by Steve Kramer
One of my readers asked for help in answering friends who have been “awakened” to anti-Zionism by Antony Lerman, who recently wrote, “The End of Liberal Zionism” (8/22/14) in The NY Times Sunday Review.
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Lerman is a British writer who on the subjects of anti-Semitism, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, multiculturalism, and the place of religion in society. From 2006 to early 2009, he was Director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research think tank. Lerman has publicly advocated for pro-Arab/anti-Israel initiatives, often writing op-ed pieces in the notoriously anti-Zionist Guardian newspaper.
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What is Liberal Zionism anyway? Wikipedia defines it as a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights. If that’s what it is, it doesn’t sound to me what Lerman described in his article. Let me say what I think Lerman is talking about. His “Liberal Zionist” is someone who may live in Israel but probably doesn’t. That person doesn’t want to get his or her hands dirty with the nitty-gritty aspects of life in Israel. Lerman’s Liberal Zionist lives comfortably in some other place, perhaps, Manhattan, Washington, D.C., or London.
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Israel’s neighbors don’t even vaguely resemble Canada or Mexico, Scotland or France. Israel’s neighbors either want to destroy Israel or have a very frigid peace with it. Consequently, Israelis who expect the Arabs to be rational and reasonable are few and far between; their champion is Shimon Peres. The rest of us have learned that there is no significant peace movement among the Arabs. It exists, of course, but its impact is negligible.
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From afar, it’s easy to be a “Zionist” of some stripe. The committed ones often make Aliyah or buy a second home here. Others donate money or fund Zionist projects. Still others, such as Lerman describes, undermine Israel, some purposefully and others unwittingly. Below I will try to counter some of Lerman’s contentions.
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Antony Lerman: “‘Never do liberal Zionists feel more torn than when Israel is at war,’ wrote Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian’s opinion editor and a leading British Liberal Zionist, for ‘The New York Review of Books’ last month. He’s not alone. Columnists like Jonathan Chait, Roger Cohen and Thomas L. Friedman have all riffed in recent weeks on the theme that what Israel is doing can’t be reconciled with their humanism.”
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Steve Kramer: It’s a shame about Thomas Friedman and others’ “humanism.” They don’t agree with Israel’s tactics in defending itself against thousands of mortars, rockets, and missiles. They probably think that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s battle strategy is too harsh. That’s ironic, because most Israelis have the opposite opinion and we are the ones on the receiving end of Hamas’ attacks. For some reason, Israelis object to our lives being turned upside down by the Arabs in Gaza, just because they want to replace Israel with a caliphate.
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A.L.: “But it’s not just Gaza, and the latest episode of ‘shock and awe’ militarism. The romantic Zionist ideal, to which Jewish liberals — and I was one, once — subscribed for so many decades, has been tarnished by the reality of modern Israel. The [1] attacks on freedom of speech and human rights organizations in Israel, [2] the land-grabbing settler movement, [3] a growing strain of anti-Arab and anti-immigrant racism, [4] extremist politics, and a [5] powerful, intolerant religious right — this mixture has pushed liberal Zionism to the brink.”
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S.K.: Ah, yes, the “reality of modern Israel.”
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1. Freedom of speech/human rights: There is a cacophony of free speech in Israel, up to and including the Supreme Court allowing Muslim Members of Knesset (!) to praise an enemy of Israel during wartime. All Israelis are accorded human rights, regardless of race or religion. Israeli Muslims, for example, have more human rights in Israel than in any Arab country. They refuse to even consider giving up their Israeli citizenship to become citizens of “Palestine.”
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2. land-grabbing: the Arabs are occupying Judea and Samaria, more than the other way around. Jews certainly have no less right to live on the land than the Arabs, and by my reckoning, much more right. This is because borders are defined by the victors in nearly all existing states, including the United States and Britain. Capsule history: (Putting aside all the religious and historical/legal arguments) Israel conquered Judea and Samaria during the defensive Six Day War of 1967. This is the land which the Arabs declared to be the “West Bank” only a few years after Transjordan conquered it during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The Arabs (soon to be renamed Jordanians) ethnically cleansed all the Jewish residents at the start of their 19-year period of rule over Judea and Samaria.
