mondoweiss.net/2014/11/support-community-continues The following extract contains some valuable observations: While our own hearts and bodies are with these activists and with radical analysis, it’s also important to acknowledge a significant shift within Jewish-American liberal Zionism that has become evident this summer. High-placed liberal pundits who could always be counted on to support Israel in times of perceived crisis — Roger Cohen of the New York Times, Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine, Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, to name only a few — have been writing of their unease and even alarm over Israeli violence against Gazans and over the decline within Israel of what they regard as Jewish and as democratic values. These commentators always make a point of couching their critiques within assurances that they love and support Israel. Nonetheless, as they have witnessed an Israeli government that clearly has had no interest in pursuing peace with the Palestinians and that has tolerated blatant calls for ethnic cleansing (and worse) within its ranks, and seen how even the mildest dissent within Israel has been squelched, they have had to grapple with the contradiction in their abiding belief in a state that can be ethnocratically Jewish and a democracy. For activists who long stopped believing in — or never did believe in — this sentimental Zionism, such rhetoric can grate; the writers seem to be disturbed more by the discomfort of their cognitive dissonance than by the actual suffering of Palestinians. Even so, that they are revealing the contradiction in mainstream publications at the very least reveals the cracks in the bedrock of liberal Jewish-American support for Israel — and maybe even widens them. At the same time, The Forward, the national Jewish newsweekly, has published some critical news reports and analyses. For example the longtime columnist J. J. Goldberg had no compunctions about stating that, to gin up public support for the crackdown against Hamas and for war, the Netanyahu government lied about the status of the three Israeli boys who had been kidnapped; and the paper regularly publishes the even sharper graphic commentary by the cartoonist Eli Valley. Limited, yes, but still strong signs that the discourse is changing. One thing the history of left Jewish activism in the US might caution us against is making too much of the swelling ranks of Jewish-Americans speaking out against Israeli violence. The first intifada saw an unprecedented rise in anti-occupation organizing, by groups all over the country. Again, during the second intifada, Jews took to the streets and their local editorial pages throughout the US. And so it has gone with each escalation of hostilities: the mainstream Jewish organizations close ranks; the opposition gears up.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 08:40:54 +0000
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