Rabbi Joshua Waxman: June 2007 Archives

Before posting I took a few minutes to survey the numerous reader responses to Rabbi Grossman’s analysis of the horrific situation in Gaza. I am struck by how diverse and deeply passionate they are–from those who blame Israel and America for everything that has gone wrong to those who fling hatred and vitriol at the Palestinians. In that sense, Gaza is a good Rorschach blot for Israeli-Palestinian relations–everyone agrees that the current situation is intolerable but, depending on your own leanings and preferences, you’ll find vastly different causes and solutions.

I think it’s important to start by acknowledging, along with the lead editorial in this week’s New Republic, that “the primary responsibility for Palestinian actions falls on Palestinians.” Making excuses for those who chose to elect Hamas and bring it into the Palestinian government or for the armed factions competing for their own narrow ideologies and self-interests is absurd and despicable. However, taking a "you break it, you bought it approach" and washing hands of any responsibility for the current situation in Gaza by writing it off as "Hamas-stan" and trying to have dealings only with Abbas and the West Bank is, while tempting, not a realistic policy for either Israel or America. For one thing, having chaos on Israel’s doorstep is only going to lead to more violence against Israelis in range of Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s Qassams. But beyond that, failure in Gaza would represent yet another place where secular and more moderate Muslim voices are defeated by Islamist forces of fundamentalism and hatred. There are too many places in the world where these same forces hang in the balance–from Egypt to Lebanon to Pakistan to Indonesia to Iraq–to allow Gaza to become yet another victory for extremism and to have moderates demoralized by the world’s failure to act.

So like all Rorschach blots there is no right or easy answer, no facile analysis of the crisis in Gaza, be it pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. Instead of easy answers we will need difficult engagement, even if the current debacle is not a situation of our own choosing or making. Gaza differs from a Rorschach only in that Rorschach blots are black and white, and there is little that is black and white about how to respond to the current crisis. Tragically, the main color in Gaza for the foreseeable future appears to be red.

Two weeks ago, the British University and College Union (UCU), the union of university academics, passed an absurd and deeply offensive resolution calling on all union members to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.” In plain English, the UCU is encouraging its members to agree to a boycott of Israeli academia–to cut ties with any Israel-based professors, conferences, journals, or institutions. This preposterous move presents itself in response to Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

Now let me start by saying there are legitimate reasons one might have concerns about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians (although, frankly, a bigger concern might be Palestinians’ treatment of the Palestinians, given Hamas and Fatah’s nasty new habit of throwing each other’s members off of rooftops). Even for those who are concerned about Israeli policies, however, there are several reasons that a boycott should be seen as a ludicrous piece of theatrical grandstanding at best and a shocking display of anti-Semitism at worst. First, the whole core premise of academic freedom is appallingly disregarded when certain perspectives are systematically delegitimized in what Burt Siegel, executive director of the Philly Jewish Community Relations Council (full disclosure: and my congregant), calls “the worst kind of intellectual McCarthyism.” Add to this the fact that many Israeli academics who would be penalized under the proposed boycott are on the political left and share concerns about Israel’s policies in the territories. Rather than furthering the Palestinian cause, the boycott would only strengthen those on Israel’s right who see a systematic campaign to delegitimize Israel.

And they’re right. What makes this campaign so outrageous and dangerous is that it punishes Israel’s actions, which are relatively minor, even as it stays silent about flagrant human rights abuses and genocide in countries like China and Darfur. The UCU is completely silent when it comes to these countries and maintains relationships with human rights abusers around the world, including with Serbia during the height of the genocide. And what’s worse is that the UCU is not alone in this hypocritical effort to single out Israel. The Presbyterian Church recently voted to divest from Israel; the National Synod of the United Church of Christ has a similar resolution for Israeli divestment on the table for their coming meeting, while the question of divestment from Sudan isn’t even on the agenda. In other words, it’s clear that Israel is being singled out for isolation, even as organizations carry on business as usual with far worse offenders. The truth of the matter is that the UCU boycott will do nothing to help the Palestinian cause; it isn’t pro-Palestinian, it’s just anti-Israeli. The true aim of the UCU isn’t to change Israeli policy or help Palestinians. Its purpose is to delegtimize Israel and turn it into a pariah state. That is why it is so insidious and that is why it must be opposed.

Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer, the Director of the Religious Studies Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a seasoned participant in interreligious dialogue, relates a telling incident that took place at an interfaith conference hosted by the Emir of Qatar in 2005. Rabbi Fuchs-Kreimer was one of four rabbis who had been invited to participate in panel discussions–a list that pointedly did not include any Israeli rabbis. The American rabbis debated whether they should participate when their Israeli colleagues were specifically disallowed and, in the end, chose to participate, taking every opportunity to reiterate both publicly and privately how much they hoped Israeli rabbis would be able to participate in the future. The following year, Israeli rabbis were invited to attend and participate in panel discussions.

Rabbi Fuchs-Kreimer’s point, and one that Rabbi Stern makes as well, is that the most important and meaningful dialogue doesn’t take place with people we agree with or even necessarily like. If we truly seek to make a change, to open up the possibility for transformation, then we must engage with those who don't share our beliefs. (We can, of course, decide that there are people we wish for one reason or another to declare ‘beyond the pale’ and make a point of not engaging them. When we do this, we’re generally making a gesture for internal consumption–to gain points or bona fides with our own constituency–and not to create meaningful change.)

Rabbi Hirschfield’s caveats about maintaining one’s own integrity, of course, are well taken (you can’t possibly encounter the Other in dialogue if you can’t bring yourself as well). And speaking from personal experience, I know how painful it is to enter into genuine dialogue in good faith and find that others are unwilling to extend the same courtesy or are merely grandstanding. Besides, there’s always the risk that you’ll come to acknowledge the rightness of somebody else’s view. Yes, there are so many spiritual and intellectual pitfalls to engaging in dialogue, that if it didn’t contain so much power and potential, it might be far easier to skip it altogether.

Rabbi Rolando Matalon, another of the rabbis on that fateful trip to Qatar, acknowledged the difficulty of dialogue with people whose views are so antithetical to one’s own. “I would rather negotiate [about Israel] with the Swedes,” he remarked, “But they’re not the ones we have to deal with.”

As we mark the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, there is no question, as Rabbi Grossman rightly points out, that it is anything but a unified city. This truth is particularly demoralizing following the dizzying sense of hope and possibility that followed Israel’s tremendous victory against the amassed armies of three hostile neighboring countries. It seemed for a brief time that Israel would have land to exchange with its neighbors for peace; this option was torpedoed months later when Arab states met in Khartoum to declare that there would be no recognition, no negotiations with, and no peace with the State of Israel. In many ways, the history of the Middle East over the last 40 years was written by this bombastic and short-sighted declaration.

So there's the other territory Israel gained following the Six-Day War, and then there's Jerusalem. If the other patches of land–Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights–were seen largely as chits or security buffers, East Jerusalem was viewed as an innate part of Israel's heritage and was annexed. Jerusalem is different because Jerusalem is where Jews ruled in Israel for 1,000 years, where the Temples stood, where we direct our prayers and yearnings every day. It is a symbol of Jewish hopes and dreams–the closest thing on this earth to a concrete manifestation of Jewish identity. When one walks the streets of Jerusalem and sees the late afternoon sun reflected off the stone through the piercingly clear air, it is clear what it means to be one with Jewish history.

Israel’s claim to Jerusalem has also had a great impact on the last 40 years of Middle East history, and it should be said that Israel has generally not done right by the Arab residents of East Jerusalem. This wrong should be righted so a process of healing can begin to take place to slowly reunify a city that is reunited only in name. It is the least we can do for Jerusalem.

Read the Full Debate: Myth vs. Reality in Today's Jerusalem

• Rabbi Grossman: Is There Hope for The City of Peace?


• Rabbi Stern: No U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. What Gives?