A national carrier without a state? Palestinian Airlines, the national carrier of a stateless Palestine, has resumed flights after a seven year absence. Flying from Al-Arish, an Egyptian port city in the Northern Sinai, to Amman, the airline is reportedly sold out for the next two months.

Yesterday, I spoke about the airline, its history (did you know one of their first planes was donated from Saddam Hussein’s private flight?) and what the airline might mean for the nascent Palestinian state with Monocle news editor Tom Edwards on the Monocle Daily. Included in the interview were select clips with Palestinian Airlines director General Ziad Albad which were completed in his Ramallah office.

You can listen, stream, or download this interview here (Episode 143, interview begins at minute 43:25) 

Election posters in Algiers (credit: Abu Ray)

Our friend Abu Ray, a journalist covering North Africa, sent in this dispatch from Algeria where he was to cover the recent parliamentary elections, in which the ruling FLN won against expectations that Islamist parties would do well, as they have done in neighboring Tunisia and Morocco. The Islamists and many others have decried widespread fraud and the turnout was very low.

For some of us journalists, the Arab Spring meant discovering French colonial architecture, or at least that of Tunis. I mean no one went toTunisia before the revolution: it was a journalistic dead zone. And then came the uprising, the confused aftermath and then the October elections, and each time, we would wander around the tree-lined Bourguiba avenue, with its never-ending outdoor cafés and beautiful peeling old buildings and think, wow, now THIS is a capital city.

Up until this point, if what you’ve seen of Arab capitals is the slow motion urban train wreck of Cairo, the bland concrete and glass of the Gulf and the soul destroying beige ugliness of Baghdad, Tunis was amazing.

Until I saw Algiers. The white city on the sea has just block after block of achingly beautifully filigreed white buildings with delicate blue balconies arrayed around a perfect semicircular bay, climbing up a steep mountain like an amphitheater.

There are drawbacks. Everything built from the 1950s on is hideous and unlike Alexandria’s lovely bay, the Algiers port is, well, smack dab in the center of the bay, so once you got close to the water, you are dealing with warehouses, train tracks, highways and chainlink fences guarding customs buildings.

But climb the hill and and there you were in winding streets connected by steep staircases, working your way through old neighborhoods. So Algiers was a rare enough site to visit, but this time around, the government wanted to invite the world for their elections, their “spring.”

It was time to throw a party, show off the city and tell the world how Spring-like Algeria was feeling. It was the regularly scheduled parliamentary elections, elections the country has been holding regularly every five years like a train schedule, and with about as much literary merit. But since everyone was looking around the region saying, “where’s your spring Algeria?,” the aging regime of old revolutionaries felt they had to put on a show. So the observers were invited in, the journalists suddenly got visas, and a fairly closed place was suddenly thrown open — much to the joy of those who love old colonial cities.

As it turns out, asking Algeria experts why there was no “Arab Spring” in Algeria, could possibly be the equivalent of asking the inane post 9/11 query of “why do they hate us?” They do get tired of that. One answer is that Algeria had its spring in 1988 when angry riots over a failed system broke out around the country necessitating a massive army crackdown that killed 500 people — roughly proportional to the numbers that died in Tunisia and Egypt’s 2011 revolutions.

The result was a multiparty system ahead of its time, some fairly free elections and then… well, the military coup, the Islamist rebellion and 10 lost years of grinding bloodshed as the military that built that country made sure it didn’t have to let it go.

The other answer, is how many Middle East nations just dripping in hydrocarbon wealth had a “spring?” Those who could bought their way out, unless they had mismanaged the whole situation so badly like Gadhafi that it went violent from the get go — and then only succeeded thanks to NATO’s air force.

Despite being a country of 35 million people, with a highly educated middle class, and a rich history, Algeria can be understood by some of the same logic as a Gulf monarchy. Politics in many ways has died off in Algeria, what it is really going on, is a competition for who gets what handout. And thanks to the ever rising price of oil, there’s huge pie to compete for.

For a rich country, many Algerians feel poor, or at least feel they should be doing better than they are, and there’s that sneaking suspicion that everyone above them on the economic ladder is just doing a better job of siphoning off that rich load of state money than they are. People despise politicians because they are paid well, why would I vote someone into power just so they can make a bunch of money? Where’s my share?

Tunisia and Egypt and elsewhere worked because people, for a brief shining moment, threw aside all their differences and got together in the street for a single goal, usually the ousting of one very obviously awful leader. In Algeria that could never come together, who would unite people? Why would you give one person your allegiance when he was probably making some kind of buck out of it? Or was in the pay of security?

So elections were this bizarre piece of theater where an incredibly cynical government of political players par excellence urged everyone to vote for… Algeria’s Spring. “Our spring is Algeria,” said the ubiquitous get-out-the-vote poster. Posters for candidates were restricted to a limited set of oft-vandalized billboards, but the posters advertising the vote itself, were everywhere.

If you don’t vote, there will be chaos. And if there is chaos, there will be foreign intervention. It will be French colonialism all over again. We’ll be Iraq, or Libya, or even worse, if you don’t vote, went the campaign speeches of the government politicians.

Meanwhile pretty much anyone you talked to would say, why vote? the parliament is powerless, the politicians are corrupt, the elections are rigged.

