been invented, but the basic narrative of “Life? or Theatre? A Play with Music“ encapsulates Salomon’s life. Opinions differ as to whether she had a romance with her stepmother’s voice coach, as her work suggests, or if an infatuated young woman let her imagination take flight.

And just as there are by now thousands of survivors and descendants of people saved by Oskar Schindler, there are a similarly large number of Jews who owe their lives to the ingenuity and heroism of Walter Suskind. But this Jewish Schindler, his wife and young daughter all perished.

Barack Obama came to Israel and Palestine, saw what he wanted to see, and conquered the mainstream media with his eloquent words. U.S. and Israeli journalists called it a dream trip, the stuff that heroic myths are made of: a charismatic world leader taking charge of the Mideast peace process. But if the president doesn’t wake up and look at the hard realities he chose to ignore, his dream of being the great peacemaker will surely crumble, as it has before.

Like most myths, this one has elements of truth. Obama did say some important things. In a speech to young Israelis, he insisted that their nation’s occupation of the West Bank is not merely bad for their country, it is downright immoral, “not fair… not just … not right.”

A new Pew Research Center poll demonstrates that Republicans are much more sympathetic to Israel than Democrats, a wider partisan divergence than has ever existed before. The poll finds that when asked if their sympathies are more with Israelis or Palestinians, 66 percent of Republicans choose Israel compared with 49 percent of independents and just 39 percent of Democrats.

The divergence is significant for several reasons.

I’ve signed this petition, as have a wide array of public figures, artists and academics from across the political spectrum and of a variety of faiths — including such accomplished historians as Israel’s Yehuda Bauer, Canada’s Irving Abella, and David S. Wyman in the U.S. Israel’s initial welcome reception of African refugees has become unwelcoming and even ugly, as their numbers have grown precipitously. I begin with a note from Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, who initiated this petition (email him or contact the Wyman Institute to add your name):

As you know, Israel has been at the center of international controversy over its handling of African refugees who have been arriving at its border.

The interfaith petition below is intended to be signed by religious leaders of all faiths, scholars in all fields, organizational leaders, and political and cultural figures from around the world–we seek a broad cross-section of distinguished individuals to demonstrate the breadth of support for this effort. Once we have a sufficiently large and impressive body of signatories, we will present it to individual governments and press for its adoption.

The Hebrew University-Hadassah Genocide Prevention Program, and the Israeli Association to Combat Genocide, have endorsed this initiative. Would you do us the honor of allowing your name to be added to the list below?

With all best wishes,

Rafael Medoff, rafaelmedoff@aol.com

THE EVIAN DECLARATION
Israel and the African Refugee Crisis:
A WORLD SOLUTION FOR A WORLD PROBLEM

When Holy Week and Passover are the same week, the simultaneity reminds us that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a radical Jewish rabbi who called himself the Son of Man, teaching his followers to understand their tradition at its basic purpose – love for God and for all of God’s creation. The Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist began as a Passover meal, the purpose of which is to remember Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. Jesus instructed his disciples to use the table meal to remember him, and he gave a new commandment: Love one another.

Maundy Thursday commemorates this mandate to love. Thus, a Passover Maundy Thursday commemorates liberation and love.

Exodus (the movie)

I became interested in Israel/Palestine when I was a girl, and I saw Otto Preminger’s movie Exodus on television. The fine Paul Newman and the too cute Sal Mineo were fighting for the establishment of a Jewish state so that Jewish refugees from World War II could have a homeland. Their characters were handsome and brave and able to at once fall in love personally and remain committed to a larger cause. Newman, playing Ari Ben Canaan, and Mineo, playing Dov Landau, were the good guys. Dalton Trumbo wrote a screenplay that gives us much to contemplate, even today.

Catching up on some of the news stories I missed about President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel and Ramallah, it struck me how offensive his words and gestures must have been to Palestinians.

At every stop, he made clear that the United States is 100 percent on Israel’s side. Almost in so many words, he said that the United States and Israel are one.