J Street’s Response to Eric Yoffe
Rabbi Eric Yoffe, President of the Union of Reform Judaism, recently took to the pages of The Forward to attack J Street for expressing skepticism about the Gaza adventure. You can read J Street’s response here. Key quote:
And, when tens of thousands of pro-Israel American Jews are joining with statements made by J Street, Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek, Israel Policy Forum and others calling for a ceasefire – it is simply wrong to call these views out of touch with Jewish sentiment.
American Jews are, as Rabbi Yoffie says, by and large sensible and centrist, and they support Israel in her hour of need. But many of those same Jews – and their friends who want the best for Israel – are well within their rights and within the centrist mainstream to question the wisdom of the actions taken this week, to question where they will lead and to ask the US and others to help bring an end to the violence as quickly as possible.
They are also in line with many in Israel, where on Friday, 30 peace organizations (including the Peres Center for Peace, the Geneva Initiative and Peace Now) signed a public call for an immediate ceasefire, joining such pillars of the national conscience as David Grossman and Amos Oz.
There’s more at the link. In addition to whatever I’ve already said about Gaza, let me just say that I find it very troubling how frequently rabbis in the United States decide that adhering to a strong form of Israeli nationalist politics is or ought to be constitutive of being Jewish. You see this all the time in the domestic context, of course, when it’s a commonplace of crank rightwing discourse that failing to muster enthusiasm about any American military endeavor no matter how misguided makes you somehow less American than the proponents of bloodshed. But that really is a crank rightwing position. And Rabbi Yoffe isn’t a rightwing crank — or, indeed, any kind of rightwinger at all. But it’s really just the same situation.
And I think that if people want to be honest, they need to ask themselves how many of them were sitting around the day before Israel started this action not only feeling that it would be smart for Israel to start a massive military action in Gaza but feeling so strongly about it that one would question the Jewish credentials and basic intelligence of anyone who didn’t agree. Frankly, I didn’t hear a lot of Americans taking that position. Then the Israeli government changed its policy, and a lot of Americans decided to agree with the new Israeli policy. Which is fine as far as it goes. But people who didn’t regard the previous policy as unconscionable at the time have no business suddenly deciding that it’s unconscionable to disagree with the new policy.
30 Responses to “J Street’s Response to Eric Yoffe”
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January 4th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Well, maybe he is, in many important ways, a rightwing crank.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
While I am much more in line with J Street than Yoffe on the Gaza operation generally, I think this is a misreading of what Yoffe was arguing. I don’t think his piece suggests that supporting Israel is “constitutive of being Jewish” or that J Street is somehow not really Jewish. Rather he just thinks that J Street is wrong.
January 4th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
“unconscienable” –> “unconscionable”
But to the topic, there’s no reason why people can’t be right- or left-wing cranks on one particular area as opposed to in-general.
The liberal who backs extreme Israeli militarism is one trope, or the moderate Democrat who’s an anti-Castro obsessive exile another, but I’ve known plenty of far right Republicans who think recreational drugs ought be perfectly legal (and not always because they personally used them) — even while abortion or homosexuality were outlawed. People are often inconsistent.
January 4th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
How could any religious leader condone this? (released by Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan).
January 4th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Greenwald has a solid post up about the excessive bonermongering of the “i think of israel when i jerk it” crowd.
January 4th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
HT to cd for the inappropriate laugh of the day.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
In retrospect, I’ve got to give credit to the English. I don’t recall many accusations of anti-anglicism flying around during the Troubles.
January 4th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Fortunately, the Government of Israel will not pay the slightest attention to the poopy heads over at J Street and will do what they have to do.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
You have to consider not only the number, but also the passion (and contributions) of the rabbinate constituency. You are looking at Jews who affiliate with a congregation, attend enough or contribute enough that the rabbi must acknowledge their views. When you narrow it to that audience then there is no question that Rabbi Yoffe is almost 100% supported in his view.
January 4th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
After all Matt, think about it. When was the last time you went to synagogue, identified yourself as a member of a congregation, or gave money to a synagogue? Hell, when was the last time you talked to a Rabbi in a religious context?
January 4th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I don’t recall many accusations of anti-anglicism flying around during the Troubles.
I do recall lots of American pols who, if they weren’t directly passing the hat for the IRA, were not averse to having the hat passed in their presence. Funny, the whole ‘taking sides’ thing.
January 4th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
I find it strange. I recall in Hebrew school when I was 9 or 10 being told that the only thing standing between the Jews and the next Holocaust was the state of Israel. Even accepting this entirely absurd premise, I still don’t see how you get from “the Jews need Israel” to “the Jews must be in lockstep with every policy of the current government of Israel.” I wonder would we still be hearing this strident nationalism if by some miracle a governing majority in Israel made dismantling the settlements and accepting a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 boundaries the official policy?
January 4th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
“Fortunately, the Government of Israel will not pay the slightest attention to the poopy heads over at J Street and will do what they have to do.”
J Street is an American lobby in American politics not Israeli, or did you just admit that some of these lobbies don’t have American interest at heart?
January 4th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
“J Street is an American lobby in American politics”
J Street is a lobby? This is news. I thought they were just a circle jerk of Lefty Jews trying to distance themselves from mean old Israel (sort of an institutional version of Matt’s anti-Israel pose).
