Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound
A few hours before my call with Peter Beinart, an East Jerusalem man drove into a crowd of people at a Jerusalem light rail station, killing a three-month-old baby. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas of inciting violence, riots started to break out in East Jerusalem, and Israeli police began a crackdown. Fatah then honored the driver, who was shot down, as a martyr.
The tragic and infuriating scenario adds a layer to the tension in East Jerusalem, where Jewish Israelis are buying formerly owned Palestinian homes in Silwan, and reverberates with the events three days prior, when a man from the West Bank town of Yitzhar hit two girls with his car, killing a 5-year-old and seriously injuring an 8-year-old. (Though he’s been cleared of charges, local Palestinians allege it was intentional.)
By the morning after the attack, murmurs of “third intifada” were cropping up in the news. A Jewish East Jerusalem kindergarten was pelted with stones. To give a sense of the reaction, one comment below the Jerusalem Post story reads, “use live ammo, if you can photo these Palestinian animals surely you can kill them.”
Particularly since this summer’s harrowing war, any last drops of optimism seem to be running dry, with both Arabs and Israelis pulling back from each other, and dovish and hawkish Jews more sharply split than before. While most Jewish organizations took a stand toward the right over the summer, the controversial Jewish Voice for Peace organization saw its Facebook and Twitter followers triple and new chapters formed in 18 cities, according to a Times of Israel article from August.
“In a war, when one is most fearful and traumatized, one’s views are likely to be hardened,” said Beinart of the pronounced tension in Israel. “It’s a very natural human reaction.”
But the United States is a different story.
“A lot of it is religious, and a lot of it is generational,” Beinart told The Jewish Sound.
Beinart, an associate professor of journalism at the City University of New York, contributing editor to The Atlantic, senior columnist at Haaretz, and a prominent voice for liberal Zionism, was in Seattle Thursday night to speak on the topic of “Israeli democracy and the ethical responsibilities of Jewish power.” He was hosted by New Israel Fund, Hillel at the University of Washington, and J Street.
In America, the religious center of pro-Israel, synagogue-attending, affiliated Reform and Conservative Jews is diminishing, while the Orthodox and secular ends of the spectrum are growing, said Beinart.
While support for Israel in the Orthodox community is pretty much steadfast across the board, young Jews less rooted in a nationalistic identity and more influenced by blue-state politics are falling away from mainstream Israel support, going so far as aligning themselves with the Palestinians and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.
“These are kids that see that something is profoundly, morally wrong, and they’re right,” Beinart said. “The leadership of the American Jewish community doesn’t face that.”
Mainstream American Jews don’t venture out to Ramallah on their trips to Israel, and they don’t see what more intrepid, often young, travelers see: Sporadic water shut-offs, inability to travel freely, and a government that owes Palestinians nothing, Beinart explained.
“It produces a great sense of anger,” said Beinart. “When those kids come back, they don’t see anyone doing anything.”
A staunch supporter of a two-state solution and a believer in a democratic Jewish state in line with the country’s founders, Beinart opposes the BDS movement for its ultimate one-state vision, which will effectively end the Jewish character of Israel. He does not buy goods from the West Bank, however.
“The territories are a problem because they’re not democratic,” he said. “It makes a possibility for a Palestinian state more and more remote…and you invite Palestinians into a struggle for one state, making [a Jewish] Israel less possible.”
By holding on to undemocratic West Bank settlements, Netanyahu is complicit in furthering a one-state solution, he argues.
“The BDS movement wants to treat all Israel as illegitimate,” he explained. “The important thing is to reaffirm the moral distinction between Israel with democratic legitimacy and the part of Israel without democratic legitimacy.”
The green line, the border that separates Israel from the disputed territories, is “a moral separation,” he said. “The legitimate idea of a Jewish state could only remain legitimate if that state offered basic democratic rights to others.”
On the topic of a Jewish state — often cited as the definition Arab leadership refuses to grant — Beinart notes that Israel has no constitution, and “Jewish state” technically doesn’t have a definition in political terms.
“Israel has never decided what it means to be a Jewish state,” he said. “The Israeli cabinet would kill each other 10 times over [coming up with an answer].” Were Israel to come up with a definition, Beinart asks, what would be the political implications on its minority population?
But more immediately, let’s get back to East Jerusalem, where an untargeted attack on civilians ripped a baby from its parents, and the south, which has been pummeled indiscriminately by rockets. In light of terror, how can the cycle be broken? How much is violence part of Arab culture, and how much are we perpetuating?
“There’s no justification for terrorism, period, and acts like this only heighten the sense of fear that Israelis have and lead to even greater misery for Palestinians,” Beinart said. “I worry a lot that we could see a return to the level of kind of violence in the second intifada period, which is terribly destructive.”
It therefore comes down to engaging the moderates, he said.
“There’s a division among Palestinians whether you can recognize if Israel has a right to exist,” Beinart said. Half a century without self-rule is wearing many of them down. “You need to support the moderates. It sends a message to Palestinians that a violent solution won’t work.”
It also involves engaging in a new Jewish conversation.
“To me, it means that instead of looking at our tradition dominantly as a tradition of victimhood and survival, that we actually see it as a tradition of victimhood, survival, and power,” he said. “We need to look at what our own tradition has to say, not just about how to endure, but to ethically wield power over others.”
Beinart looks to the story of Hagar, read on Rosh Hashanah and coming up in the Torah portion cycle.
“We’re all familiar with the story of being slaves in the land of Egypt,” he said. “We think less about the story of Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar is in bondage in the Jewish home…. The pain in that family led to a very cruel act.”
Beinart concedes there are many ways to interpret this story — including commentary that claims Ishmael was wicked. But the text is clear: “We’re taught that God did hear Hagar. Her prayer was so pure that it inspires us to pray.
“Our tradition is an ocean,” Beinart continued. “It is this conversation of the ethical responsibility of power that we don’t have.”
Updated Monday, October 28 at 12 p.m.