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3. racism: Unfortunately, racism exists throughout the world. It is no more prevalent in Israel than in the United States or Britain. In comparison to Muslim countries, which allow no Jewish residents (with a few small exceptions), Israel is a human rights paradise.
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4. extremist politics: These also exist throughout the world. In Israel, however, there are no prominent and rapidly growing parties like the racist/xenophobic Jobbik in Hungary and Golden Dawn in Greece.
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5. religious right: Yes, there are religious parties in Israel. They run the gamut from nationalist right to anti-Zionist Ultra-Orthodox. They are an example of Israel’s right of free speech.
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A.L.: “J Street in America and Yachad in Britain, founded in 2008 and 2011 respectively, describe themselves as ‘pro-Israel and pro-peace’ and have attracted significant numbers of people who seek a more critical engagement with Israel.”
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S.K.: Sorry to say, but J-Street undermines Israel. (I don’t know anything about Yachad.) Critical is one thing, but encouraging groups such as college Hillel chapters to be inclusive by promoting hate-spewing Palestinian speakers is helping turn impressionable college students against Israel.
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A.L.: “I still understood its dream of Israel as a moral and just cause, but I judged it anachronistic. The only Zionism of any consequence today is xenophobic and exclusionary, a Jewish ethno-nationalism inspired by religious messianism. It is carrying out an open-ended project of national self-realization to be achieved through colonization and purification of the tribe.”
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S.K.: Yes, Jews are a tribe, both a nation and a people, unlike any other people on earth. Israel is moral and just, but not perfect. Perhaps if Lerman were in charge of Israel, it wouldn’t be so “anachronistic” in trying to remain the State of the Jews. It could be more trendy by inviting the Arabs to be our friends. . Running a country is tough, just ask President Obama, who is probably in sync with Lerman’s post-Zionist views. (Post-Zionism: a set of critical positions that disparage Zionist ideals and the historical narratives and social and cultural representations that it produced.)
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A.L.: “Since liberal Zionists can’t countenance anything but two states, this situation leaves them high and dry.”
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S.K.: Two states will not work and it’s not the only option. In this region, where Muslims slaughter each other with regularity, only a naive person would cling to a failed paradigm. I don’t know exactly what the best solution is, but I recognize a “solution” has no chance to succeed, such as the two-state vision. With Israel sitting on less than a half per cent of so-called Arab land, to give land for peace is worse than fruitless, it’s a recipe for disaster. My view is that things will eventually settle down in Israel’s favor, because the Palestinian Arabs have proven themselves incapable of governing, let alone sharing, even a part of this tiny space between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
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If Lerner and the others doubt this, take a second look at the Gaza experiment, or just imagine if Israel had turned over the Golan Heights to the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad, who has previously been called a “reformer” by Hillary Clinton and “generous” as well as a man of his word by John Kerry.
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Antony Lerner and his ilk find it easy to criticize Israel from their comfortable arm chairs somewhere else. Israel is a vibrant democracy which invites all Jews to make it their home. Lerner can move here and say whatever he wants, without fear of imprisonment or worse. In fact, that’s what many like-minded critics do, as loyal Israeli resident-citizens.
Max Said:
That’s a cute story, but your schoolboy games just don’t cut it. This is an adult forum and when you open you big mouth and spout BS you are expected to provide support for your assertions. These schoolboy red herrings and obfuscations only demonstrate your intellectual bankruptcy. Everyone here knows what ad hominem is, which you throw about here prolifically as red herring fig leafs to cover your ignorance .
bernard ross Said:
Like I said: I am still waiting for you to stop running away, like a little boy, trying to avoid being humiliated by the disclosure of your massive ignorance. All this obfuscation and name calling is not working as a distraction from your ignorance. You are still transparent.
@ honeybee:
You are still feeding the troll, your learning curve is broken.