But the thing is, I thought this time the government was serious, this time they would really try to let the opposition movements have their say and breathe, just to let off a bit of steam in a closed political society subsidized by natural gas.

Some of the opposition seemed to feel that way as well, though their confidence smacked of that Egyptian opposition kind, when their local intelligence service minder has promised them 50 seats in the next parliament if they just don’t boycott.

As it was, Algeria continued to buck the trend, whether it was in meaningful elections, or Islamist parties winning, or doing something that just didn’t reek of the same old stultifying status quo, but the former single ruling party of aged war heroes nearly doubled its seats. It was particularly painful coming just two days after the cancer-ridden president, a foreign minister in the 1965 government of Colonel Boumendiene, told the country that the generation of the independence struggle was finished and it was time for a new generation.

Apparently that new generation still has to belong to the National Liberation Front, because they’re the ones still running the show.

But the thing is, if you have a system where no one votes, it’s just going to be those rickety old pensioners who do remember the independence struggle and who do think that the FLN is the only solution who cast their votes. The 40+ other political parties didn’t really have popular support. Many of them consisted of one well known ex-government official, a few friends, and a fax machine to send out press releases.

The three-week campaign was largely a series of poorly attended rallies around the country where the new parties tried to articulate their program but mostly spent their time urging people to vote. The one exception I saw was Amar Ghoul, the head of the Algiers list for the “Green Alliance” of Islamist parties.

I saw him campaign in the fairly gritty neighborhood of Harache in Algiers and he told young people that if they wanted jobs, they had to organize, and he walked through the streets and greeted cafe owners and listened to people with their housing woes, including a dramatic example where an entire floor had disintegrated in one low slung apartment building, leaving the families there living in debris. He listened with concern, hugged an old woman, shook hands in the streets — it was like a real campaign, it inspired hope for change. As I was leaving, I saw a man at the nearby covered market, with steel grey hair and piercing blue eyes watching the politician move through his town with his entourage and I asked him if maybe, just maybe, this was something worthwhile?

“It’s nothing he snorted, just air,” he said with disgust, before turning away and walking off.

“Affirming a Judaism and Jewish Identity without Zionism:

A Personal Spiritual/Ethical Journey”

Talk in memory of Hilda Silverman z’l

Boston April 17,2012

Hilda Silverman was a personal friend and congregant of Rabbi Walt’s congregation (Mishkan Shalom) when she lived in Philadelphia.   In honor of her, Rabbi Walt will reflect on his own journey as a long-time progressive Zionist to a belief in a Judaism and American Jewish identity that rejects Zionism and support for the State of Israel as its core belief.  He will discuss how non-Orthodox Jewish movements – Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist  - adopted Zionism as the foundation of American liberal Jewish identity, corrupting the prophetic and ethical values of Judaism.  How do we reclaim a vibrant, progressive, non-Zionist Jewish identity that is connected to the Jewish community in Israel but not to unconditional support for Zionism and the State of Israel?  

Part 1: Hilda z’l

Thank you so much for inviting me to give this lecture in memory of Hilda Silverman z’l, a dear friend, congregant, teacher and comrade.  Hilda, as many of you know, was a very passionate, articulate and relentless advocate for justice, particularly for Palestinians.  Passion for justice was core of her Jewish identity.  The Torah commands: Justice, Justice, shall you pursue! Hilda’s tireless pursuit of justice is reflected in the Torah’s repetition: Justice, (Yes!) Justice shall you pursue!

For Hilda, as for most liberal Jews, this commitment to justice was based not only on Jewish text but also in Jewish history, in the experience of Jews as victims of injustice.  We must never do to others what was done to us.  In the words of the Torah: “You shall not oppress the stranger for you know the soul of the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” For Hilda, solidarity with the oppressed, with those who are treated unjustly, was what it meant to be a Jew.

Hilda saw the discrimination and oppression of Palestinians was the most urgent and pressing moral Jewish issue.  Every day she challenged the high wall, a “Separation Barrier”, a “Mechitza” that many progressive and liberal American Jews involved in many different justice issues build around the issue of Palestinian human rights.  American Jews have a proud legacy of challenging discrimination in America in housing, education, voting rights and every form of human and civil rights, yet are often silent about the systematic denial of precisely these same rights to Palestinians by Israel.  (I wonder how many synagogue and family seders were held 10 days ago where rights for women, gays and lesbians, immigrants, the poor and many others were mentioned but not a word about the violation of Palestinian human rights.)

For Hilda the issue of Palestine was the issue on which the integrity of the Jewish ethical tradition and the Jewish legacy rested.  And, it wasn’t just the silence that was so disturbing, but the silence is acccompanied by the massive and effective support of the American Jewish community for Israel and the profound influence of the American Jewish community in ensuring massive American military, political and diplomatic support for Israel that enables the oppression of the Palestinian people.  As Hilda met Palestinians and encountered Palestinian suffering, the role of her community, so committed on issues of justice in America, while at the same time enablers of the oppression of Palestinians, pained her so deeply and inspired her to act fearlessly.  She angered many with her relentless insistence that this issue must be confronted and for this we are all so indebted to her.

