Philadelphia — One of the oddest aspects of my job as an editor is the way some readers regard me as a conduit to Israel. They will call or write and ask that I pass to Jerusalem “solutions” they have concocted to Israel’s problems. Not all the suggestions are goofy, but many are.
I don’t know what is more touching, the confidence of these readers in their own amateur expertise or their misplaced faith in my own limited influence among Israeli decision-makers.
Of course, dimwitted suggestions for Israel are not solely the province of individual readers. Various foreign governments and some American Jewish organizations are just as eager to impart their wisdom to Israel’s elected leaders. Many of their ideas aren’t much more sensible than those proposed by some of my loopy readers.
We are used to the spectacle of the European Union nations or even the United States offering hypocritical advice to Israel on how to deal with terror. We know well that though they may tell the Israelis to act with restraint, they sing a different tune when dealing with those who attack them.
But those American Jews who take the attitude that they understand Israel’s security situation better than Israel’s elected government have enough chutzpah and hot air to launch the NASA space shuttle.
While most American Jewish organizations — including many that fell totally for the Oslo peace mirage — have adopted a chastened and more respectful silence about what Israel should do, others are undaunted.
Take for instance, a leftist group like the Israel Policy Forum. While most of us have moved beyond the tired left-right arguments over Israeli policy on territory that characterized the ’80s and ’90s, IPF members are steadfastly fighting battles already decided.
Their insistence that “Oslo was not a failure” shows they are marooned in an ideological time warp, unphased by the betrayal of their faith by a Palestinian strategy of answering an Israeli peace offer with a terror war.
They are unashamed about the reported involvement of one of their chief mouthpieces, think-tank wonk Stephen P. Cohen, in a scandalous scheme that funneled cash to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Americans for Peace Now is in a similar situation. It has joined the rest of the pro-Israel community in support of loan guarantees and additional U.S. aid for an Israel that is having trouble coping with the war launched by old “peace partner” Arafat. But they are unable to do so without adding caveats filled with advice for Israel.
They want the aid spiked with conditions that will force Israel to make more concessions to the Palestinians. Specifically, they want Israel to promise not to use the money on “settlements” in the administered territories and that 20 percent of it will be set aside to pay for moving Jews out of their homes.
Israel had already said it wasn’t going to use the money to build “new” settlements (a term that the Jewish left, as well as Israel-bashers elsewhere, use to falsely describe the building of a new house in an existing town). Nor need we dwell on how this ban on Jews might be interpreted as extending even to settlements that nearly everyone in Israel agrees will never be handed over to Arafat, such as parts of Jerusalem and its suburbs.
What is truly amazing is that these people are not only are dictating to Israel but are seeking to aid those in the American government who are only too happy to use economic leverage to squeeze Israel into abandoning positions vital to its security.
Some of those on the left have even added their voices to bogus claims that Israel’s justifiable measures of self-defense against terror make it a human-rights violator.
No shame on the right
As always, the left has no monopoly on crackpot opinions. Many on the Jewish right in this country have been using harsh rhetoric about the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Unhappy that Sharon has been relatively restrained in his response to Palestinian terrorism, some here called for his ouster during the Likud primary. That they were supporting Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had been far more accommodating when he was prime minister, in his failed effort to unseat Sharon was an irony lost on them.
Many on the right, including some who spare no effort to label themselves “mainstream,” scoff at Sharon’s decision to treat Israel’s alliance with America and, in particular, President Bush, as its greatest strategic asset. Sharon rightly has decided to avoid needlessly antagonizing Bush, especially when so much is on the line. But to these Jewish ultras, Bush and Sharon are as bad as the failed leaders of the left.
It is bad enough when leftist Jewish diaspora critics seek to undermine Israel’s democratically elected government. That they do so by sometimes siding with Israel’s American foes is disgraceful.
But the only word to describe the notion that right-wing American Jews can be more Zionist than a nationalist Israeli government is ludicrous. This assertion ought to cause these diaspora know-it-alls to blush with shame.
Do we really think that American right-wingers really know more about Israel’s security than a man like Sharon, who spent his whole life defending it and building settlements throughout the land of Israel?
Similarly, do we really believe that Jewish leftists sitting in Washington or New York care more about peace than the members of the Israeli cabinet, who send their own sons out to fight?
Yet nothing seems to deter both these groups from forcing their unwanted and often unneeded advice on the Israelis.
American Jews are fully entitled to their opinions about Israel, its leaders and its policies. All are open to criticism But needed from diaspora critics is a greater degree of humility about their views.
Most Israelis I speak to have discarded ideological cant in favor of hard-headed realism. Events have caused many once firmly on the left and the right to re-examine their beliefs. But many American Jews seem incapable of this exercise.
By all means, let us discuss and even debate Israel’s options. But let us end the self-righteous lecturing Israel neither needs nor wants.
Jonathan S. Tobin is executive editor of the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia.
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