From my Rosh Hashanah sermon last Thursday:
So what is the real issue here? I don’t think it’s about sensitivity to individuals who may or may not be offended by this particular construction project. The real issue is really quite straightforward. The real issue, I believe, is the same as it ever was – and as Jews, it’s an issue we know all too well. Will America be a land of religious liberty for all or merely the few?
Click below to read the entire sermon:
From my Rosh Hashanah Eve sermon last Wednesday night:
So here’s my question for this Rosh Hashanah: how will you leave the familiarity of your home in the coming year? In ways will you challenge your sense of comfort and complacency and find the strength to venture into unknown territory? To a place that holds out a promise, but no guarantees? For some of you, this coming year might be a time of a significant life transition: how might you mark this experience so that it offers you real potential for transformation and growth? For others, this year might be not all that different from the last. How will you challenge that comfortable sameness? What might you do to, in a sense to create a doorway that leads outward?
Click below to read the entire sermon:
Very big and inspiring news:
Last week, fifty Israeli actors, directors and producers publicly released a letter saying they would not perform in a new multi-million dollar theater center in the West Bank settlement of Ariel and that they would continue to do so until there was an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
Their stand drew immediate outrage from the Israeli government. PM Netanyahu, Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz responded by threatening to deny government funding to any cultural institutions that refuse to hold performances in the Occupied Territories. Netayahu released a statement accusing the Israeli artists of joining an “international delegitimization campaign” adding that “the last thing the state needs to do is fund bodies that are promoting boycotts from within.”
These events had a powerful and galvanizing effect within Israeli society. Almost as immediately, over 150 leading Israeli academics and writers (including authors Amos Oz and David Grossman) came to the defense of the artists. The boycott quickly became a central issue of discussion in the Israeli press – for its part, Ha’aretz’s staff editorial stated:
Theater actors are not marionettes, and cultural coercion of artists who fear for their livelihood does not befit a freedom-loving country. Cultural and academic institutions that receive budgetary support from the state do not owe it obedience in return. On the contrary, the government should be thankful for the existence of institutions that constitute such a vital interest for Israeli society.
Now it appears the struggle has moved to the United States. I’m so incredibly proud to see that Jewish Voice for Peace has now organized a support statement by over 150 American and European theater and film professionals – including Mandy Patinkin, Theodore Bikel, Eve Ensler, Tony Kushner, Cynthia Nixon, Ed Asner, among others.
Here’s the text of the statement:
On August 27th, dozens of Israeli actors, directors, and playwrights made the brave decision not to perform in Ariel, one of the largest of the West Bank settlements, which by all standards of international law are clearly illegal. As American actors, directors, critics and playwrights, we salute our Israeli counterparts for their courageous decision.
Most of us are involved in daily compromises with wrongful acts. When a group of people suddenly have the clarity of mind to see that the next compromise looming up before them is an unbearable one — and when they somehow find the strength to refuse to cross that line — we can’t help but be overjoyed and inspired and grateful.
It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis an Palestinians alike. They’ve made a wonderful decision, and they deserve the respect of people everywhere who dream of justice. We stand with them.
This is big. Indeed, as the government’s apoplectic response clearly demonstrates, it represents much more than a mere symbolic stand. To stand up against performing in Ariel, which Netanyahu has described as the “Capital of Samaria,” means to stand up against the very heart of Israel’s settlement enterprise.
It is also the most significant internal cultural boycott to ever take place in Israel – and the support of the artistic community around the world shows that there is a growing constituency of prominent figures who are willing to publicly speak out against Israel’s impunity.
In other words, the artistic community is stepping up and going to the places to which our politicians seem unwilling to go. Bravo!
