Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun and, with Cornel West and Susannah Heschel, co-chair of The Tikkun Community. He is author of "Spirit Matters." He is participating in a teach-in today, April 28.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Every day, I receive anguished letters,
e-mails and phone calls from members of my congregation and others who have been
tagged with the label "self-hating Jews." Why? Solely because they've raised
questions about Israel's policy toward Palestinians.
There is something
deeply hurtful about that term and about the way the Jewish community is
treating its dissenters, something reminiscent of the cultural repressiveness of
1950s McCarthyism and its labeling of dissidents as "anti-American." Jews in
America are all Jews by choice. Those who wish to leave their religion and
ethnicity behind can easily do so. Increasing numbers, when asked about their
ethnicity or religion, answer, "my parents are Jewish," indicating that they no
longer feel connected to that identity. But most Jews don't make that choice.
They feel a special resonance with the history and culture of a people that has
proclaimed a message of love, justice and peace while others pursued paths of
cruelty and domination. They feel a special pride in being part of a people that
has insisted on the possibility of "tikkun," a Hebrew word expressing a belief
that the world can be fundamentally healed and transformed. They know that the
Jews have paid dearly for that belief, and, though they are angry at the history
of anti-Semitism and convinced that no one should ever have to endure again what
we endured from Christian Europe, they are also proud that Jewish values kept us
from becoming like our oppressors.
A Los Angeles Times poll in 1988 found
that some 50% of Jews surveyed identified "a commitment to social equality" as
the characteristic most important to their Jewish identity. Only 17% cited a
commitment to Israel. Similar statistics have been reported many times in the
subsequent 14 years by other pollsters. No wonder, then, that these
social-justice oriented American Jews should feel betrayed by Israeli policies
that seem transparently immoral and self-destructive.
All of us are
outraged at the immoral acts of Palestinian terrorists who blow up Israelis as
they sit at a Seder table, or shop in their stores, or sit in cafes or ride in
buses. We know that these acts cannot be forgiven, no matter how they have been
provoked.
But many of us also understand that Israeli treatment of
Palestinians has been immoral and outrageous. Hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians fled their homes in 1948, and recent Israeli historical research
has shown that most of them fled not because they were responding to the appeal
of Arab leaders, but because they were terrified at the acts of violence by
right-wing Israeli terrorists or because they were actually physically forced
from their homes by the Israeli army. (The slaying of some 250 Palestinian
civilians in a town that had indicated loyalty to Israel, Deir Yassin, was
intentionally aimed at convincing Palestinians that they would not be safe in a
new Israeli state, no matter how much they wished to live in peace.) Palestinian
refugees and their families now number more than 3 million, and many live in
horrifying conditions in refugee camps under Israeli military
rule.
Despite Israel's promises in 1993 at Oslo to end its occupation of
the Palestinian territories by May 4, 1999, the actual path Israel took was the
opposite. After a right-wing Israeli murdered peace-oriented Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, Israel actually increased the number of West Bank settlers, from
around 120,000 in 1993 to some 200,000 by the time Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak met with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat at Camp David. And
though the Israeli and U.S. media bought the myth that what had been offered to
Palestinians was "the best they could expect," and that hence their rejection of
the offer was proof that they wanted nothing less than the full destruction of
Israel, the actual details show a quite different story. Not only did Barak
offer Arafat less than had been promised in 1993, but he refused to provide
anything at all in the way of reparations or compensation for the refugees.
Instead, he insisted that Arafat sign a statement saying that the terms being
offered by Barak would end all claims by the Palestinian people against Israel
and would represent a resolution of all outstanding issues. No Palestinian
leader could have signed that agreement and abandoned the needs of those
refugees.
Though it is popularly thought that negotiations ended there,
in fact they continued at Taba until Ariel Sharon's election ended the process,
one which, according to the then-Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin (writing
recently in the New York Times), was very close to arriving at a full agreement
between the two peoples.
Sharon did not want that agreement, because he
had always opposed any deal that would involve abandoning the West Bank
settlements, which he had helped establish in the 1980s--precisely to ensure
that Israel would never abandon the occupied territories. Using the excuse of
responding to the (totally immoral and unacceptable) acts of terror by some
Palestinians, Sharon has recently set out to destroy the institutions of
Palestinian society, and they have done so brutally, with great harm to many
civilians.
No wonder, then, that many Jews would feel deeply upset by
Israeli policies. On the one hand, they can see that the policies are leading to
a frightening upsurge of anti-Semitism. On the other hand, they can see that the
policies are not providing security for Israel, but instead creating new
generations of future terrorists and convincing the world that Israel has lost
its moral compass.
Still, many Jews and non-Jews have been intimidated by
the intense campaign being waged on behalf of Israeli "political correctness."
Organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and by other
Jewish institutions, they label those critical of Israel "self-hating" if they
are Jewish or anti-Semitic if not. They mobilize large amounts of money to
defeat candidates deemed insufficiently pro-Israel. Many rabbis and
professionals have told me recently that they fear for their jobs should they
even begin to articulate their doubts about Israeli policy--much less give
explicit support to calls for an end to the occupation.
Yet, far from
being self-hating, Jews are affirming the highest values of their culture and
religion when they conclude that being pro-Israel today requires pushing Israel
to end the occupation and break the cycle of violence on both sides.
Many
American Jews understand the need in today's world to abandon chauvinism and
insistence on Jewish "specialness." We need instead to affirm those parts of
Jewish tradition that lead us to be able to recognize the spirit of God in every
human being on the planet, and to recognize that our security will come not from
more armaments for Israel, but from more love and connection between the Jewish
people and all other peoples. There is no special path to Jewish safety and
security that does not also lead us to global safety and security for all
peoples.
I have great compassion for Jews who can't imagine a world in
which other people can be trusted. The horrors of the Holocaust continue to
reverberate. But if we allow that fear to shape our current perceptions of
possibility, we will self-fulfillingly recreate the very world of antagonism
toward Jews that we feared--and that would give Adolf Hitler a posthumous
victory. The best response to the hatred of the past is to pursue a path that
affirms love, justice and peace, and rejects the "realists" who insist that our
only security lies in military domination over the Palestinian people.
It
is time for the U.S. to sponsor a multinational force to physically separate and
protect Israel and Palestine from each other, and to then convene an
international conference to impose a final settlement. The settlement would
include an end to the occupation, evacuation of the settlements, reparations for
Palestinian refugees (and also for Jews who fled Arab lands), recognition of
Israel by surrounding Arab states and an end to all acts of terror and violence.
This is the goal of thousands of American Jews and our non-Jewish allies--who
have recently formed the Tikkun Community--a progressive pro-Israel
organization. Unwilling to be considered traitors and no longer sure that
Jewishness is worth preserving if it means the Jewishness of Sharon, we have
joined together because we are not willing to allow our culture and religion to
lose its prophetic message of generosity, compassion and open-heartedness.
("Thou shalt love the stranger.") No surprise that we have been greeted by some
Jews with their favorite mantra: You are self-hating Jews.
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