Hilda and I met in Philadelphia in the 1980′s, I think in the Philadelphia chapter of New Jewish Agenda.  Then I was a rabbinical student and Middle East Peace activist training to become a social justice rabbi anchored in the prophetic tradition of Judaism.

Hilda read everything she could put her hands on about the Palestinians. She would send me long handwriten notes suggesting I read photocopied articles that she enclosed on the history of the conflict and on the disturbing realities of the Occupation.  She invited Palestinian speakers and arranged educational events.  She opened my eyes to realities that I wanted to deny. She was always ahead of me, understanding realities that it took me years to acknowledge.   She understood how important and painful it was for us to step beyond the comfort of denial.

In my first congregation, she helped me put together a unique adult education series on Israel: Hearing Both Sides that included speakers such as Rashid Khalidi, Afif Sefieh, Meron Bevenisti and several prominent Israelis.  At the time there was an Israeli ban on speaking to anyone associated with the P.L.O and yet Afif Sefieh who devoted his life to representing the P.L.O. was welcomed into our little synagogue.

In 1987, my  Yom Kippur sermon,  A Generation of Occupation, discussing the corrosive moral effects of twenty years of Occupation on Jews and Judaism. cost me my first position as a congregational rabbi.  When we founded Mishkan Shalom, an explicitly activist congregation with a commitment to support to justice and peace in Israel/Palestine, Hilda joined the congregation.   I think it was the first time she became a  member of a congregation.  I will always remember the first Hannukah service in our congregation that Hilda planned honoring Human Rights Day and the first anniversary of the intifadeh.

Hilda moved to Boston but we kept in touch and later when I helped found Rabbis for Human Rights North America we reconnected.  Hilda always was a devoted and passionate supporter of Rabbis for Human Rights, particularly the work of Rabbi Arik Ascherman with whom she had a close relationship.  She always helped bring him to different communities.

Hilda was my teacher and friend and a very important part of my own spiritual/ethical journey that I want to share tonight.   As I said, she was always ahead of me.    My talk, “Affirming a Judaism and Jewish Identity without Zionism: A Personal Spiritual/Ethical Journey” is a way of honoring and thanking her.  It is also a way of sharing publicly in a comprehensive way an important transformation that I have undergone in my understanding of the conflict and of my activism in the past two to three years.

My talk will be divided into three parts:

1. Zionism

2. Judaism

3. Privilege, Power and Solidarity

1. Zionism

I grew up in a fiercely and passionately Zionist family and community in South Africa and have been a progressive, liberal Zionist for most of my life.  The schools I attended as a child were Weizmann and Herzlia, named after the two Zionist leaders.  I was part of Habonim, a Zionist youth movement, and spent three months in Israel in 1967 following the 67 War.  I love Hebrew language and culture.  In 1969 one of the highlights of my life was meeting David Ben Gurion, the founding father of Israel, and representing South Africa in the International Bible Quiz in Jerusalem on Israel Independence Day.    I made aliya after high school, and studied in the regular program with Israelis at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  While I returned to South Africa in 1972, liberal Zionism and a deep connection to Israel remained  a core part my Judaism and Jewish identity. (My great grandfather, Avraham Zeev, after whom I am named, is buried on Mount of Olives.  According to family legend he made aliya to Israel in 1926, a few days after his daughter asked if she could go to a store with a non Jewish friend on Shabbat!)

Liberal Zionism

Liberal Zionism meant that I believed in the creation of a Jewish state that would provide a desparately needed safe haven for Jews around the world,  a state that would be a cultural center for the Jewish People, and a state that would reflect the highest ideals of the Jewish tradition.  After centuries of victimization, the creation of a Jewish state would afford Jews an opportunity to test our values: not do unto others as was done to us.   The Jewish State would treat all with dignity, equality and respect.  In the words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, the state will be “based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

This was the Zionist vision that I learned as a child, that was the ethos of Habonim, my Zionist youth movement, that inspired me to make aliya, and that inspired my involvement over the past three decades in Breira, New Jewish Agenda, Tikkun , Rabbis for Human Rights, Americans for Peace Now, the Shalom Center, and many related organizations.  Athough these organizations are to the left of the mainstream American Jewish community they all share a progressive/liberal Zionist vision, deeply attached to the Jewish state, while viewing the oppression of Palestinians, the Occupation and the settlement policy as deviations from the true intent of Zionism and a violation of the core values of Judaism.

Public Letter to Netanyahu

One of the very first public acts of Rabbis for Human Rights – North America was a public letter in 2004 to Prime Minister Netanyahu from over 400 rabbis protesting the arrest of Rabbi Arik Ascherman for blocking a bulldozer demolishing a Palestinian home.  The letter articulated our Zionism.

We wrote: “We are concerned about the decision to prosecute our colleague who has devoted his life to Israel and to the Zionist vision of building and sustaining a Jewish State that exemplifies the values of compassion and justice.  Rabbi Ascherman has dedicated his career to protecting the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and his Zionist and Jewish commitments inspire thousands of Jews in Israel and abroad.  ……..  For us and for many Jews in our communities the work of Rabbi for Human Rights represents the Jewish moral conscience. We express our love and commitment for Israel by supporting that work. To silence it is to push us away from the Israel we love.”

