J Street’s A Street Problem… by Gerald A. Honigman
How is it that Israel living in 9-15 mile wide area that they received as a result of UN-imposed armistice (“Auschwitz”) lines in 1949–are considered “expansionist right-wing extremists?”
How is it that JStreet cohorts condemn both those “oppressors” and President Trump for expecting/allowing the territorial compromise in the disputed territories–in which Jews have millennia of linkage–permitted via the final draft of UNSC Resolution 242 in the wake of the “67 War.
This is what the Settlement Issue is largely all about, as well as Israel’s new intent to apply sovereignty (misnamed “annexation”) to about a third of those disputed lands. Lands where Jews have lived, again, for millennia, Hebrew Prophets, preached, David was crowned King of Israel, Hebrew matriarchs and patriarchs are buried, the Maccabees led their fight against Greco-Syrian oppressors, and Jews owned land clear up to their massacres by Arabs in the 2oth century. And where the Temple itself is located. Keep in mind that these are not Brits claiming the Falkland islands over 8,000 miles away from home, the Russians in Chechnya, etc. and so forth…American Samoa?
Check out excerpts by the chief architect of 242, Lord Caradon:
“It would have been wrong to demand Israel return to positions of June 4, 1967 … those positions were … artificial … just places where soldiers of each side happened to be on the day fighting stopped in 1948 … just armistice lines. That’s why we didn’t demand Israelis return to them” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11127 .
So, not surprisingly, our starry-eyed kids go off to higher indoctrination--er, education–by “Progressive” professors (products themselves of what you read in the first lines above) to learn that Israeli Jews are now the new Nazis while Arabs, who only recently realized the benefits of calling themselves “Palestinians” instead, have allegedly become the new, formerly stateless Jews.
Thousands of these Jews thus wind up becoming “useful idiots” by Arabs and their duplicitous supporters who reject any justice in “their” region except that of their own. It’s not Israel’s size that’s the problem. It’s that Israel IS.
Some years ago, a friend sent an article which appeared in the October 6th, 2013 Jerusalem Post. The author, Aaron Magid, was a Masters candidate in Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. This brought back some painful memories of my own masters and doctoral studies in this same field decades ago. His essay was titled Feeling Uncomfortable At J Street. Here’s how he opened it…
“Attending the annual J Street Conference for the first time, I wanted to be proven wrong. Supporters of Israel within the Jewish community had ridiculed the newly created lobby group for launching harsh and unfair attacks against Israel. As a supporter of Israel who is also firmly opposed to increased settlement building and in favor of ending the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, I believed J Street would be my perfect home.”
Aaron likely succeeded where I failed. He attended that year’s annual J Street Conference because he sings some of those folks’ same tunes–he’s all for a Judenrein Judea, for example. This goes over nicely with too many running the hypocritical show in the Ivory Tower as well.
I, on the other hand, naively expected that the same lenses of academic scrutiny would be applied towards Arabs and others pointing fingers at Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Israel…and paid the price. I was denied a Ph.D. dissertation advisor by the chief honcho, a specialist on Turkey, who, among many other such things, managed to never mention the word “Kurd” once and who liked to speak about “fascist Zionists” and such. I raised the wrong issues and asked the wrong questions.Turkey’s 23 million Kurds have been renamed “Mountain Turks,” with their language and culture outlawed. Any “Progressive” professors discussing this with students? In the Near/Middle East and North Africa, if the alleged problem isn’t Hebraic, it usually gets swept under the rug. I raised such issues as an advanced doctoral student–and the rest is history.
But alas, even Aaron Magid was shocked at what he encountered among his then, would-be Left of Lenin colleagues.
One of the invited participants was a Fatah spokesman (you know, one of Mahmoud Abbas’s “moderates”), Husam Zumlot, who openly admitted that his intent was to inundate Israel with refugees during one of the numerous sessions dealing with Israeli occupation. So, not only was he insisting–with approval from Hebrew cheerleaders–that Arabs get a 22nd state and second, not first, in the original 1920 Mandate of Palestine (Jordan created on some 80% of the total area since 1922), but his game plan (no shock to those with heads above sand) turns Israel into Arab state # 23 as well.
Now, I do realize that there is a place for self-critique. Jews specialize in this.
One of our favorite heroes is Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Yeshua (Yehoshua–Jesus) of Nazareth–who some call Rabbi J.