I made a mistake I must correct – Sarah Silverman is actually the leftist leader of the Jewish-American Diaspora Potty. Don’t underestimate her- she and Jon Stewart got the last President elected.
bernard ross Said:
When you two got engaged, which one of you is the woman?
bernard ross Said:
Now that I am filling Joan Rivers position as ” Leader of the Jewish-Americans” , I have become far more cautious and dignified, Darlin.
honeybee Said:
I was not referring to “that”: simply the classic phrase of being “caught with ones pants down” (having done something wrong, caught red handed, hand in the cookie jar, etc) the deer analogy had to do with being frozen in fear when the light is shone on you. However, in their case they frantically grasp at straws, throw red herrings, create clouds of obfuscation, engage in amateur psychobabble, etc. rather than admit they are wrong.
Your deer with pants down, though, added an amusing dimension to their adventures.
honeybee Said:
that does not sound like you.
bernard ross Said:
Deer “don’t swing that way”.
bernard ross Said:
That is one “cow pie” I shall avoid stepping in, Darlin!!!!!!!!!!
honeybee Said:
this is what differentiates them from deer in headlights as opposed to the frozen fear when caught in the “headlights”. Although, the image of the 2 as deer wearing pants that are down is better than the one I conjured up for the 2 of them.
honeybee Said:
I assume you refer to Max and Dweller? Another similarity.
dweller Said:
I remember I was very proud of my Mother and myself, at the time and still am. We handled the problem.
dweller Said:
How could they be proud when they did not intimidate us in the lest.
bernard ross Said:
Bernard !!!!!!!!!!! Deer don’t wear pants !!!!!!!!!! They run around naked !!!!!!! And they stand in headlights because they are shameless exhibitionist !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Max Said:
You appear to be still hurting from the last humiliation to which I subjected you. You ran away with your tail beltween your legs when you were unable to answer a few questions which any fool could answer who had any knowledge of recent events in Israel and the ME. I fashioned the questions specifcally to point out your ignorance of the issues and the facts: you could not answer a single one, instead you ran off calling me a troll like a little boy. You did the same a couple of years ago when I humiliated you the first time when you said I was a conspiracy theorist for speculation that your precious democratic syrian twitter revolution was an organized event: planned, armed, twittered and financed by GCC and the west. You still have no clue as to the significance of benghazi.
You love to engage in name calling and verbal diarhea, giving your unsolicited and ludicrous opinions, but you NEVER give any support for any of the statements you make on the ME. You are an empty suit, pretending to knowledge of fact and issues but unable to EVER make a single citation to support your statements wrt the ME.
It is amusing that you lump me with Dweller as you both love to engage in amateur psychobabble when you both are caught red faced with your pants down, like deer in headlights, when you are unable to admit you are in error. Both of you have massive egos which prevent you from admitting error and both provide entertainment when throwing out red herrings to distract from your errors. It is amusing that the both of you are now busy analyzing each other with amateur psychobabble. Two charlatans at each others throats. At least dweller often provides citations for his assertions where as you provide NOTHING and hope to get by on bravado.
I am still waiting for you to answer the questions from which you ran away.
@ Max:
If you can’t point to an instance in which this monkey’s hammer has landed wide of the mark (and you cannot), then you have no legitimate beef.
@ honeybee:
Quite so
— but ONLY if you can deal with it in a manner that does not generate as much or more trauma than it “cleans up.”
Superficially true. But in reality, not true.
The perpetrators succeeded in spite of themselves; succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings.
They crippled the souls of three persons for years to come.
@ Max:
Only in your fantasies.
Like I say, you’re welcome to try.
I speak the truth in all matters. The sun is always in the sky, rain or shine.
Objective Reality never takes a vacation from showing itself, and I never take one from commenting on it. Honest, seeking, sincere persons appreciate that. Those who don’t take kindly to it have effectively said volumes more about themselves than they EVER could about me.
So, why aren’t you ‘stomping,’ tough guy?
When I deal with you, Max, I know I’m working in the manure pile (not ‘playing’ in it).
— But I have a very effective methodology for staying clean-as-a-whistle and fresh-as-a-daisy throughout the experience.
This “porcine” gave HB much finer pearls than she gave him. What she decides to DO with them is up to HER — not you.
Of course you do, Max. (BTW, your nose is growing.)
@ Max:
Hoo-hah! — That was good for a gale of giggles.