For many years I expressed my love and commitment to Israel by supporting the work of Rabbis for Human Rights and other Israeli Human Rights and peace organizations as they embodied the Israel that I believed in and loved.

Over time, engagement with these organizations also led to a transformation in my own relationship to Zionism and my understanding of the relationship between Zionism and Judaism.   This transformation came to a head in 2008.

Home Demolition:

As part of my involvement with these organizations, particularly Rabbis for Human Rights in the 1990′s and first decade of this century, I got to see some very disturbing realities most Jews and Israelis choose not to see.

As Rabbis for Human Rights worked very closely with the Israel Commmittee against Home Demolition, in the 1990′s I witnessed or visited several demolished Palestinian homes.  The memory and visual images of these experiences live within me, in my body and soul.

I remember standing on the site of a recently demolished Palestinian home seeing the childrens toys lying in the rubble and a small one person tent next to the demolished home where the father of the family now lived.  The experience shook me to my core.  What does it mean for me to believe in a Jewish state that demolishes Palestinian homes using bulldozers to destroy everything including the toys of children, while it builds and subsidizes thousands of homes for Jews, homes that house among others, friends of mine who make aliya from America?  How can I understand this reality as a Jew?   Is this the Jewish state I believe in and support?   As a supporter of Israel, a Zionist, am I implicated in this evil act?   What is the appropriate response?

These questions haunted me every time.  On one visit to Israel a small group of rabbis participated in rebuilding a demolished home.  While we were there some of us slept in a home threatened with imminent demolition.  Later in the day as we watched the demolition trucks, police and ambulance make their rounds demolishing various Palestinian “illegal” structures, we actually saw the home being demolished.  First, dozens of Israeli soldiers and police cut off access to the village, then we saw the bulldozers do their dirty work while the homeowners were wailing, the neighbors standing in shock and awe.  It is is a scene that I will never forget.    I was proud that Rabbi Arik Ascherman wearing a kippah was present protesting the demolition but the questions remained.   Do I still believe in Zionism?  Can I still be  a Zionist?  A Jew?

As a person who had grown up in South Africa under Apartheid, these acts of discrimination were very  evocative of scenes from my childhood.    Evictions was one of the brutal realities of Apartheid, part of my reality as a chid.

Over the years as I saw more and more horrifying basic violations of human rights: massive tracts of stolen Palestinian land on which settlements were built, trees uprooted and burned by settlers, homes in Silwan taken over by settlers in the middle of the night who are then protected by the Israeli army.  Each time the question of Zionism came up.  These demolitions, settlements, violent disposession of Palestinian homes were not “rogue” acts, the Israeli state with all its military might enabled and supported these actions.   Because of my deep connection to Israel, to my friends, to Israeli culture, to what Israel meant to me and the Jewish people,  it was hard for me to even think of relinquishing my Zionism.  It was so much part of me and my connection to my community.

In 2008 it came to a head.

In honor of Israel’s 60th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of Rabbis for Human Rights, I planned and led a Rabbis for Human Rights trip to Israel and the West Bank entitled Planting Justice. This solidarity mission to Israel and the West Bank was part of a campaign to support the efforts of Rabbis for Human Rights and all those in Israel working to fulfill the dream of an Israel that upholds equality and justice for all -Jews and Arabs alike.

On the trip:

We visited an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev where Palestinians have lived since 1948 without any services, while over the same period of time countless Jewish towns, and villages have been created.  There are over 150 such unrecognized villages in Israel of Palestinians displaced in the 48 war.  While the Bedouin village was still unrecognized 60 years after the founding of the Israel, the government was advancing plans to  ”Judaize” the Negev.

We witnessed the humiliation of Palestinians waiting  for hours early in the morning at a checkpoint and then processed like a group of animals.

We replanted olive trees on Palestinian land, uprooted by Jewish settlers with the full protection of the Israeli army.  The trees were undoubtedly uprooted again within days after our visit.   The tract of land adjacent to where we planted the trees had been stolen from a Palestinian who took the case to the Supreme Court with the aid of Israeli human rights organizations.  Despite a ruling in his favor several years ago, the land had still not been returned to him.

Hebron

And, for me this was the clincher a deserted street restricted to Jews, in the middle of Hebron, passing by Palestinian homes where the residents are not allowed to walk on the street in front of their homes.  When Michael Manikin, our guide, mentioned that this was a Jews only street and showed us the apartments where Palestinians climb over the roof and then down a ladder to go to the store, the supermarket, the hospital, something in me had changed.  Sadness and rage overwhelmed me.   I realized that this was in some ways worse than what I had witnessed as a child in South Africa.  Whenever I would compare my experience on the West Bank with my experience during Apartheid, Jews would get very angry.  For many years I knew I should never use the A (Apartheid) word.  At that moment I broke down crying and made a pledge that I would never again censor myself.  I didn’t know it then, but that was the moment when I crossed over.

There was no word that accurately describes what we had experienced on this 12 day trip on both sides of Green Line other than systemic racism.   I finally had to admit to myself what I had known for a long time but was too scared to acknowledge: political Zionism, at its core, is a discriminatory ethno-nationalism that privileges the rights of Jews over non-Jews.  As such political Zionism violates everything I believe about Judaism.  While there was  desperate need in the 1940′s to provide a safe haven for Jews, and this need won over most of the Jewish world and the Western world to support the Zionist movement, the Holocaust can in in no way justify or excuse the systemic racism that was and remains an integral part of Zionism.

