RUTHFULLY YOURS

Grenoble, 11 April. Friday evening a group of punk jihadis [the media call them “youths”] are kicked off the tramway for rowdiness. Four ordinary young people get off the tramway at the same stop in the center of Grenoble. The punk jihadis hassle the normal citizens, insult them, ask the young woman for a cigarette. When she replies, honestly, that she doesn’t have any left, they fall upon her friend Martin, a 23 year-old cartographer, knock him down, kick him in the face with all their might, stab him in the arm and chest, perforating a lung. Martin barely escaped with his life, the thugs escaped but some were found—thanks to tramway video surveillance — and arrested.

Justice is done? You don’t know the half of it. We who live here cannot count the ways in which the basic freedom to come and go, essential to the European urban way of life, is hanging between life and death. Two victims of the November 2005 uprising were killed that way, kicked and pummeled to death in the space of a few seconds. One took a picture of a lamp post in what turned out to be a no-go zone, the other tried to put out a fire in a garbage can. How do you balance this “cultural artifact” in the social equation? And what do you do when the forces of law and order are apparently helpless?

Talk about “faute morale”! (I translated the term as used in the Appeal to Reason to describe the settlements as “moral transgression” but perhaps it should be “ethical transgression” or just “transgression.” It is closer to sin than to error). European citizens can—and do—accuse their governments of “faute morale.” Of allowing their countries to become bi-national states in which those who uphold its culture and traditions, whatever their ethnic origin, are turning into a besieged defenseless minority. Not a numerical minority, or at least not yet, but a minority in terms of balance of power.

What could be in the minds of intellectuals who address their grievances—against Israel—to the parliament of this Europe-in-distress?  That is the crux of the problem: the epistemological error of holding Israel responsible for turmoil in its neighborhood and by extension in the whole wide world is the faute morale and the impotence and the blindness of the JCallers and all who came before them. Because theirs is no wake up call. It is a replay of a worn out tune.

Where is the intellectual muscle of these certified thinkers who are trotting behind Obama, desperately trying to hand him supplicating messages from the hinterland as he gallops across the burning sands on his Arabian stallion? Are they still drunk from the heady presidential campaign? Do they get their information on Obama from French media? From JStreet hasbara? Where is their perspicacity today, when Barack Hussein Obama repeatedly “assures” Israel that the US will guarantee its security? This from the right side of his mouth, while the left side gurgles over a nuclear-free Middle East. And Hizbullah is caressing the flanks of its brand new Scuds acquired with implicit UNIFIL consent. That’s how the EU, the US, and the UN gang up to ensure Israeli security.

5 May, 5 PM: JCall 4749   Be Reasonable 6269 (+ 1520 over JCall)

If the figures continue on this same path, they will become the facts. We, Diaspora JCall Jews who love Israel and despise its government, who love Israel up to a point (’49 frontiers) and can’t stomach it beyond, do solemnly declare…that we are an insignificant gaggle of straggling voices. And our gesture is starting to look like a swan song.

OK Yankees, can you knock out JStreet with the same krav maga force? Michel Gurfinkiel [http://michelgurfinkiel.com/] forceful writer and sharp intellect, posted an in-depth profile of JStreet, its origins, its financial backers, its 3-tier structure—a do-gooder grassroots street level that obscures a shadowy underground which, unencumbered by the pro-Israel yoke, responds to its Master’s Voice. Is JStreet, Obama’s Jewish playmobil, an example that European Jews should want to follow, asks Gurfinkiel. His answer is No, and he is active in the Be Reasonable movement now gathering steam. Michel’s judgment on the high profile JCallers is merciless. Where some might give a bit of slack to one sincere European Jewish thinker misled by a few disgruntled far Left Israeli politicians in exile, Gurfinkiel dismisses him as a silly dancer who passes off opportunism as tortured conscience and earnest truth-seeking.

Gurfinkiel notes that JCall’s website was registered under the name of David Chemla, French leader of the moribund Peace Now. The postal address is that of the Centre Bernard Lazare, a small community center that also houses the left wing Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzaïr. Two members of HH were beaten up by Muslims from the anti-Zionist CAPJPO during a “peace march” in March 2003. The CAPJPO, now merged with Euro-Palestine, runs BDS Israel boycott operations. Videos of BDS commando intrusions in Carrefour supermarkets and H & M shops are proudly displayed on their site http://europalestine.com/. Here’s their take on JCall: while Cohn-Bendit BHL, and other self-proclaimed “reasonable European Jews” are putting on their show in Brussels, their “leftist” Zionist friends in the Kibbutz movement are colonizing the Jordan valley.

What is Alain Finkielkraut doing with a naughty old roughneck like Cohn-Bendit in a purportedly Israel-friendly enterprise that regurgitates stale peace process rhetoric? Is he simply dancing to the house music and holding on to his perks? Finkielkraut was battered all up and down the French media and his career almost went down the drain when he analyzed the 2005 uprising as an ethnic, religious movement. I publicized his case and defended him in the National Post and other outlets. But when I asked to interview him for Makor Rishon he declined. If I remember correctly his leftwing Israeli friends told him to stay away from that right wing paper. Shortly thereafter, struck with a very serious medical problem, he reduced his professional activities, gave up his popular Qui Vive program on Jewish radio, avoided touchy Middle East questions on his Répliques program (France Culture). His reputation for intellectual courage and integrity has withstood these retreats. A film portrait of Finky, as he is affectionately called, aired on TV5 last week. I watched with rapt attention, looking for the chink that could explain why he got roped into JCall, why he can’t let go of the peace process illusion, why I still believe in his sincerity and understand his abiding appeal.

