In Defense of Annapolis / Ori Nir, spokesman, Americans for Peace Now
Pundits and analysts seem to be competing over who can be more dismissive of the Annapolis conference. A “charade,” a “mere photo-op,” a “parody” - are some of the kinder expressions used to trivialize the gathering by those who seem happy to bury it before it is born.
These nattering nabobs of negativity – to borrow William Safire’s phrase – are both wrongheaded and wrong.
They are wrong because the Annapolis summit is not intended to result in peace now. It is intended to launch a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is intended to make a statement that bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are resuming and that this time negotiations are based on a sounder, more promising foundation. Annapolis is not intended to be a venue for negotiations. It is rather a beginning of a new, somewhat different Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process.
The Annapolis conference is supposed to generate drama. Call it a photo-op. Call it a media event. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will mark the beginning of a process and that it does so with some drama.
How is this process different? First - for the firs time - it is sponsored by an American administration that says it views Israeli-Palestinian peace as a vital U.S. national security interest. The administration apparently recognizes now how much Israeli-Palestinian peace could help America achieve its goals in the region, particularly its efforts to curtail the regional influence of Islamist militants led by Iran. Second, for the first time, there is broad Arab support for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Third, there is a Palestinian partner who is regarded as legitimate and credible by Israel, the U.S. and other stakeholders in the peace process. Fourth, there is a mutual commitment by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to steer the negotiating process toward resolving the “core issues” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while detangling the complex reality on the ground of the West Bank.
For those who support a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace – a large majority of Israelis and American Jews do, as do most Palestinians – this new process is an exciting development. But there is little excitement, whether in Israel or on the other side of the Atlantic
Unfortunately, past failures, violence and the lack of any significant positive movement in the seven years that passed since the collapse of the Barak-Arafat negotiations have left almost everyone weary, skeptical and cynical.
That’s why drama is important. An impressive event in Annapolis might could rekindle some hope and trust in the viability of a negotiated peace process. If that happens – and there is good reason to believe it will - the conference will have achieved significant success. That is why eulogizing the conference before it happens is simply wrong.
Obviously, garnering enthusiasm for the relaunched peace process is but a means to an end. For this process to succeed, Israelis and Palestinians must follow through with real negotiations and with on-the-ground implementation of peace-oriented measures. The U.S. government must follow-up with robust leadership and. The Arab world and international community must demonstrate real support. Such follow-up efforts could turn into a credible, ongoing process. We will probably refer to it in the future as the “Annapolis process.”
Focusing on the Annapolis conference rather than on the Annapolis process is not only wrong. It’s wrongheaded. Done right, the process may bring about the peace that Israelis so yearn for, peace not only with the Palestinians but with Syria and Lebanon, as well as normalization with the entire Arab world.
Israelis don’t need American naysayers. They need American friends who can influence America’s government to stay engaged and steer a responsible, credible diplomatic process that will provide peace with security for a democratic Jewish state.
PermaLink
Inviting Syria To Annapolis Would Violate U.S. Law / Stuart Ditchek,
As the U.S. gears up for the Annapolis Middle East conference, an invitation and enticement for the Syrians to join is being carried out. While including the Syrians in a peace conference might be a political consideration, it would constitute a violation of United States Public Law 106-89 (“The Zachary Baumel Law”).
Zachary Baumel is an American-Israeli citizen who was captured by combined Syrian and Palestinian forces during the Lebanon War’s battle of Sultan Yakoub in 1982. He has been held by the Syrians with no reports of his whereabouts since he and his tank crew were beaten and paraded through the streets of Damascus on the day of the battle. His parents, American citizens, live in Jerusalem and along with me have carried out a 25-year campaign to gain information on his status, dead or alive.
To date the Syrians and Palestinians have stonewalled all efforts.