In the past I believed that the discrimination I saw: the demolished homes, the uprooted trees, the stolen land were an aberration of the Zionist vision. I came to understand that all of these were not mistakes nor a blemishes on a dream,  they were all the logical outcome of Zionism.

As a Jew I believe in the inherent dignity of every human being.  As  a Jew I believe that justice is the core commandment of our tradition.  As a Jew I believe that we are commanded to be advocates for the poor, the oppressed the marginalized.   Zionism and the daily reality in Israel violated each of these core values.  And, I could no longer be a Zionist.   I will always be a person with deep and profound connection to Israel and my friends and family there, but I was no longer a Zionist

I came to understand that the democratic Jewish state is an illusion. There is no democratic Jewish state nor will there ever be.  Israel will either be a Jewish state or a democratic state. A Jewish state by definition privileges Jews and cannot be democratic.  Israel is a  democratic state for Jews and a Jewish state for Arabs.   It is true that Palestinians who live within Israel have the franchise but they are do not have eqaul rights in many different ways, nor could they ever be full and equal citizens of a Jewish state.

And there was another profound change in my thinking.  I also came to understand that there was a direct line between the formation of Israel in 1948 and the Occupation.  Just as I thought that the human rights violations were blemishes on an otherwise inspiring vision, I, like many liberal Zionists saw the Occupation as the issue. The problem were the right wing settlers and the settlements.  Like most liberal Zionists, I ignored the Nakhba and the direct connection between the Nakhba and the Occupation.   Without knowing it at the time, this confrontation with the Nakhba began at that meeting with Ben Gurion when I was in high school.

Ben Gurion in South Africa

When Ben Gurion visited South Africa in 1979 he was asked at a meeting of the counsellors of the Zionist youth movements about charges that in 1948, Palestinians were expelled from their homes.  Red in his face, banging on the table, he adamantly asserted that not one Palestinian was expelled.  The opposite: We pleaded with the Arabs to stay and promised them security but they followed the Mufti of Jerusalem who encouraged them to drive the Jews into the sea.  This story is still told to explain the exodus of over 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

For a few years I believed this standard and still prevalent untruth.  We now know conclusively that this story is simply not true.  Not only were Palestinians expelled from many villages and towns, often with great brutality,  but Ben Gurion himself gave the order for some of  these expulsions.  He one of the architects of the policy of transfer.  The debate still rages about exacty what happened in each village but there is overwhelming evidence that most of the Palestinians left because of actions of the Israeli forces.

The expulsion of over 600,000 Palestinians some of whom left out of fear and most because they were expelled, and the refusal to allow them to return to their homes as required by United Nations Resolution was also a logical outcome of Zionism.  Removing or transferring them was essential to create a “democratic” Jewish state.   Ben Gurion understood this and he was one of the architects of this policy.   The Jewish state could only claim to be democratic if it had a minority of citizens that are not Jewish. Demography, not democracy is the driver.    Zionism has always had the goal of control over the maximum amount of land with the minimum number of Arabs.  Demography has always been the main rationale for Israeli policy.  It was the policy in 1948 and it has been the same policy on the West Bank since 1967.  The Occupation is simply the continuation of the same Zionist goals that led to the Nakhba.     

As a liberal Zionist, we never talked much about the Nakhba.  We never paid attention to  the over 400 Palestinian villages that were razed to the ground, their names erased and replaced by Jewish towns, villages and kibbutzim with Hebrew names.   When I made aliya to a kibbutz in 1970, I simply had no idea that most kibbutzim were built on the ruins of Palestinian villages.  Last year as I was thinking about this I looked up my kibbutz and with the aid of Google in a few minutes I found a photo of the Palestinian village on which it was built.

In 2010, my family spent five months in Israel  in Katamon, a neighborhood with many Anglo immigrants to Israel.  As I walked around the neighborhood I wondered who lived in all these beautiful Arab homes before 48 and where were they now.  In 2009, I was in Bethlehem and when some Palestinian friends and I made our way back to Jerusalem, one of them told me that her home was in Katamon!  There will be no reconciliation without an acknowledgement of the dispossession of the Palestinians.

It is true that what happened in Israel was no different from what the colonialists did in North America and Africa and around the world.  What is different is that the Nakhba is ongoing.  The Occupation, the stealing of Palestinian land, the creation of settlements,  the demolition of Arab villages in the Jordan Valley and elsewhere are a continuation of the Nakhba.  It is a systematic policy by which Israel creates facts on the ground that will make life difficult for Palestinians thereby encouraging or precipitating a voluntary “transfer” of Palestinians from the West Bank. And the policy has met with success.  According to the Civil Administration about a quarter million Palestinians voluntarily left the West Bank between 200-2007.

Palestinian Residency:

Another dramatic example of this policy are the regulations that revoke Palestinian residency for Palestinians who leave the country for a few years.  By the time of the Oslo accords, Israel had revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians from the West Bank.

Gideon Levy writes:  “In other words 14% of West Bank residents who dared to go abroad had their right to return to Israel and live here denied forever. In other words, they were expelled from their land and their homes.  In other words: ethnic cleansing.”