Two posts from today’s blogosphere offer spot-on responses to yesterday’s tragic killings in Hebron:
From Mitchell Plitnick’s “The Third Way:”
I very much appreciate President Obama condemning yesterday’s murders of four settlers in the South Hebron Hills.But that condemnation would be an awful lot more meaningful, to myself and to many others I’m sure, if we saw similar outrage in Washington when Israel killed over 700 Palestinian non-combatants in Operation Cast Lead. Or when a border policeman killed Bassem Abu Rahmeh by firing a gas cannister directly and intentionally at him. Or for any of the 100 Palestinians killed since the end of Operation Cast Lead (many of whom were killed as combatants, to be sure, but 32 of whom were not taking part in hostilities nor were counted as “targeted assassinations”).
From Paul Woodward’s “War in Context:”
Whether or not Hamas had a role in yesterday’s attack it is too soon to tell. And even if some or all of the gunmen turn out to belong to the movement does not necessarily reveal a great deal about the level of command and control or political motives for the attack.
Whatever the motives, the outcome itself has opened political opportunities to each constituency that now portrays itself as a victim.
Given that the attack took place in an area controlled by the IDF, President Abbas could have taken the opportunity to point out that the attack underlines the fact that there can ultimately be no security solution to the political conflict. Instead, Palestinian security services have been quick to launch what is being described as one of the largest arrest waves of all time in the West Bank.
At the funerals of the four Israelis killed, settler leaders took the opportunity to push for settlement expansion, call for vengeance (a call which has already been acted upon), deny the existence of the Palestinian people and made a thinly-veiled appeal for ethnic cleansing…
When President Obama tries to press Benjamin Netanyahu to extend the so-called settlement freeze, the Israeli prime minister will no doubt tell him solemnly that in light of recent events, his hands are well and truly tied.
They shoot and we build has become the settlers’ slogan — one that is almost certainly to Netanyahu’s liking.
A commenter on my last post asked me what I thought of Martin Indyk’s recent NY Times op-ed, in which he expresses a powerful optimism about the upcoming I/P peace talks in Washington.
My answer? Indyk’s article represents a picture-perfect example of the inherent inequity of the peace process as it is currently defined.
In his op-ed, Indyk lists four factors that he believes distinguish this round of direct talk from previous attempts. Number one, he claims that “violence is down considerably in the region.” Thanks to the PA’s security measures in the West Bank and Hamas’ in Gaza, Indyk explains, Palestinian violence against Israelis has decreased considerably.
His analysis, however, completely leaves out the other side of the equation: Israel’s violence against Palestinians, which remains as brutal and oppressive as ever. The examples are legion: Israel’s military assault in Gaza in 2008/09 that left 1,400 dead, the structural violence of its ongoing blockade of Gaza, which is having a devastating effect on Gaza’s economy, health care system, infrastructure and Gazans’ freedom of movement. In the West Bank, the IDF continues its armed crackdown on weekly non-violent protests and has increased its arrests and incarceration of non-violent Palestinian leaders. Home evictions and demolitions continue throughout the territories, East Jerusalem and even in Israel proper.
Indyk’s myopia on this front is fascinating. Indeed, it offers an important window into a fundamental injustice that currently pervades the peace process – a process where only Palestinian violence against Israelis is considered germane to negotiations. It might reasonably be asked: is this process about delineating the terms of a equitable peace treaty or dictating the terms of a Palestinian surrender?
Indyk’s second factor: Israel’s “settlement activity has slowed down considerably.” To demonstrate his claim he quotes from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, which reports that
(No) new housing starts in the West Bank were reported…in the first quarter of this year. What’s more, there have been hardly any new housing projects in East Jerusalem since the brouhaha in March, when Vice President Joe Biden, during a visit to Israel, condemned the announcement of 1,600 additional residential units. The demolition of Palestinian houses there is also down compared with recent years.
It is a clear sign of Indyk’s abiding prejudice that he turns to the Israeli government for an accurate report of facts on the ground. I’d suggest a more trustworthy source: namely, Peace Now, who has been indefatigably tracking Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank.
According to its most recent report:
(On) the ground, there is almost no freeze or even a visible slowdown, despite the fact that legal construction starts have been frozen for 8 months (and) that the Government of Israel is not enforcing the moratorium.
