The Jewish Divide on Israel (Page 4)

Rosenthal of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the lobbying arm of local Jewish federations across the country, says that "the issue of how big is our tent and how civil is our dissent is the question of our time." At JCPA's annual conference in February, several hundred people packed a forum on dialogue and dissent over Israel. "We heard most poignantly from students, who said, 'I want to be able to ask questions and not be called an anti-Semite,'" Rosenthal recalls. The divide has become so pronounced that both sides have begun to address it as a crisis in its own right. Brit Tzedek has launched a Listening Project, and Jews Against the Occupation held a national Day of Debate on June 6; both entail small group encounters where the full range of views on Israel/Palestine can be heard. "We want to create a space where support for Palestinian rights is not seen as traitorous or self-hating," says JATO's Lorne Lieb, "but rather as something people can think about and talk to each other about." Hillel will roll out a similar campaign timed for the fall holiday of Sukkot, which will feature intimate conversations where, Wayne Firestone says, "students on the right will have to listen respectfully to students on the left and vice versa."

But such tentative efforts to pry open space for Jewish debate is unlikely to tear down the artificial AIPAC consensus anytime soon. When the Tikkun Community brought some 350 activists to Capitol Hill in April to lobby members of Congress to support a return to negotiations, recalls co-chair Michael Lerner, "there was an astonishing openness--behind closed doors." But most members said AIPAC's presence, both on the Hill and in their home districts, was overwhelming, especially in tandem with Israel hawks on the Christian right. "One member of Congress said it even feels dangerous to meet with us, because they have such good radar screens that they find out almost immediately," Lerner says.

His finger to the wind, John Kerry has uncritically endorsed Bush's enthusiasm for Sharon; while he once spoke somewhat critically of the wall Sharon is erecting deep inside the West Bank, Kerry now wholeheartedly endorses it as a necessary security measure. "The unwritten rule," says APN president Debrah DeLee, "is don't let anyone get to the right of you on Israel." The math is simple: Jews on the right will vote on the single issue of Israel, but liberal Jews vote on a range of issues. So for political candidates, tacking to the right is all gain, no pain.

Over and over, activists like Freedman have been told by sympathetic elected officials, "We support your positions, but we need the telephone calls, the faxes, the letters to the editor, the visits to our office in the home districts." Jewish anti-occupation forces are slowly getting the message. In July Brit Tzedek will post an open letter to the next President asking for an aggressive commitment to push for a final-status Israeli-Palestinian agreement; the organization is now collecting signatures from American Jews. The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has just published a first-ever dovish voter guide, in which members of Congress who support the occupation get a negative score; and Tikkun is working on a private letter to Kerry from peace activists across the country.

At the very least, their presence has exposed the lack of unanimous US Jewish support for Sharon, and that may itself have salutary effects. Cecilie Surasky of JVP says her organization's Jewish presence in alliances for Palestinian rights has opened up the space for other dissenters, mentioning that, with JVP's support, Catholic investors in Caterpillar felt emboldened to introduce a shareholder resolution against the military use of its bulldozers in the occupied territories. "For Americans to be persuaded [to support the Palestinian cause]," says Hany Khalil, organizing coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, a national antiwar organization that opposes the Israeli occupation, "we have to build support across all sectors of the United States, and that will never happen without a significant and visible split within the Jewish community."

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