He writes; “Anyone who says “it’s not apartheid” is invited to reply: Why is an Israeli allowed to leave his country for the rest of his life, and nobody suggests that his citizenship be revoked, while a Palestinian, a native son, is not allowed to do so? Why is an Israeli allowed to marry a foreigner and receive a residency permit for her, while a Palestinian is not allowed to marry his former neighbor who lives in Jordan? Isn’t that apartheid?  Over the years I have documented endless pitiful tragedies of families that were torn apart, whose sons and daughters were not permitted to live in the West Bank or Gaza due to draconian rules – for Palestinians only.”

Israel recognizes that many Palestinians will not leave but it hopes to contain them in four disconnected Palestinian cantons over which it will exert maximum control and have minimal responsibility.  This is the situtation Israel has created in Gaza and this is the intention for the West Bank.  This is exactly what was called a Bantustan in South Africa, an area where Blacks seemingly had indepdence and autonomy but in fact were totally controlled by the White South African government.

Zionism has become a movement that displaces Palestinians and privileges Jews. The problem here is much deeper than demography; it is a problem of ethics.  Political Zionism contradicts what we hold as the sacred values of Judaism and the lessons of Jewish history.  Judaism has been fused with Zionism and we need a Judaism and Jewish identity without political Zionism.

2. Judaism and Zionism

Prior to the 1940′s there was a vigorous debate about Zionism and Judaism.  Within the Zionist movement there was a small but influential group of very prominent leaders – Buber, Magnes and others –  that understood that imposing our will on the Palestinians would create an unending cycle of violence and violate our deepest values as Jews. There were vigorous debates about Zionism and a division between political Zionists and cultural Zionists.   Most Jews were not Zionists.   The Holocaust transformed the Jewish world and Zionism won the sympathy of the world.

Today 60 years later there is almost no distinction made between Zionism and Judaism.  Zionism has become the religion of American Jews.  Even the Reform movement, the most liberal of the movements with a proud commitment to social justice and  which prior to 1948 was opposed to Zionism, has made Zionism a core tenet of Judaism.

I was recently preparing a Shabbat morning service for Tikkun v’Or the Reform congregation in Ithaca.  As I reviewed the service in Mishkan Tefila, the new Reform prayerbook, I came across the prayer for light that preceeds the recitation of the Shma.

“Shine a new light upon Zion, that we may all swiftly be privileged to bask in its radiance.

Blessed are You, God, Creator of the Light”

My eyes were drawn to a commentary on the bottom of the page by my colleague, Rabbi David Ellenson, the President of Hebrew Union College, the Rabbinical School of Reform rabbis.

He writes:

“Classical Reform prayerbook authors in the Diaspora consistently omitted this line with its mention of Zion from the liturgy because of their opposition to Jewish nationalism (Zionism).  With the restoration of this passage to our new prayerbook, the Reform movement consciously affirms its devotion to the modern State of Israel and signals its recognition of the religious significance of the reborn Jewish commonwealth”

In his brief comment, Rabbi Ellenson describes the transformation in the Reform movement’s relationship to Zionism in the mid 20th century.  In the first half of the 20th century only a minority of the world’s Jews were supporters of Zionism. The Reform movement actively opposed Zionism as antithetical to the core values of Reform Judaism dedicated to a form of Judaism that would allow Jews to uphold our tradition while fully participating in American society.  Since the Holocaust there has been a complete reversal.  with Reform Judaism not only affirms its devotion to Israel but ascribes to the State of Israel religious significance.

What does it mean to ascribe to a political state that is predicated on privileging a particular ethnic group, religious significance? How can American Jews who firmly advocate separation of Church and State  ascribe religious significance to a Jewish State?  Do we believe in a separation of religion and state in America but not in Israel?

The idea that the State of Israel has religious significance is shared by all the movements of Judaism except for some sectors of the ultra Orthodox.  The formulation that is most widely accepted is that Israel is of the flowering of our redemption.  of redemption, the beginning of the messianic age “Reishit tzmichat geulateynu”

Last year there was  some controversy in the Reform movement when Rabbi  Rick Jacobs was chosen to replace Rabbi Eric Yoffie as the the head of the Reform movement.  To allay the fears of those who were afraid of Rabbi Jacobs’ support for J Street and the New Israel Fund, my colleague Rabbi Peter Knobel defended Jacobs as a “staunch Zionist.”

He wrote in Haaretz:

“This is not just a reflection of Rabbi Jacobs’ personal views, for this staunch Zionism and support for Israel are enshrined in Reform Judaism – and in the hearts of most of our more than 1.5 million Jews. For us Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) is not only a national celebration but a religious one as well.  [We have enriched our ritual life with new observances and liturgy rooted in our commitment to Israel. The Israeli Reform siddur, “Avodah Shebalev,” has a special Amidah and Kiddush for Independence Day. The new North American Reform siddur, “Mishkan Tefillah,” has a special service for Yom Ha’atzmaut, which uses the Israeli Declaration of Independence as a sacred text.”