PresentCompany has FAR more in common with BR than I do.
@ Max:
I acknowledged that at the time (even before you did).
But I also, at the same time, homed-in on a much, much more SERIOUS matter.
— And I was right-on-the-money with my assessment of it.
Not ‘abrasive.’
Bracing is the word you want — like Bay Rum on the skin after a good clean shave from a steady hand and a fresh, flawless blade.
— Nothing at all ‘abrasive’ about it (except in the view of someone who chooses to take it that way).
As for my being a “troll,” Max, let’s be quite clear here:
For ANYBODY to be called a “troll” by the likes of PresentCompany
— is a lot like his/her being characterized as “ugly” by a toad.
honeybee Said:
Yes, interesting story. I got it on post # 3 back some 30 posts of diversional abrasive tripe instigated by the troll.
Max Said:
Yes Max I shall follow your advce. The subject, if I can remember was anti-Semitism not my parent marriage. What I was trying to say with my little story was the best way to handle it is to ” gird up ones loins” and deal with it. Who ever wrote on our garage never did so again and my parent lived in the house for 15 yrs without incident.
honeybee Said:
Give a monkey a hammer and eventually it will hit something.
Stop feeding the troll.
BR and Dweller are two peas in a pod – they’ve sentenced themselves to the Phantom Zone. They should get married to each other and bore each other to tears.
@ honeybee:
In some ways, no doubt.
Not in this regard, however.
Antisemitism wasn’t the BIGGEST threat to her or her family. That was external to your family.
The BIGGEST threat was internal:
— her need to retain her sense of security by keeping her husband weak & needy; and HIS lack of commitment to becoming STRONG.
So she kept him in the dark over incidents like that of the Jew haters, and he was content to LET her keep him so oblivious.
Max says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
September 4, 2014 at 3:10 am
honeybee Said:
No, I beat dweller because he is dweller. He’s an adolescent tr-oll and he needs beating.
You share something and he uses it for tro-lling material , such a coke-kaa-r00ch needs to be stomped on.
He’s a little kid playing in the man-ure pile, he needs to be washed off with a firehouse.
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Don’t feed him anymore, you are giving pearls to a porcine, I get the impression he is not an adult – – there is nothing he could ever add to any discussion here, I just skip over his posts now.
honeybee Said:
No, I beat dweller because he is dweller. He’s an adolescent troll and he needs beating.
You share something and he uses it for trolling material , such a cockaroach needs to be stomped on.
He’s a little kid playing in the manure pile, he needs to be washed off with a firehouse.
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Don’t feed him anymore, you are giving pearls to a pig, I get the impression he is not an adult – – there is nothing he could ever add to any discussion here, I just skip over his posts now.
dweller Said:
@ honeybee:
A common assumption, but untrue. Actually, you’ve told us quite a lot more than you realize over the years. Just because these turkeys miss the signs doesn’t mean those indicators aren’t there to be read by someone with eyes to see.
@ honeybee:
Quite the contrary, the fact that you never broke it shows plainly that you did NOT understand the essence of a promise — which INCLUDES the understanding that not all promises are legitimate.
— For example, a contract (which is a kind of promise) can be nullified if it can be shown that it was signed under fraudulent or forcible circumstances.
But that’s just it: a young child could not be EXPECTED to grasp the fact that not every promise is valid.
And a promise of this sort: demanded of a child by one whom she trusted — to keep a secret from another whom she (up until then) ALSO trusted — was in its nature illegitimate.
— And any normal Mom would have known that, and never used a child that way. (A child would not have realized that — but an adult most certainly would have.)
dweller Said:
Now you hit the nail on the head.
dweller Said:
And haven’t yawl boy just proved it over and over.
dweller Said:
Its back to womb with all you guys.
dweller Said:
I was also wise.
dweller Said:
Not dictionaries Sweetie, thuarsis.
dweller Said:
I knew what a promise was because I never broke my promise !
@ yamit82:
Do you drive a pick-up ?????????? It will be a relief for you to know The Cowboy’s cheerleaders are safe, they picked up Sam the gay football player.
dweller Said:
Nobody know about another’s life or marriage.