Several years ago, information was gained which indicated that Zack was alive and being held in a Syrian military instillation. Efforts were renewed to pressure the Syrians to cooperate but without results. As Zachary Baumel’s legal guardian in the United States, I have since filed a hallmark lawsuit against the president and government of Syria in Washington, DC district court under the exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Syrians have never responded to the lawsuit. We will soon be pursuing the State and Justice Department to freeze and liquidate all Unite States based Syrian assets.
In November 1999, “The Zachary Baumel Law” was passed by Congress and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. The law clearly states that the Secretary of State must continuously raise the issue of Baumel and his crew with all governments and authorities involved, specifically the Palestinian Authority and the Syrians until they cooperate with inquiries. It further details that no assistance can be provided to these entities until they cooperate. I would specify that during the Oslo accords, Yasir Arafat was pressured to hand over half of Baumels’ dog tags to Yitzchak Rabin and promised to tell Rabin what Zack’s status was as soon as he got everything he wanted from the negotiations. He never followed through on the promise.
The United States government has been in frequent violation of this law since providing the Palestinian Authority with material assistance for years. Should they greet the Syrians at Annapolis, this will compound these violations. The catch lies in the subtle “precatory” exception written into the law. This means that if the president of the United States decides that the law should not be enforced, it can be ignored. The question must be raised as to why a law would be written with such an exception other than to satisfy political expedience. The answer lies in the sometimes not fully forthcoming foreign policy of the United States government as it pertains to the Palestinian Authority.
Giving the Syrians a seat at Annapolis would require President Bush to allow Secretary of State Rice to utilize this Presidential precatory exception. His conscience should not allow him or any other president to do so.
My commitment as Zack’s friend is to be the voice of one who cannot speak for himself. In a resounding voice of Zachary Baumel, he and his family say no! The fact that the Palestinian Authority has been given a pass for all these years since Oslo is painful enough for the family of an MIA and a United States citizen. Allowing the Syrian government that is holding Baumel to the Annapolis summit would be an insult that they could not and should not bear.
PermaLink
Immigration Reform Retreat: Why Jews Should Care / Lisa Shuger Hubliz, Washington director, The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
With the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress in June of this year, not only have the prospects for a reasonable and humane fix any time soon to our broken immigration system decreased considerably, but it appears that an all-out assault on immigrants, reminiscent of backlashes we’ve seen in the past, especially against Jews after the creation of national origin quotas in the 1920s.
As a people historically all too familiar with outsider status, and based on our religious and ethical teachings and values, there is a clear and firm foundation for Jewish involvement in the current immigration debate. Jews have long understood what it means to come to a country in search of freedom, opportunity, and to be with family members. Like our grandparents and great-grandparents who benefited from these opportunities and along the way made this country better – economically, politically, culturally, and in many other ways – today’s immigrants want these same opportunities for themselves and their families. They want to contribute to their new homeland and become full participants in American society and should not be denied that same opportunity.
In spite of its support to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill across the finish line, the Bush Administration recently released a 26-point plan containing enforcement-only measures that unfairly and unreasonably hampers the lives of undocumented immigrants who are only here to work hard and make important and necessary contributions to this country. Shortly after the release of this plan, the draconian enforcement-only Sensenbrenner bill of 2005 was reincarnated by Senators Kyl (R-AZ), Sessions (R-AL), McCain (R-AZ), and Graham (R-SC). Senators Specter (R-PA) and Martinez (R-FL) are also cosponsors of this legislation. This bill would supercharge immigration arrests, raids, and detention, all while rolling back legal protections and due process for immigrants, and include a provision that would make it a criminal offense to be out of immigration status.
While it is not surprising that some in Congress would continue their pursuit of legislation that focuses entirely on enforcement measures, it is extremely curious and downright disturbing that the Administration and Senators McCain, Graham, Kyl, and Specter, who were ardent supporters of the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill, would turn their backs on immigrants and a comprehensive approach.