“We believe that the renewal and perpetuation of Jewish national life in Eretz Yisrael is a necessary condition for the realization of the physical and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people and of all humanity. While that day of redemption remains but a distant yearning, we express the fervent hope that Medinat Yisrael, living in peace with its neighbors, will hasten the redemption of Am Yisrael, and the fulfillment of our messianic dream of universal peace under the sovereignty of God.”

What does he mean?   Is the existence and perpetuation of a Jewish State, one that was created by dispossessing the Palestinian people, one that is has imposed the longest military occupation in human history is a “necessary condition for the realization of the physical and spiritual redemption of the Jewish people and all humanity?”

What is the relationship between these inspiring words and the Jewish soldiers who invaded a Palestinian home last night to arrest Palestinian children?  Or to Palestinian children who are imprisoned in Israel?  Or to the villagers of El Arakib whose village has been destroyed several times over the past year?

Tragically, Zionism has become the primary religious commitment for most liberal Jews, more important than any other commandment or ethical concern. As a rabbi one can say almost anything one wants about the most sacred traditions and rituals of the Jewish people but if one criticizes Israel, one could quite easily lose your job.

Birthright

In response to concern about Jewish continuity, the Jewish community has invested millions of dollars in Birthright, free trips to Israel.  Instead of building a vibrant Jewish life here in America and/or creating programs in which our children could engage meaningfully in spiritually engaging/justice related projects we take our children to Israel on “birthright”   What is their birthright?  Do they as Jewish children growing up in security and with much privilege here in America, have a right that comes to them because they were born Jewish of a free trip to a country where Palestinians who lived there for centuries were expelled and not allowed to return and where the process of dispossession of the Palestinians is an ongoing project day by day?

This fusion of Judaism with the interests of that nation state is a tragedy for Judaism.  Judaism is a religion.  Zionism is a political movement associated with a particular nation state. And we need to separate the two, to create daylight between Judaism and Zionism.

We are all indebted to Mark Ellis who coined the term
“Constantinian Judaism” comparing the fusion of Judaism and Zionism to the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Christianity by becoming the religion of the empire, assumed the role of legitimating the actions of the empire.  A religion that is based on the teachings of a radical prophet who taught a message of love, justice and peace was wedded to the needs and brutality of an empire.  Similarly, Judaism with its profound commitment to the human dignity of all, to freedom and to justice, is now wedded of the actions of the Israeli government.

Diaspora Judaism

We need to return to the vibrant debates about the Jewish future that existed prior to 1940.  We need to reclaim with pride the history of Diaspora Judaism, a Judaism that was attached to Spirit and community, not to political power.  We need to affirm the value of  life in Diaspora, living alongside and in relationship with people of other faiths and ethnicities.  We need the wisdom of two thousand years of Jews living in Diaspora creating community and surviving despite victimization.  The Zionists portray Jewish life in the Diaspora in shameful terms, as weak, effeminate, shameful. Living in Diaspora offers us many blessings.

We need to envision an Israel that is a state for all it’s citizens, a true democracy. We need to reclaim Judaism as a source of ultimate values not as the cheerleader for a nation state.  Judaism is an ethical system that can and offer us wisdom about how to use power ethically.

Cast a New light upon Zion and may we all be privileged to bask in that light.

We truly need a new light with which to see Zion and it must be a a light that all can bask in.

Part 3: Solidarity, Privilege and Transformation

In his recent book, The Crisis of Judaism, Peter Beinart has pointed out the contradiction between the story of victimisation that is told almost exclusively by mainstrem Jewish leaders and the reality of Jewish privilege and power.  Jews in America, Israel and around the world have significant power and privilege.   We were victims and have been victimized but thankfully in our world Jews are no longer victims.  The challenge we face is how to live Jewishly with power and privilege.   How do we respond ethically to our power and privilege.

I believe the answer to this question lies in the concept of solidarity. Judaism calls us to be in solidarity with those who are the victims of injustice.  The God of Judaism is the God who cares about the oppressed  Oseh mishpat la’ashukim.  Our God is the God who brings people out of slavery, poverty, injustice.

The Jewish response to privilege and power is to stand in solidarity with all who are seeking justice for all.  In our time, this includes standing in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice and equal rights.    As Americans we have a direct responsibility for the oppression of the Palestinian people – we make it possible.

Hilda followed a path of solidarity.  As a Jew she was in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for justice just as she was in solidarity with the struggle of African Americans, Black South Africans, the people of Haiti and Central America.  She understood far earlier than many that this issue, the Palestinian issue, was a Jewish issue, one for which she and we are accountable.

There is a growing movement of Jews who, as Jews, support the Palestinian struggle for justice.  They can be found in American Jews for a Just Peace, in Jewish Voice for Peace, in J Street, in Students for Justice in Palestine, in the US Campaign to end the Occupation and in the B.D.S. movement.  Every person, every Jew will have to make a choice about how we can best support the struggle for justice.

Every day the Nakhba continues.  Every day land is expropriated, Palestinians are imprisoned, brutalised.  Every day our precious Jewish tradition is used to justify this oppression.

For those of us, like Hilda, for whom Judaism is essentially about justice, who have deep love for Jewish culture, we need to join in the task of reclaiming a new Judaism without Zionism.  It will require vision, courage and the ability to endure many difficult and painful conversations.  There are many who want to silence this new movement by name calling and intimidation.