@ yamit82:
And I’m right-on-the-money. . . .
— How nice to see, however, that you both have dictionaries. (Now, if you could just learn how to use them.)
yamit82 Said:
Then you SHOULD not take advantage of him. Just drove into to town with TX to retrieve the road car. You know those Mexican clay figures of the Devil driving a pick-up ??????????????????
@ honeybee:
You may have understood what a promise IS — but there is no way a seven-yr-old would understand the implications of this kind of secrecy for her future relationship with the person who demanded it of her (imposed it on her) — nor grasp its implications for her future relationship with the one from whom the secret was to be kept, her own father.
Irrelevant & off-point. Reading the newspaper is strictly an intellectual function. (And lots of kids are doing THAT long before the age of six.) Extracting a lifetime promise of secrecy from a young child that way is another matter altogether; that was outrageous.
Most emphatically not so. What your mother did to you was horrendous & unconscionable. She created a part of your psyche to be kept off-limits from the most important man in your life — and all in the name of ‘protecting’ him
— when, as the man of the household, HE should have been the protector of BOTH of you.
How could you subsequently feel free to confide in him, now that there was this secret that was strictly beyond the pale?
Actually, THEIR damage was from without. That kind is FAR less lasting — if met properly — than the kind your Mom did.
@ honeybee:
I’d pretty much gathered that, some time ago. Also that she too arrived in his life badly scarred from her own early years.
Yes, I could believe that.
LIke most men, he “married his mother”
— married someone who would take over where his bio mother had left off.
And he remained her smart little boy . . . forever.
While he, in turn, became the unconscious template, in YOUR consciousness, for men generally: Essentially, WEAKLINGS
— i.e., easily manipulated to give you what you want (or what think you want), if you know which buttons to push or which parts to stroke — and as long as you take special care to never reveal to them their vulnerabilities.
PROTECTION can be pernicious & quite deadly. . . . if it keeps you from ever becoming inwardly strong.
honeybee Said:
dweller provides his own sticks with each of his comments. He is his own straight man for our barbs. He is the gift WHO keeps on giving and giving… ad-nausea.
@ Max:
What a crock. (Does this line of drivel work with other people you deal with?)
YOU, an advocate of suicide in difficult situations, can talk to me about “healthy constructive communication”? — ROFLMAO.
The child abuse took place when her mother swore her to secrecy in a matter her father should have been allowed to know about instantly, thus using their own child to drive a wedge between them.
All you are doing here is trying to transfer the accountability for that to me — effectively, attempting to shoot the messenger.
@ Max:
I have common sense in spades, and I stand by what I’ve said.
It’s YOU who are pontificating, bozo. What’s more, it’s you who has no way of knowing what I do or don’t know about HB’s parents. Our online discussions have covered lots of ground over the past several years, and I know how to make sense of it.
Wrong. It doesn’t depend on what ANYBODY ‘wants.’
It depends on what’s right. (a novel concept for you?)
I agree — but then, that’s precisely what YOU have just presumed here to do with ME.
There is nothing destructive about me, and emotional sharing is hardly sacrosanct.
Actually the parts to which you refer arrived unusually EARLY in my case; not late. The reason you haven’t noticed is that, unlike YoursTruly, you never learned what those parts are there for
— so you have no idea what you’re looking at in me.
Thanks for your opinion; I’ll pass it along to her. We’ll both enjoy a good giggle over that one.
@ Max:
@ yamit82
Are yawl boys using me for stick to beat dweller ???????????
dweller Said:
They had a better then average relationship.
My Father had terrible childhood, my Mother was his “safe place”. He had a genius IQ and learned more from him then any teacher.
dweller Said:
I understood perfectly what my Mother was asking. By the age of 6 I could read and comprehend the newspaper. Those who did the damage to me were not my parent, but the perpetrators who wrote on my garage.
yamit82 Said:
Thank you,,, now I know how to spell schmuck !!!!!!!!! A word neither of my parents would approve of me using.
Max Said:
Add: presumptuous, insolent, vain, bumptious, supercilious, impertinent, patronizing, pompous, pretentious, impudent, AH & schmuck. A real sicko!!!