It seems they have opted to secure political points rather than to secure our borders, adopting an enforcement-only strategy that ignores an entire population of undocumented immigrants already here in this country. Abandoning efforts that would provide hard-working immigrants the opportunity to get on the right side of the law combined with tough enforcement policy does nothing to bolster our national security and stem the tide of illegal immigration.
For the past several years, HIAS has consistently urged Congress and the Administration to enact legislation that does both by: offering a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows; creating wider legal channels for future workers and worker protections; reuniting families; and including enforcement and border security measures that are tough, effective, and humane.
To abandon this effort and move so far in the wrong direction creates more systemic dysfunction and anti-immigrant backlash, neither of which we, as a nation, can afford to do. Only by channeling the current undocumented flow into a legal and orderly system that is secure and protects human and civil rights at the same time will we truly be able to secure our borders and more easily distinguish between those who mean to do us harm and those who only seek to work or reunite with family. Rejecting a compassionate approach in favor of one that is harsh and unrealistic is simply not a solution.
We agree that our borders must be secure. However, the only way to stop illegal immigration is to develop a national policy that is truly comprehensive and will effectively fix our broken immigration system.
PermaLink
Two Views on Christian Zionism
(Editors note: Christian Zionists such as Pastor John Hagee, president of Christians United for Israel, have become an increasingly vocal pro-Israel force. Here a leading advocate of close cooperation between Jewish and Christian pro-Israel groups – and leading critics of the Christian Zionists – make their cases.)
An Unseemly Prejudice / David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel (CUFI).
For the long and lonely centuries of our Diaspora in Christian lands, we Jews prayed to be left alone. For almost two millennia, all we wanted was for the Christians in whose midst we lived to agree to disagree with us on theology and to let us practice our faith without persecution or coercion.
In America, we have found such an existence alongside our gentile friends and neighbors. And, in recent years, we have found even more than cold neutrality. We are now seeing a growing movement of evangelical Christian Zionists who see past our theological differences and passionately want to focus on what we share as Jews and Christians. These Christian friends have a 3-point agenda:
- To thank us for giving them the fundamentals of their faith, from the Bible to that Jewish Rabbi named Jesus;
- To ask forgiveness for the atrocities committed against us by prior generations of Christians; and
- To stand with us in support of Israel so that future atrocities can be avoided.
But instead of thanking God for answering our prayers, we have found reasons to complain. We are, after all, still Jews. Now we are the ones who are often unwilling to agree to disagree on theology. Representatives of our community now point to various tenets of Christian theology as a basis for rejecting so many hands extended in friendship.
What is even more troubling is the fact that so many of the complaints about Christian Zionists are based on myths about Christian beliefs with no basis in reality.
Many critics repeat the urban myth that Christians support Israel merely to speed the Second Coming of Jesus, at which point the Jews get killed or converted. Others ignore a clear record to the contrary to insist that Christians support Israel merely to convert us in the here or now. Still others look down their noses at Christian positions on social issues and declare that they – open minded people that they are – cannot partner with those who dare to disagree with us on abortion or gay marriage.
This nonsense about Armageddon is particularly offensive. As a people who have suffered persecution flowing from lies about our beliefs, we should be the last to embrace and repeat lies about other faiths. We all know how much Jewish blood was spilled over the libel that Jews need the blood of a gentile to make their matzah. Shame on us if we participate in repeating a new blood libel which claims that Christians support Israel merely to speed the widespread bloodshed that will accompany Armageddon. This claim demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of Christian theology. And it reveals an unseemly prejudice against the religious “other.”
It is odd that we Jews would seek to invent enemies when reality already supplies us with such an abundance of them. Even here in America, the threats are growing. The likes of Jimmy Carter , Walt and Mearsheimer are spreading a very big lie – that if America only abandoned Israel, the terrorists would leave us alone. In the face of this distortion, we find so many fair-weather friends running for the exits. The Christian Zionists, by contrast, want to stand with us and work with us to maintain American support for Israel.