Hilda was one person who continued despite the name calling.  She developed a community of resistance, a commumnity of Jews, Palestinians, and people of many faiths and ethnicities tied together in a shared commitment to justice. There is no better way for us to honor her memory than by travelling beyond our comfortable assumptions and choosing how we may be part of the growing movement for justice.

May her soul live on in us.

A Sheynem Dank/ Todah Rabba/Shukran/ Thank You

Photo: AFP

From the Palestinian NGO, Adameer: Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association:

After nearly a full month of fasting, around 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners ended last night their mass hunger strike upon reaching an agreement with the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to attain certain core demands…

The written agreement contained five main provisions: the prisoners would end their hunger strike following the signing of the agreement; there will be an end to the use of long-term isolation of prisoners for “security” reasons, and the 19 prisoners will be moved out of isolation within 72 hours; family visits for first degree relatives to prisoners from the Gaza Strip and for families from the West Bank who have been denied visits based on vague “security reasons” will be reinstated within one month; the Israeli intelligence agency guarantees that there will be a committee formed to facilitate meetings between the IPS and prisoners in order to improve their daily conditions; there will be no new administrative detention orders or renewals of administrative detention orders for the 308 Palestinians currently in administrative detention, unless the secret files, upon which administrative detention is based, contain “very serious” information.

This is heartening news to be sure, particularly for the families of the strikers.  But on an even deeper level, this deal is a testimony to the astonishing moral/political power of fasting in response to oppression.  As my colleague Rabbi Alissa Wise recently wrote:

I can not even begin to fathom the pain, the discomfort, the anguish of starving yourself to protest injustice. Their decision to take up this action surely was not taken up lightly, and neither, I imagine, (was) their decision each and every day to continue with the fast.

Nor can I think of any more basic or courageous form of resistance than the simple act of refusing food. For an eloquent, heartbreaking expression of this principle, look no farther than the widely published letter written by hunger striker Thaer Halahleh to his two year old daughter Lamar. (Halahleh hovered between life and death for weeks before ending his strike at 77 days):

When you grow up you will understand how injustice was brought upon your father and upon thousands of Palestinians whom the occupation has put in prisons and jail cells, shattering their lives and future for no reason other then their pursuit of freedom, dignity and independence. You will know that your father did not tolerate injustice and submission, and that he would never accept insult and compromise, and that he is going through a hunger strike to protest against the Jewish state that wants to turn us into humiliated slaves without any rights or patriotic dignity.

Hunger striking is, of course, is an ancient time-honored form of protest. And as a Jew, I’m particularly mindful that the Book of Isaiah passionately connects the act of fasting to the pursuit of justice:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?

Indeed, it is critical that we understand that the Palestinians’ “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” as part of this long and honorable tradition of nonviolent resistance. As we have seen from the events of the past several months, it has lasted so long largely because it is a tactic that works.

At the same time, however, it is imperative to bear in mind what has been accomplished and what has not.  While several specific demands regarding prison conditions have been met, Israel’s overall policy of administrative detention essentially remains in place. Adameer’s press release rightly noted this point:

Addameer is concerned that these provisions of the agreement will not explicitly solve Israel’s lenient and problematic application of administrative detention, which as it stands is in stark violation of international law.

In a recent blog post for +972mag, Palestinian journalist Omar Rahman also viewed this agreement in context of the overall Israeli/Palestinian power dynamic:

We must also remember that Israel holds all the chips. These hunger strikers have managed to pressure Israel into a level of accommodation, but only while people are focused on the issue. As soon as that attention dissipates, Israel is free to take back what it has offered. In the relationship between the occupier and the occupied, Israel is the Lord who giveth and taketh away. What will the Palestinians do? Stage another collective hunger strike only to repeat the process of give and take? The costs are simply too high to stage such a strike every time the need arises to challenge the system.

In the meantime, it seems to me, the most important outcome of the hunger strike campaign is the way in which it powerfully frames the ethical stakes of Israel’s occupation. As a recent Guardian editorial stated plainly, “Israel cannot claim the moral high ground while it is holding Palestinians without charge.”

For Jews, the “Battle of the Empty Stomachs” thus represents a profoundly critical challenge. Will we, who are the bearers of a tradition that bids us to call out oppression, find the wherewithal to stand with those who fast in response to their oppression by the Jewish state?

I don’t know how to say it any better than my colleague Rabbi Rachel Barenblat:

When I read anything which speaks ill of Israel and of Judaism, my heart aches. I do not want to hear these things about my coreligionists. But the answer is not to silence or ignore those who are speaking out. The answer is for my fellow Jews to live up to what is best in our tradition. Detaining people without trial, without informing them or their lawyers of the charges against them, is wrong. When the only Jewish government in the world makes those choices, we are all diminished.

My papers are graded and final grades submitted, so I'm off to Istanbul this afternoon to attend the Istanbul World Political Forum. I'll be speaking on two panels -- one on "A New and Just Global Order?" and another on "Can the Cold War Between Israel and Iran Turn to Hot War?" -- and I'm looking forward to hearing what my hosts and the other attendees think about Syria, the U.S. election, China, the Euro crisis, and a host of other issues. It's a very full schedule and there won't be a lot of time for blogging, but I will try to post something if I get a moment and the jet lag isn't too bad.