The report’s main findings:
• At least 600 housing units have started to be built during the freeze, in over 60 different settlements.
• At least 492 of those housing units are in direct violation of the law of the freeze.
• During an average year (when there is no freeze) approximately 1,130 housing units start to be built in 8 months in the settlements. The new construction starts during the moratorium constitute approximately half of the normal construction pace in the settlements.
• Some 2,000 housing units are currently under construction in the settlements, most of them started before the freeze was announced in November 2009.
This means that on the ground, there is almost no freeze or even a visible slowdown, despite the fact that legal construction starts have been frozen for 8 months. It also means that the Government of Israel is not enforcing the moratorium.
In short? Indyk’s claim is misleading and spurious. Palestinians have been reasonably concerned about entering into direct talks while Israel’s settlement activity is ongoing. As things currently stand, the “freeze” is slated to be lifted next month – precisely the same time talks in Washington are scheduled to commence.
For factors three and four, Indyk points out that a majority of the public on both sides support a two-state solution – and that there really isn’t that much left to negotiate anyway. He blames Arafat exclusively for the breakdown of Camp David in 2000, a failure that left “Palestinians and Israelis mired in conflict.” This is, of course, the conventional Israeli narrative regarding the failure of Camp David: the Israelis made a generous offer, the Palestinians spurned it, and the Second Intifada ensued.
This is a simplistic, one-sided narrative that has long been challenged by compelling accounts of the actual negotiations. Most famously, this narrative asserts that Israel was prepared to offer 96% of the Occupied Territories to the Palestinians. It has since been pointed out that this 96% number more accurately represented the percentage of the land over which Israel was prepared to negotiate. It did not include, among other things, East Jerusalem, the huge belt of Jewish settlements around the city or a ten mile wide military buffer zone around the Palestinian territories. In fact, after factoring in an obligation to lease back settlements to Israel for twenty five years, the total Palestinian land from which Israel was prepared to withdraw actually came to approximately 46%.
Regardless of which narrative we choose to believe, it is clear that ten years after Camp David many difficult complicated issues remain unaddressed. In the meantime, Israel has continued to expand its settlement regime across Palestinian territories, which likely means the amount of land from which it is prepared to withdraw has shrunk all the more. Under these circumstances, Indyk has little cause to treat the current round of negotiations as pro-forma.
Albert Einstein has been quoted as observing that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time.” For the past twenty years the peace process has been defined by the same basic – and one-sided – parameters. Each time the process has been rebooted, we’ve heard the same kinds of hopeful tropes that Indyk expresses here. Each time we’ve been told that we have an unprecedented opportunity for peace. Each time we’ve been told that those who criticize the process are the “enemies of hope.” But each time, this flawed political process has brought us no further along toward a viable two-state solution.
Perhaps it is time to envision a different process. One that takes values of justice and equity as seriously as it does peace. One in which the United States acts as a truly honest broker, in which Israel is held to account for its violence against Palestinians, for its oppressive policies and its ongoing settlement of the occupied territories. Then, and only then, will there truly be, as Indyk puts it, “hope in the Middle East.”
Since my recent post on the current round of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process I’ve received many responses, via comment, in person, and email. Here’s one of the most thoughtful and challenging, sent to me by a good friend. Click at the finish for my response:
As the Midrash (Leviticus Rabbah 9) teaches, “Great is Peace, since even in a time of war, one should begin with peace…”
Even now, when the prospect of achieving peace seems so remote and the hostility from some in the Netanyahu government so hostile, we as Jews are commanded to pursue peace. This doesn’t mean that we should be Pollyannaish about the possibilities of success in the upcoming talks, but neither should we give up before they’ve started. There is always the possibility, however remote, that Netanyahu will decide to take the bull by the horns and do a Nixon to China like move. Those of us who care deeply must encourage the best possible outcome. After all, if these talks fail and the Palestinian Authority disintegrates, where will this leave in terms of security in the West Bank and international credibility? Where will it leave President Obama who has hinged so much of his foreign policy on resolving the conflict? These are serious and weighty matters for Israel and the U.S.