As a people who have had such a solitary walk through history, we are blessed to find ourselves with so many new and enthusiastic allies. If those who don't like our Christian friends wish to remove themselves from the scene and lick their imaginary wounds, this is their right. But they mustn't be permitted to spread lies or misinformation which will poison a very important and beautiful new friendship. Sometimes, even a club that would have us as members is still a club very much worth joining.
“Apocalyptic Fixation” /
Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak and Jane Hunter, editors of JewsOnFirst.org .
Christian Zionism is an extreme modern apocalyptic movement that shares with Nazi philosophy the paranoid idea that Jews and Judaism are the central actors in the world. Both movements seek the eventual dismantling of the Jewish people and Jewish faith - Nazism by death and Christian Zionism by conversion to Christianity of a remnant of Jews, who will finally learn their "lesson" from the death of most of the Jewish people at Armageddon (Ir Megiddo); then the "left-behind" remnant is expected to commit apostasy by converting to Jesus worship.
All the Christian Zionists' expressions of love and friendship -- all their farm aid (including red heifers to use in revived temple sacrifices) and help for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel -- are preparations for genocide by remote control.
Christian Zionism entirely ignores Jewish/Zionist aspirations for normalcy. Zionism was to be a new start for Judaism and the Jewish people living enlightened lives in peace. Instead Christian Zionism encourages the Israeli government and the US Jewish organizational leadership on a path toward enmity with the Palestinians and disrespect for Islam.
Most of what has been written about Christian Zionism by Jews (for example, Yechiel Eckstein's The Journey Home, and CUFI Executive Director David Brog's Standing with Israel: Why Christians support the Jewish state, and Zev Chafets' A Match Made in Heaven) projects a romantic version of Zionism that assumes maximum claims for land and barely nods to pragmatic political considerations. Virtually the entire pantheon of Zionist thinkers from Theodore Herzl to David Grossman and Amos Elon saw peace with Arab neighbors as the culmination of the Zionist dream, not as an impossibility.
Jewish organization leaders may laugh off their Christian Zionist friends' apocalyptic fixation. These leaders are less convincing when they pass on guarantees from Hagee and his ilk that they will not evangelize the Jews with whom they work. Max Blumenthal's recent video showed the emphasis Hagee followers place on converting Jews to Christianity.
And beyond evangelizing, there is disparagement of Judaism -- notably Hagee's statement last year on Fresh Air casting Jews as Christ killers when he "clinched" a volley with host Terry Gross about the necessity of professing belief in Jesus: He said "Now, when it comes to the Jewish people, Zechariah very clearly says that they are not going to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah until they see him. Zechariah says in the 14th chapter `and when they, the Jewish people, see him whom they have pierced'--and the word pierced there actually refers to his rib and side--`when they see him whom they have pierced, they will weep as one weeps for his only son for a period of one week. They're simply not going to believe he is the Messiah until they actually see him, and that's at the Second Coming."
PermaLink
More on Sudan: Be Wary of War Option / Rabbi Steve Gutow
(Editors Note: recently Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, wrote a Machers Blog item chastising Jewish groups involved in the fight to end the genocide in Darfur for their unwillingness to consider military solutions to the problem.
Here is a response from Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs – and the board chair of the Save Darfur Coalition.)
Goodness, Shoshana's simple answer seems so easy. Why not walk in with troops and teach those animals in Khartoum once and for all that we mean business and that their genocide must stop? The United States could do that. Our power is great. Thursday, I took a taxi to Reagan in DC and listened to a cab driver from Sierra Leone attack a "bullying" United States in a way so venomous that I had to shout back just to maintain my conscience.
I hate the policies of the Khartoum regime, hate them enough to fill up my days as co-chair of the interfaith, intergroup Save Darfur Coalition---no rest for the weary, particularly when Sudan’s devastation of Darfur is the main genocide in town. I have toyed with, challenged the State Department with, and tried to ingest the idea of unilateral war as the answer. It is not.