January 4th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
I can’t wait to hear the wailing when Tel Aviv glows in the dark, because some terrorist got smart and used one of Israel’s own nukes on it.
Oh, the new Holocaust!
Except it could all have been prevented had they not been intent on using the OLD Holocaust as justification for Nazi-like policies from the start.
Zionism is just the mirror image of National Socialism. It’s enemy is the Arab, just as the Nazi’s enemy was the Jew. It’s state policies are expansionist and greedy, just as the Nazis wanted “lebensraum”. It’s as militaristic as the Nazis. The only difference is that its leaders aren’t a cult of personality to the same degree and the uniforms are less flashy.
And sooner or later they’ll end up in the dung heap of history just like the Nazis did. And for generations after, Jews will hang their heads in shame that after hundreds of years of positive cultural, philosophical, religious, artistic and scientific influence, they allowed a racist, imperialist, fascist, colonialist, militaristic philosophy to dominate the world’s view of Jews.
January 5th, 2009 at 1:47 am
“I can’t wait to hear the wailing when Tel Aviv glows in the dark, because some terrorist got smart and used one of Israel’s own nukes on it.”
I’m sure the Arabs who would be killed that nuke aren’t as eager for that to happen as you are. Then again, nihilism runs strong among many of them, so perhaps they are.
“Zionism is just the mirror image of National Socialism. It’s enemy is the Arab, just as the Nazi’s enemy was the Jew. It’s state policies are expansionist and greedy, just as the Nazis wanted “lebensraum”.”
Do you even believe this nonsense? It was the spiritual leader of the Palestinians, after all, who raised Muslim SS battalions for Hitler, and most Arab autocracies were inspired by the Nazis. As for Israel’s policies being “expansionist”, if you haven’t noticed, Israel given several times more land over the last few decades than it controls now — Sinai alone was more than 3x the size of Israel. That’s the opposite of expansionism. Do you need a transhuman implant to see that?
January 5th, 2009 at 2:28 am
Matt,
I, too, get very irritated when someone calls into question basics of my identity or views (”you’re not really a ____ if you don’t ______”). Seems authoritarian in an unsubtle and un-nuanced way for someone to demand that I agree “or get out.” Still, part of being a member of community means defending your community because it is yours — not because you agree with each specific point. Going further, unity is sometimes, at brief moments, more important than discourse. Is it really wrong to say now is not the right time for criticism, now is a time for support. Is it wrong to chastise community members who privilege their personal voice over their voice as a member of a community with which they self-identify?
January 5th, 2009 at 3:58 am
Fred: You can’t read, can you? No surprise for an idiot.
First, I said nothing about desiring Israel to be nuked. Of course, as a radical Transhumanist, I also couldn’t care less when it is nuked. What will amuse me is the reactions of the assholes - like yourself - whose policies in regard to the Middle East and Israel resulted in that event.
Second, I said nothing about Zionism BEING National Socialism. I said it was a mirror of National Socialism in its racism, colonialism, fascism, militarism, imperialism and state terrorism.
It is irrelevant what Israel was FORCED to return as a result of pressure over international laws. What is relevant is the stated goals of the leaders of Zionism over the decades, which is that Israel is intended to control ALL of Palestine, to which it has no right, and is intended to expand “from the Nile to the Euphrates.”
Some quotes from Israel’s leaders:
Yitzhak Rabin, on the ethnic cleansing of residents of Gaza said: “Israel will create in the course of the next ten or twenty years, conditions which would attract natural and voluntary migration of the refugees from the Gaza….”
“The Palestinians are beasts walking on two legs….. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.” stated Menachem Begin, only to be outdone by Yitzhak Shamir: The Palestinians: “… would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.” Ehud Barak weighed in with: “Palestinians are like crocodiles, the more you give them meat, they want more….”
George W. Bush’s “man of peace”, Ariel Sharon, lynchpin of the 1982 Lebanon Sabra and Shatila massacres, voicing his action plan stated: “Everybody has to move, run and grab as many (Palestinian) hilltops as they can, to enlarge the (Jewish) settlements because everything we take now will stay… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.”
Raphael Eitan, founder of the right wing Tzomet Party and clearly a soul mate of Sharon, stated: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” (2)
In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: “From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.”
Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: “The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.”
from
Oded Yinon’s
“A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties”
Published by the
Association of Arab-American University Graduates, Inc.
Belmont, Massachusetts, 1982
Special Document No. 1
(ISBN 0-937694-56-8)
http://www.geocities.com/alabasters_archive/zionist_plan.html
And another expose of the lies of Zionists which we hear today about how this attack on Gaza is because of a few Hamas rockets:
January 5th, 2009 at 7:19 am
But it’s really just the same situation.
It’s a “support the” situation. So you don’t support? Huh? Yes I support, hah!
Someone should write something clever about the place of the “support the + etc” figure of speech in the discourse. Always saw it used in relation to one right wing crankery or another.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:01 am
The Best mohammed T-shirt art is from Sweden. Watch and read the info at,
http://www.mohammedt-shirt.com
Fuck islam.
January 15th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I am an American Jew belonging to the reform movement. I am also a Holocaust survivor. Rabbi Yoffe does not speak for me when he criticizes Mr Ben Ami’s plea for a diplomatic settlement to the Gaza conflict on behalf of both parties. Yoffe doesn’t appear to value Palestinian life and his stance is immoral and terribly “unjewish”.
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