I know that the political maneuvering around peace talks can be very discouraging for those like you who are trying to improve the situation on the ground. Politicians make all sorts of moves that are hard to swallow. Hillary Clinton, for example, started out very strongly on human rights issues leading the way for international financial assistance to Gaza following the war and strong denouncing settlement building in East Jerusalem. To get to these talks, she has become much more restrained in response to both the failure of the settlement freeze policy and to fear of attacks from the right wing (both Jewish and Christian) in characterizing Obama as anti-Israel. There is a place for politics in moving things forward, but it operates in a very different manner than truth telling. Mobilizing support from people with a broad range of perspectives involves compromises that can be very hard to swallow, but until we find a way to win over broader grassroots support, this is the price we will pay until then.
I admire your decision as a prominent rabbi to telling the truth about the on the ground situation in Israel and Palestine. This is extremely difficult to look at for many of us, and yet you have decided to unflinchingly dive in headfirst. However, I believe that your framing the political process in opposition to justice on the ground is quite problematic and ultimately more harmful to your dreams than heuylpful.
I cannot praise your glorification of hopelessness and the messianic like idea that we cannot pursue peace until there is justice. We cannot stop seeking peace and we cannot stop seeking justice, and we must use all of the tools at our disposal including politics and including truth telling.
Most importantly, if you really want to “extend civil rights, human rights, equity and equality for all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine” then you will need every possible ally. Please don’t make yourself the leader of an exclusive club that turns away your natural allies for lack of moral purity. It’s so much easier to stand on supposed high moral ground and criticize those who imperfectly seek to bring about change than to do the dirty work of making it happen. In the end, we all need each other if we’re going to move this forward.
‘
It was my honor today to join with Hyatt workers and supporters for a press conference to announce that Unite Here Local 1 is now urging patrons to boycott three Chicago Hyatt locations.
From the union’s press release:
Today, UNITE HERE Local 1 members are gathering in front of Hyatt Global Headquarters in Chicago to call for a boycott at several area Hyatt Hotels—the Hyatt Regency Chicago, the Hyatt O’Hare, and the Park Hyatt. Hyatt workers will be joined by Jewish allies, who are releasing a pledge signed by over 250 Rabbis and other Jewish leaders nationwide in support of Hyatt workers across North America. The boycott and national pledge represent the latest escalation of a labor dispute with Hyatt, which has become the target of labor demonstrations across North America in recent weeks.
The boycott announcement comes almost one year after union contracts with Hyatt in Chicago have expired (Aug. 31, 2009). Hyatt workers have taken several actions in recent months, including a work stoppage on May 26, 2010, a picket of Hyatt’s annual shareholders meeting on June 9, 2010, a massive demonstration outside the Hyatt Regency Chicago on July 22, 2010, and a strike vote on July 29, 2010. Hyatt protests in Chicago have been echoed by other major demonstrations this summer in 15 cities across the U.S. and Canada.
The three Hyatt boycotts in Chicago, which join seven other active boycotts of Hyatt properties nationwide, signal a growing crisis for Chicago-based Hyatt and its billionaire owners—the Pritzker Family—who have become a symbol among hotel workers for how the wealthy are trying to take unfair advantage of the recession. Hotel workers in Chicago have endured staff cuts, reduced hours, and excessive injury rates. Frustration among area workers has deepened, as Hyatt has tried to make further job cuts and lock workers into recession contracts even as the economy rebounds.
In the clip above: behind me stands Rabbi Alison Abrams of Temple Chai in Long Grove and Cantor Michael Davis of Lakeside Congregation, Highland Park, both of whom spoke at the press conference as well.