There is a world of worries and they are not minor ones. At the outset, I enter this debate as one who believes that 'war is hell' not to be entered into lightly without a moral and just reason, without a winning plan, and without an easy to understand and embrace endgame.
Sudan-- even though it would be difficult to deny that the main perpetrator is al-Bashir, there are many unclean hands among the tribes of Darfur. That does not obviate the idea of military action but it makes it less simple. We are doing this to take power from one tyrant and give it to_____? Or are we assuming that we will just maintain the place ourselves? Not often a good plan!
Add the DC taxi-driver factor into the mix--much of the world sees us as bullies who cannot keep our greedy hands to ourselves. Iraq is not seen by third worlders, second worlders, or allied first worlders as a moment of American idealism. Our standing, our ability to lead is at a nadir and we have some major challenges ahead.
If we walk in to Sudan as bulls in china shops, will we merely infuse the Arab and Moslem world with a sense of deja-vu; of we need to stop the 'great Satan'; of let's rally around he flag of Allah and stop these evil monsters before they eat us. If we do this little 'let's have a fight on the playground' scene, will Europe just sit back and say, 'There they go again' and lessen its already tenuous connections to a nation they used to see as an ally. Is there an end-game? G-d knows that whatever endgame we imagined in Iraq when the warriors decided that we should engage there has taken us into an unintended and seemingly endless purgatory.
I do not want 'war' off the table. I want to think about the efficacy of war, unilaterally and more optimistically, in coalition. If not war, there may well be other strong avenues of force such as no-fly zones and strategies to stop flows of arms to Sudan but to suggest that there are no more peaceful avenues to resolution may sound good in some corners but they do not hold water in the real world.
Looking at the recent success in North Korea might give the libido for armed conflict a little pause; most recognize the power of sanctions and political pressure in stopping apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, the horrific slaughters in South Sudan by this same Khartoum regime were stopped by economic and political pressure just a few short years ago.
Those of us who want to stop the slaughter will continue to do all the things that Shoshana seemed to dismiss. We will hang banners, support divestment, urge the country and the world to take stronger and stronger economic and political action. We will try and pressure China to exert more pressure and we will use the Olympics to help increase such pressure. When we say 'war', we are walking in a very dangerous minefield.
Perhaps, we should go in that direction but not flippantly and without the kind of full analysis and thought that should precede any such action. War is Hell for sure and we best be very, very wary of hell.
PermaLink
Getting It on the Environment / Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin in Baltimore
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why more people don’t get it. The truth is this: we are killing ourselves, and it is happening a lot faster than we thought. The glaciers are melting; the sea-level rising; droughts are persisting; floods are raging; crops are failing; people are dying all because we are entrenched in a dead-end, cat-in-a-sack misguided pursuit of energy sources.
Cushioned Americans may be the last to feel it. But here’s the bottom-line: there is nothing that we do that does not begin and end with the earth and its treasures. If we trash them or exhaust them or otherwise debase and abuse them, they will either rear up and attack us (as in hurricanes and floods) or collapse in a heap before us (as in our water tables, wildlife and perhaps even life-giving bees). Either way, we are doomed.
You don’t have to be an environmentalist or activist or visionary to be moved to do something. You only need to be a realist to see that our Twentieth Century technologies and our Twenty First Century appetites are bound in a self-destructive embrace. We have to intervene and realign these two.
The good news is that the solution is within our grasp. To make it happen, the Jewish community must get in the game big time. Now. We must focus on two things:
(1) We must use our celebrated minds and means to lead the charge in the next technological revolution. We need to re-focus our resources and creativity on designing and financing truly green energy, the kind that never runs out and that doesn’t leave any waste; the kind you don’t have to wrest from the earth but capture in mid-flight: sun rays, wind power and ocean movement. We should not spend a penny more on extracting fuels but on harnessing them. We should be designing ways to convert the inexhaustible pulsing of the universe into energy that lights our cities, runs our businesses, warms our homes, preserves our food and powers our transportation.
