Detroit, Mich. — Over the last decade, we American Jews have been in the vanguard of the movement seeking a permanent, negotiated peace in the Middle East.
In doing so, many of us became almost complacent about the inevitability of peace, convinced that the Palestinians and the mass of Arabs in neighboring countries — Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and even Syria — were ready to concede Israel’s right to a secure existence.
Yes, Israel would have to give up its control of security in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip; but that would be okay because ultimately Palestinians and Israelis were going to be partners in building strong, stable nations.
The violence that began last Sept. 28 put an end to all that. Now American Jews are going to have to decide if they have the will to stand up for what Israel will have to do over the coming years, because some of it is not going to be pretty.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, elected on a promise of restoring security, clearly took the gloves off with the strong air attacks on Syrian military emplacements and the massive tank assault that temporarily cut the Gaza Strip into three pieces.
Even after the tanks seemingly withdrew in haste, the message was clear that Israel will reply to attacks with far more strength and immediacy than was the norm in the eight years since the Oslo accords were signed.
One question for American Jews is how they can now support actions that six months ago many of them would have condemned. Another is whether they, too, are prepared to take off the gloves in the coming battle for public opinion; and, if they are, what they will say.
To the first question, we answer that the Palestinians and their supporters in the Arab world rewrote the rules by launching their new intifada. It was an intentional slap in the face of an Israel that had made an almost incredibly generous offer at Camp David.
The subsequent actions — shootings, bombings and mortar attacks — cannot go unanswered. If Israel does not respond strongly, it will give the Arab world more reason to believe that the state has lost the will to defend itself.
We are not going to agree with every action that Sharon and his military advisers take, the Gaza incursion being a case in point. But we are in favor of carefully planned and executed strikes at the people and sites initiating terrorist attacks.
To the second question, we believe that America’s Jewish community must raise its voice in Washington and in cities around the country to explain why the Palestinian actions must not be tolerated.
Some major Jewish organizations have been silent or timorous, saying they wanted to give the Bush administration more time to formulate a Middle Eastern policy. What they really meant was that they valued access to the administration more than they valued honesty.
Outside the Beltway, Jewish activism has taken a back seat while the emergent Arab-American leaders try to seize the driving wheel.
We have to realize that the Arab Muslim world is trying not just to delegitimize Israel, but to deny Judaism. Its mullahs say there is no Temple Mount, no Holocaust. Arab children go to camp for training as Paradise-bound suicide bombers. Government-controlled media promote the most vile descriptions of Jews as avaricious, treacherous, cowardly subhumans.
This isn’t an attack on Israel, it is an attack on us. We must respond with exactly the same mix of force and intelligence that we hope Israel itself uses.
Israel isn’t perfect. It hasn’t always dealt fairly with its own Arab populations, for example, and its continued expansion of West Bank settlements is wrong. But its flaws do not include teaching its population to hate and kill Muslims.
If we now sit comfortably idle assuming that our fellow Americans will automatically understand the rights and wrongs of the Palestinian attack on human decency, we will have only ourselves to blame if that attack succeeds.
Jonathan Friendly is national editor of Jewish Renaissance Media.
Editor’s note: The Milwaukee Jewish Federation and the Milwaukee Jewish Council for Community Relations issued a joint call urging the community to demonstrate its support for Israel at this week’s Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut events.
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