Israelis and Palestinians are being brought back to the table, but no one really seems to be all that happy about it. Indeed, I can’t remember a time when renewed peace talks were greeted with such widespread cynicism. And that’s when you can even read about it at all – as I scour my usual media outlets for news and commentary on the peace process, I’m getting the distinct impression that this kind of thing is simply not considered to be news any more.
The only significant piece I’ve read recently is Ethan Bronner’s front page article in Saturday’s NY Times. The first few paragraphs pretty much tell you everything you need to know:
The American invitation on Friday to the Israelis and Palestinians to start direct peace talks in two weeks in Washington was immediately accepted by both governments. But just below the surface there was an almost audible shrug. There is little confidence — close to none — on either side that the Obama administration’s goal of reaching a comprehensive deal in one year can be met…
“These direct negotiations are the option of the crippled and the helpless,” remarked Zakaria al-Qaq, vice president of Al Quds University and a Palestinian moderate, when asked his view of the development. “It is an act of self-deception that will lead nowhere.”
And Nahum Barnea, Israel’s pre-eminent political columnist, said in a phone interview: “Most Israelis have decided that nothing is going to come out of it, that it will have no bearing on their lives. So why should they care?”
I used to believe where there’s talk, there’s hope. (In fact, I think I’ve even written those very words on this blog once or twice before). I don’t think I really believe this any more – not, at least, when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. For almost two decades, the US and the international community has been brokering talks between both sides and now this is what it has come to: beyond the pro-forma diplomatic statements, everyone seems to agree that it’s really just a road to nowhere. And a half-hearted attempt to bring the “crippled and the helpless” to the bargaining table simply doesn’t inspire hope. Quite the opposite.
I’m not even tempted any more to engage in an analytical discussion of how/why/where talks have failed. There are still more than enough pundits out there ready to parse the political maneuvering. To my mind, it’s all fairly moot at this point. For so many years, so many of us have been working overtime to advocate for the peace process. But while so many of us have held forth the two-state solution as a kind of Holy Grail, the prospect of a viable Palestinian state has grown increasingly remote.
Again, from Ethan Bronner:
Most Palestinians — and many on the Israeli left — argue that there are now too many Israeli settlements in the West Bank for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state to arise there. Settlement growth has continued despite a construction moratorium announced by Mr. Netanyahu.
Moreover, support for many of the settlements remains relatively strong in Israel. In other words, if this view holds, the Israelis have closed out any serious option of a two-state solution. So the talks are useless.
As someone who has fervently supported peace talks from the beginning, I write these words with great sorrow: it is time to face the facts and declare that the peace process is dead. I respect those who honestly disagree with such a position, but for myself at least, I cannot in good conscience advocate for a peace process that is so fatally flawed in so many ways. For me, the much more critical and pressing question at this point is not “how can we get both parties to the table?” but “how can we find a way to extend civil rights, human rights, equity and equality for all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine?”
That’s really the crux of the issue for me: peace without justice is no peace at all. Whether or not there is eventually a one-state, two-state or fifteen-state solution, it will need to be a just solution. And at the moment, justice seems to be precisely what is missing from the peace process.
At the end of the day, Israel simply cannot claim to take the concept of Palestinian statehood seriously while it establishes Jewish settlements throughout the Palestinian territories with impunity. Israel cannot say it accepts the concept of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem yet at the same time evict Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem with a clear intention of Judaizing these neighborhoods. And perhaps most critically, Israel cannot claim to meet the Palestinians across the peace table in good faith while it oppresses Palestinians on a daily basis.
My friend and colleague Cantor Michael Davis once said to me that the real problem with the peace process is that “we are focusing exclusively on the future at the expense of the present.” I agree. For far too long we have been using the peace process as a shield to keep us from honestly facing the very real and troubling human rights abuse Israel is committing on the ground right now. Yes, there will need to be a political solution to this conflict. But until a present justice is consciously attached to a future peace, I believe in my heart that the peace process will remain as good as dead.
