David Hirsh makes the progressive case in the right-leaning Jerusalem Post. And he doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable truths. Responding to an earlier JPost op-ed by Isi Leibler, Hirsh writes:
[T]he Israeli government has, since the collapse of the peace process, been acting in an indefensible way in its relations with Palestinians.
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Demonizing Arabs or Palestinians or Muslims is not the best way to oppose the demonization of Israel and Jews.
Most British Jews feel this, on one level or another. And so they grumble. They tell each other stories of what they heard somebody say; they feel unease when Ken Livingstone fetes the anti-Semitic Karadawi at City Hall; they feel the academic boycott campaign as an attack; they shake their heads in disbelief when they meet liberal anti-racists who think that George Galloway is a plucky little British hero.
And then they hit their foreheads in exasperation when they read that Israel has sent another missile into an apartment block or into a car full of people in what it calls targeted assassinations, or when they are confronted by Israeli plans to build a Jewish-only road network across the West Bank; or when a journalist is shot dead by an Israeli sniper or when an ISM peace activist is run over by an armored bulldozer or when a Palestinian is forced to play his violin at an Israeli checkpoint.
I THINK that the reason British Jews do not speak with a clear and loud voice in their own defense is that they don’t really know what to say. Many want to criticize Prime Minister Ariel Sharon but they don’t want to be disloyal to Israel. They want to oppose anti-Semitism but they don’t know how to do this when it comes in a form that seems to defend the underdog and appears to tell the truth about what Israel is doing.
British Jews know, in general, that anti-Zionists talk dangerous, unfair rubbish, but many are not skilled in deconstructing their stories. Barking back that Israel is a democracy, that its violence is only defensive, that the Arabs are worse, doesn’t feel like it will do the trick.
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The only way to fill Leibler’s “Jewish youngsters” with a self-confident ability to stand up against anti-Semitism is to give them something positive to argue, about which they can be proud and confident. And it is the tradition of opposing racism that is the key to this, more than the nationalist tradition of “my country right or wrong.”
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