Jewish money and Jewish brains can once again help change this world for the better. It is something that the altruist and the greedy and all the folks in the middle can all agree on. For there is no doubt this frontier, like all those that came before it, will reward its pioneers with riches. But this time, everyone, including the earth, will benefit.
(2) We must use the teachings of our tradition to re-center our values. Modern society has made an idol out of engorgement. Bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger pay checks; bigger body parts; bigger portions. When the product is small, we market it with bigger packaging. We believe that bigger is happier, safer; that more is better. But we know, and studies tell us, that we are not one wit happier, and hardly healthier, have no more friends and no more leisure and no more pleasure, than our “smaller” parents and grandparents before us. The bulky, bulgy, bloated life doesn’t get us to Paradise. And yet we somehow delude ourselves into thinking that while this purchase or that paycheck or the last deal didn’t get us there, the next one surely will.
Sustainable satisfaction, true contentment, comes from a life lived in seeing the goodness we have, not the stuff we don’t. Judaism teaches us to dream and explore; to dare and innovate. It encourages enough dissatisfaction for progress and growth to thrive. That is what we do on the six work days. But it also teaches us to pause and rest and look and appreciate, and to see how little it takes to truly feel full. That is the magic of Shabbat, and a lesson the world needs to learn once again.
Shabbat does not come when our work is done. If that were the case, Shabbat would never come. Rather, our work is done when Shabbat comes. Amidst all that we don’t have, Shabbat shows us what we do have. Amidst our yearning for more, Shabbat shows us what we have in abundance. Paradoxically, it is in doing nothing but being with our friends and family; eating with them, talking with them and basking in their company; acknowledging our dependence on others and the world, that we grow sated, wise and happy.
Learning to hold these two in balance, desire and contentment, appetite and ease, is the grand message of Shabbat that we must again teach ourselves, and the world. And we haven’t a moment to lose.
PermaLink
From a synagogue Listserv: “A CLEAN CAR AND A CLEAN CONSCIENCE: Stop by on Memorial Day – between noon and 3:30 to support my tzedakah project and have your car washed. All donations to the Save Darfur Coalition. Thank you for your support!”
It was a Bar/Bat Mitzvah project, no doubt, and not to be mocked. But it begs the questions, “What are adult Jews doing about Darfur, and are we able to move beyond our political comfort zone even in the circumstance of genocide?”
Everybody wants to “Save Darfur.” Sermons, banners and “awareness raising” projects are fixtures in the Jewish community, but produce little more than the self-satisfaction of being ahead of the churches. Paying for “feeding stations” in refugee camps under attack is a sop to our conscience. Food is good, but in 1943 would it have been enough to demand that the Jews ate in Auschwitz? (“Never mind that oven over there.”) Enough to demand financial sanctions on Hermann Goering? Bombs on the railroad tracks would have been better.
President Bush has announced sanctions for Sudan, but sanctions hurt the weakest people, and anyhow have no traction in the UN where China protects Sudan’s government in exchange for oil drilling rights. Negotiations? Even the UN Special Envoy for Darfur admits, “Our peace strategy so far has failed. All we did was pick up the pieces and muddle through, doing too little, too late.” He asked the UN for a “force of… peacekeepers with the authority to use violence to prevent attacks against civilians and disarm militias.”
The death of nine "peacekeepers" in September makes it clear he means warfighters.
Militias, with government assistance and Chinese protection, are waging genocidal war against Darfur, and warfighters – people with the authority to use violence – are needed to protect the refugees and kill, yes kill, the perpetrators. Our own history tells us there is no reason to believe anything less will stop the ravaging of an already ravaged people.
The people of Darfur need American Jews – who have the political clout they don’t have – to argue the case for their salvation. But as a community, we rarely acknowledge that war can serve the interest of peace and have been unable to demand military intervention where it is needed. Instead we have made the case for ensuring that the victims die full.
To the extent that we only clean our cars for Darfur, we are cleaning our collective conscience at their expense.
PermaLink