Someone who is not Jewish, who only knows Finkielkraut from his books and radio programs, who has never met him in person, said to me after viewing the film, “It’s strange. I feel like I am his friend.”

As for me, I discovered that we are landsmen: his mother comes from Lvov, my father z”l from nearby Przemysl.  Why do I think it would be salutary for Alain to drop out of the JCall club?

Shlomo Malka, CEO of Radio Communauté Juive, former student of Emmanuel Levinas and author of several authoritative works on the philosopher—Finkielkraut is a founding member, with Bernard Henri-Levy and the late Benny Levy, of the Institut des etudes Levinassiennes—interviewed his friend Alain last week [Le grand entretien, May 2 http://www.radiorcj.info/,].  The following is a transcript of extensive excerpts of the interview, freely translated.  

Shlomo Malka: Many people in our audience who love you are surprised that you signed the JCall petition.

Alain Finkielkraut: I signed “with a heavy heart.” Israel is more than ever in danger from Iran proxies, Hamas and Hizbullah, and target of a campaign of hatred. Israel, more than ever, needs our support. I called David Grossman yesterday, asked him if he agrees with the Appeal. He said current Israeli policy is suicidal. It will lead either to a binational state or apartheid. Grossman said he spoke to Bibi and is convinced he has no sincere intention of negotiating with the Palestinians. We need American pressure. David Grossman agrees with the terms of the Appeal but is not sure it’s a good idea to issue it. It could be counter-productive. It could cause hardline Israelis to be even more intractable, because they don’t like outside pressure, don’t like to take lessons from outsiders.

SM: Shouldn’t Hamas and Fatah reach an agreement first?

AF: No. That’s just an excuse… it’s because of the fear of giving up the settlements. And the reaction to our Appeal in the French Jewish community is evidence of this “exacerbated Zionism.” Israel makes itself the Jew of nations [that is, brings this hatred on itself]. Look at the calls for boycotts in the universities. The Palestinians are not divided between Hamas and Fatah, they’re divided between those who want a state, and those who want something else. Still, the settlements are bad for Israel. The mediator has to pound the table and force Israelis to negotiate. If they want to remain firm, as they should, on Jerusalem and the right of return, they have to be flexible on other questions.

SM: Who is the Appeal addressed to? Why are you asking for pressure when you say you are calling for reason?

AF: The settlements are the worst policy.

SM: Tzippy Livni is not asking for pressure.

AF: David Grossman says Israeli policy is suicidal. You can be both threatened and suicidal.

SM: How about the kind of pressure from Sarkozy who tells Bibi he should replace Lieberman with Livni?

AF: No, I don’t agree with that kind of pressure. But it’s a sign of real friendship. And it would be better if he got rid of Lieberman.

SM: Why is the Appeal going to be presented to the EU Parliament?

AF: I don’t know. It is in no way connected to calls for boycott of Israel.

SM: You won’t be in Brussels. Is it because you don’t approve?

AF: No. I have medical reasons for not attending. If I went to the Parliament I would have made an appeal to recognize the campaign of hatred against Israel for what it is.

SM: JStreet has a political action wing. Do you intend to do that with JCall in France?

AF: No. But now the debate is open again. After the painful years we have gone through when it wasn’t possible. But why this counter appeal right away? [irascible] They don’t even mention the pursuit of settlements. It’s not “raison garder” [be reasonable] it’s “maison garder” [keep the homestead]. They want to keep the territories. Instead of transcendence now they brandish the enemy as an excuse to defend the settlements.

Alain Finkielkraut was not able to attend the ceremony but Leila Shahid was there in her role as Palestinian delegate to the EU. She expressed her delight at the JCall initiative in an interview with the Nouvel Observateur. It’s wonderful, she declares. It breaks the deadlock created “when Ehud Barack [sic] in 2001 so to speak assassinated the Israeli peace camp” by claiming the Palestinians didn’t want to make peace. “The solution to the conflict will of course be negotiated officially by Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, European, and American representatives…” but JCall is a welcome change from those like the CRIF who blindly follow the Netanyahu government.” Does madame Shahid agree with Ze’ev Sternhell, that Israel has to abandon territories occupied in 1967 and the Palestinians have to renounce the right of return?

Not at all! “The question of the right of return is fundamental to the Palestinian question. We can negotiate on the application of the right of return but we can not renounce the right of return because it is an inalienable right.” “Netanyahu has demonstrated by his policies that he is not interested in discussing with us,” concludes Leila Shahid. But now there is someone to talk to. A new Diaspora movement. JCall. That changes everything.

Really?

May 5, 9 PM: JCall 4813 signatures, Be Reasonable 6402

Is JCall a flash in the pan?

Tune in for Part 5, which will conclude the saga.