Washington — Right now a lot of Jews who disagree with almost everything he says should be rooting for Rabbi Michael Lerner. The Tikkun Magazine editor and longtime peace activist frequently enrages mainstream pro-Israel groups with his criticisms of Israel; his “Tikkun Community” sometimes seems politically correct to the point of self-parody.
But Lerner is engaged in a fight for the soul of an anti-war movement that could burgeon if the U.S.-led war against Iraq turns sour. And that has big implications for the Jewish community, which could face a major community-relations crisis if the wrong side wins.
Lerner wants a peace movement not led by groups seeking to advance anti-Israel and anti-Semitic causes. He also demands that the movement not swallow the idea that just because the United States is sometimes wrong despots like Saddam Hussein are automatically right.
Recently, Lerner was blackballed from the speakers’ platform at a major anti-war rally in San Francisco organized by International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), a group that has emerged as the driving force of the new anti-war movement.
But ANSWER, which organized several major demonstrations in Washington in the past year, is anything but centrist. Its vehement anti-Israel ideology is only one of its extreme positions.
There’s nothing new about an anti-Israel bias in the American left, a particularly interesting paradox because so many Jews identify themselves with that part of the political spectrum. In the late 1960s, prominent Jewish leftists were harshly critical of the anti-Vietnam war movement because of what they rightly saw as anti-Israel bias.
That bias, skillfully nurtured by Palestinian and Arab activists, could become a core belief of the new anti-war and anti-globalization movements if ANSWER and other radicals have their way.
Shrewd positioning
ANSWER skillfully thrust itself into the forefront of those emerging movements and has mobilized many activists who know nothing of its ideological underpinnings or its anti-Israel views.
ANSWER is actually an offshoot of the Workers World Party, whose web site describes Zionist leaders as “colonial shock troops” and labels Israel’s creation “a terrible act of anti-Semitism, as well as a violent racist crime against the Palestinian people.” North Korea, on the other hand, is merely a victim of decades of U.S. aggression, according to the WWP.
WWP created ANSWER as the vehicle for a broader mass movement based on opposition to any U.S. attack against Iraq.
In normal circumstances, ANSWER and WWP would be more comic relief than threat. But ANSWER has shrewdly positioned itself to capitalize on widespread anxiety about impending war with Iraq, which means its over-the-edge views could gain undeserved legitimacy and plenty of attention.
It also means a crisis for the many Jews who believe an Iraq war now would be a catastrophe, but won’t work with groups that oppose Israel’s right to exist or tolerate anti-Semitism.
Lerner, to his credit, understands what’s at stake and is making a principled stand. If he and other Jews who are both pro-Israel and anti-war do not succeed, anti-Israel views could move from the fringes of this nascent movement to the center.
The movement, which has orchestrated impressive demonstrations here and around the world, will be just a footnote if the war produces quick victories and a better regime in Iraq.
But it could mushroom — carrying some of the anti-Israel baggage along with it — if the military effort bogs down, or produces unacceptable casualties among American troops or Iraqi civilians.
It could also drive more Jews into the arms of the religious right, which has elevated support for Israel and love of Jews to a central place in its political theology — next to the “biblical prophecies” demanding unending Mideast violence until the great battles of the Apocalypse convince a remnant of Jews of the error of their religious ways.
There’s no doubt the American Jewish community has shifted to the right. Lerner’s leftist views are probably more out of the Jewish mainstream than ever. But right now, he is doing the entire community a mitzvah.
Former Madisonian James Besser has been Washington correspondent for the New York Jewish Week, the Baltimore Jewish Times and other leading Anglo-Jewish newspapers for 15 years.
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