Land can be deemed “sacred ground” for many reasons, but I’m struck that much too often this concept has less to do with the experience of divinity than it does the exercise of human power.
The latest debate over the Cordoba Islamic community center is only the latest example of this phenomenon – on this point I believe blogger Paul Woodward hit the nail squarely on the head with this recent insight:
Another way of saying “sacred” is to say “off-limits.”
Something can be sanctified by placing a barrier around it constructed from rigid taboos. The most extreme among those taboos dictates not only silence but also exclusion.
In such a way, for many Americans, 9/11 has been sanctified. The sacred idea occupies a sacred space and only those willing to display sufficient awe and reverence can be allowed to enter.
Woodward is absolutely right that sacred space and exclusion can invariably go hand in hand. When we read in the Torah, for instance about the Israelites’ construction of the Tabernacle (and later in the Bible, the Temple itself), we learn that certain sacred areas correspond to the specific social hierarchies within the Israelite community. Rank and file Israelites are allowed into the outer courtyard, but the inner precincts are off limits to all but the priests. And only the High Priest himself is allowed into the innermost Holy of Holies – and only on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.
Ironically enough, Jewish tradition teaches that it was precisely hierarchy and division that led to the loss of our most central of sacred spaces. According to the Rabbis, the destruction of the Second Temple was due not to the greater military might of the Romans, but because of the divisive, internecine hatreds (“sinat chinam”) harbored by the Jewish people between themselves. I often think about this teaching when I read about the power politics raging over the Western Wall or ongoing attempts to claim the areas in and around the Old City of Jerusalem in the name of the Jewish people alone.
When it comes to the area that is considered to be the holiest of places for Jews, I can’t help but think it has more often been a place of sacrilege, not sanctity. It has ever been thus: the more we press our own claims upon the places we deem sacred, the more we manage only to defile them in the end.
And so, as I have read about the horrid political wrangling over Cordoba House, it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that this little patch of land in Lower Manhattan will only truly become hallowed ground if we resist the temptation to yield exclusive political claims over it.
If there is any Biblical image we might look to for guidance, I would argue it is less the hierarchical, exclusivist priestly model than the universal, inclusive prophetic vision famously expressed in Isaiah 56:7: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
To this end, I commend to you this recent statement from Faith in Public Life, to which I am honored to be a co-signer. I can think of no better definition of “sacred space” than this:
The profound tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001 revealed the horror that can unfold when a small minority of violent extremists manipulates religious language for political gain and falsely claims to represent one of the world’s great religions. We have witnessed this sinful corruption of religion across faith traditions throughout history and must condemn it without equivocation whenever or wherever it occurs. However, we fail to honor those murdered on that awful day – including Muslim Americans killed in the Twin Towers and Pentagon – by betraying our nation’s historic commitment to religious liberty, fueling ugly stereotypes about Islam and demeaning the vast majority of Muslims committed to peace. The proposed mosque would be part of Cordoba House, a center open to all Americans that will provide Islamic, interfaith and secular programs. The project aims to support “integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture,” according to the Cordoba Initiative, which promotes improved “Muslim-West relations.” These are exactly the kind of efforts that foster dialogue, break down barriers and begin to build a world where religiously inspired violent extremism is less likely.
The next fast day sponsored by Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza will take place on Thursday, August 19. To mark the occasion, we will host “A Conversation About Women, Health, Children and Human Rights in Gaza,” a conference call with Dr. Mona El-Farra, Director of Gaza Projects for the Middle East Children’s Alliance.
Dr. El-Farra is a physician by training and a human rights and women’s rights activist by practice in the Gaza Strip. She was born in Khan Younis, Gaza, and has dedicated herself to developing community-based programs that seek to improve health quality and link health services with cultural and recreational services throughout the Gaza Strip.
Our conference call will take place on Thursday, August 19, at 12:00 pm (EST).
Call info:
Access Number: 1.800.920.7487
Participant Code: 92247763#
There will be a question and answer period during the call.
Shalom Rav 