Hillel reminded us of what the Hebrew Bible emphasizes in all sorts of ways–love for one’s neighbor, which necessitates such self-critique and caring for the “other.” At the same time, however, Hillel did not say to ignore our own needs. We are to find the proper balance.
J Street, however, demands that Jews live each day as Yom Kippur–pounding their chests for their own imperfections while allowing those of their enemies to go unaddressed.
The J Street crew and other Arab useful idiots (best buddies with SJP–Students For Justice In Palestine) routinely accept the Arab narrative, despite the fact that that story is often far from the truth–and deliberately so. Taqiyya–deliberate lying for the cause–is the well-known stratagem utilized by such folks. And they have been caught doing this time after time. Many, if not most, Arabs waving alleged keys, for example, had fathers or grandfathers who were newcomers themselves into the Mandate from surrounding lands–like even Hamas’s virtual patron saint, for whom its “militant” wing and rockets are named, Sheikh Izz ed-Din al-Qassam. Along with numerous others, this “native Palestinian” hero and butcher of Jews came into the Mandate from elsewhere–in Izzy’s case, Latakia, Syria.
This is not to say that in the Jews’ attempt to survive via resurrecting their long-tormented nation, some wrongs were not committed. But it is to say that you’d be hard pressed to find another people who tried harder than Jews to reach a fair and just compromise with their competitors and enemies–repeatedly so. Once bullets start to fly and comrades start to die, however, too often things change.
What compromises has Arab nationalism, in any of its numerous modern morphs, ever sought with the aspirations of scores of millions of native, non-Arab peoples whom Arabs simply conquered and forcibly Arabized?
So, you see, the main problem with J Street is that there is really no A Street.
While there are some Arabs–mostly converts from Islam–who bravely indulge in self-critique (some whom are good friends of mine, indeed wrote part of the foreword to my own book), a true Arab counterpart to J Street does not exist.
Where is the Arab organization focusing on the plight of millions of non-Arab, native refugees who fled the Middle East due to the Arabs’ own murderous, internal, imperial, colonial, subjugating policies? These are the words of those folks–not mine. See here: https://ekurd.net/arabism-zionism-journeys-2019-01-12
J Street invites Fatah spokesmen to their conferences. They do not have to fear for their lives while attending. And, again, their message is simply justice for Arabs only.
Show me the A Street conference where a Jew who demands justice for his own people (while not ignoring justice for all others) can attend while not risking his very life. Remember Rabbi Hillel’s balance noted above. Where is his counterpart among such Arab spokesmen?
Show me the A Street conference where the subject of the Jews’ own history in Israel/Judea is examined and dealt with fairly. Or where the works of the contemporary Roman historians recording the wars of the Jews for their freedom and independence in the land are discussed–struggles which continued clear up to the dawn of the Arabs’ own imperial Caliphal colonizing conquests when scores of thousands of Jews were recorded, in non-Jewish sources, as allying themselves with the Persians against the hated Byzantines.
Arabs refuse to even call the Temple Mount in Jerusalem a Jewish holy place. They call it Buraq’s Mount–after Muhammad’s allegedly winged horse with the head of a woman who flew him to Heaven–from, coincidence of coincidences–the very site of the Jews’ Temple of Solomon. Another “coincidence?” In the 7th century C.E., Muhammad fled Mecca to the Jewish date palm oasis of Medina–where Jews prayed towards Jerusalem and shared their ideas with the future Prophet of Islam. The Jews had settled there after the Roman wars.
Show me an A Street willing to compromise over lands that Jews lived on for millennia–clear up to modern times. Or, for that matter, lands where Kurds, Amazigh/“Berbers,” black Africans, Copts, Assyrians, kilab yahud (the Arabs’ Jew dogs), and others have lived as well…or the A Street Conference where such words as Darfur, the Anfal Campaign, and such are ever even mentioned.
And finally, show me, one more time, that A (Arab) Street gathering where the Arab subjugation of scores of millions of native, non-Arab peoples in the region, in repeated forced Arabization campaigns (going on to this very day), is critiqued, and concrete atonement by Arab oppressors is demanded– as is constantly done over at J Street where Israel is concerned.
Good luck trying…
There are no perfect saints to be found anywhere among the realm of man.
Until there is a serious A Street, however, and the demands and topics of discussion are more balanced, J Street will simply remain what it now is…yet another one-sided, anti-Israel organization. And its members will remain for Israel’s enemies what Soviet leaders liked to call their “useful idiots.”
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