Max Said:
If he had a real one then I would venture he was smothered by mommy or he became a mama’s boy and still is it seems.
honeybee Said:
Good story and interesting family dynamic. Thanks for sharing.
An excellent example of dweller’s lack of common sense – like a missing part.
He pontificates about what should be best without any knowledge whatsoever of the actual relationship of which he has only surface knowledge, without even asking questions to find out about it and and actually not even having the ability to know what questions to ask to encourage further sharing.
Dweller, you have no idea of what was “good” in that situation – it depends on what they want , not what you want. Imposing an abstract superficial idealism on others is certainly not good.
In fact Dweller acts destructively to emotional sharing from others so much that I would gather his emotional world is something like a cramped igloo.
Dweller! You have some parts on back order- wait for the missing emotional parts to arrive before attempting to engage your thinking apparatus.
To engage in such juvenile destructive personal trolling in response to a shared experience, I really think your mommy didn’t love you enough.
dweller Said:
The use of the word “should” applied to a relationship means your psyche is dysfunctional or neurotic. There is no “should” in relationships.
In the mature adult world when someone shares something personal , we absorb their narrative and feel a desire to share something back. This is the entire basis of healthy constructive communication. If you are talking to any seven year old in the manner you are doing then that would be child abuse and such a manner and in fact since you are addressing the seven year old in a person’s memory you are engaging in some kind of twisted cathartic child abuse.
You are acting like, if not are, a immature, dysfunctional, destructive, abrasive adolescent.
@ honeybee:
She swore you to secrecy before you were old enough to even comprehend such a promise.
Not good for him.
Not good for you.
Not good for her.
I can see why. You became her (perhaps unspoken) excuse for everything wrong between her & him.
The US Jews (vast majority on the left)believe that they represent the Jewish people!!!! But they are the most dangerous antisemites!
@ dweller:
Yes I agree, but I was only 7 and I promised my Mother. My Mother was very very protective of my Father. I often felt like an intruder in the relationship.
@ honeybee:
Good story.
But you shoulda told him.
He had a right to know.
When I was seven yrs. old my family move into a new town and a new neighborhood. One morning a few weeks after we arrived my Mother was carrying boxes to the ally, when she notice that during the night someone had written ” dirty Jews etc.” all over the back of our garage. It was after my Father had gone to his office. She returned to our home, she brushed my hair in long curls. I had hair so long I could sit upon it so it took some time. Then she dressed me my best plaid taffeta dress, made by my Grandmother. She then dressed herself in her finest dress arranged her hair and make-up carefully and prepared a bucket of soapy water and two brushes and out we went. As we cleaned off the horrible words my Mother said she wanted ” them” to see,” we were clean people “, but even at seven I knew that, the unknown they, were not speaking of my Mother’s housekeeping.
Sometimes the best way to deal with ant-Semitism and the world’s unkindness is with stiff-necked courage and defiance. It was the greatest lesson my Mother ever gave me. We never told my Father and we never spoke of the incident again.
Israel decision tree!
I find Steve Kramer’s defense of Israel as a good attempt but falling short.
Humanism is an amorphic construct and designed by Communists to cover their activities. To other “humanists” One-World represents personal Chameleon safety. No one will fight because there is nothing to fight for. One-World without borders and without differences among peoples is the naive configuration covering the true goal of conglomerating power in the hands of the few to control the many.
However, in truth, without extreme diversity, the best paths to the future will be missed and the worst choices have a better chance of being institutionalized. How about ISIS becoming the norm, because it is not worse than liberal democracy or capitalist enterprise!
Israel is an alternative to One-World thinking and thus must be destroyed, according to these One-World disinformation experts. Its dazzling success in social and scientific areas including those of the orthodox community is not seen as a phenomenon to be studied, but as a blockage to flourishing of Utopia. Thus, Israel’s destruction must be encouraged or at least ignored. The very notion of the death of each civilian and soldier in Israel as being a calamity and a tragedy is fought tooth-and-nail by the Left and the Muslim world who do not hold life as dear as the goals of the Revolution, whichever revolution they are supporting today!