In speaking with people these days who were brought up in open-minded households, dedicated to progressive causes and educated in liberal schools, I have found considerable unease with the liberal approach in the vital area of security. Seeing the events of September 11, 2001, together with the wagons circling around Israel and violence against Jewish communities, many traditional liberals appear to be in transition toward backing a conservative approach to security issues.
This is an especially tough time to be both liberal and vitally concerned about the future of Israel and Jewish communities. Liberalism, far from being a detracting word, has been great for Jews in placing highest priority on individual expression and activity, respecting diversity and shunning use of force, except to the minimum extent necessary for protecting innocents.
Recent history, however, has confirmed that the liberal approach often falls down in the area of security. Brutal and hate-filled predators are using open societies to commit outrages in many places against innocent people, including Jews. Many in the community, including some of the most generous progressives, are refusing to view the world through rose-colored glasses when they witness bombings and beatings on the streets of Jerusalem and in the Western cities.
This ideological tension facing American Jewish progressives was brought to the fore by the recent controversy surrounding Alvin Rosenfeld’s article “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism.” In the article, which was posted on the American Jewish Committee’s Web site and featured in a New York Times article, Rosenfeld takes to task commentators — most particularly those of Jewish descent — who decry Israel’s status as a Jewish state or who brand Israel as a net liability to Western security.
Rosenfeld lists in this category experienced and talented commentators like Tony Judt, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, and Richard Cohen, a regular columnist for The Washington Post. Rosenfeld holds that these highly knowledgeable and thoughtful people, however well motivated by their own lights, perform a fundamental disservice by comforting Israel’s many enemies.
Despite some possible overreaching on Rosenfeld’s part regarding certain particulars, this conclusion is fundamentally on the mark.
Much criticism, some of it quite harsh, has come Rosenfeld’s way from respected quarters — including the Forward. Starting with the unassailable proposition that for democratic debate to be effective it must be robust, these critics hold that Rosenfeld’s piece looks to stifle viewpoints with which he disagrees. They affirm that even harsh criticism of Israel and proposals to dismantle Israel’s official Jewish status deserve to be included in the exchange of ideas, so long as physical harm toward Israel’s citizens is not advocated.
Rosenfeld’s critics are also uncomfortable with his citing the Jewish parentage of writers he finds objectionable. While they draw upon the best of progressive impulses, Rosenfeld’s detractors have got it essentially wrong.
No one can fairly accuse Rosenfeld of advocating suppression of speech. Instead, he is pressing to have the community face a reality, which is that the present risks are real and will get worse unless we are careful.
The current situation is a most critical one combining volatile elements. The White House is being run by a lame-duck president whose maneuvering room in the area of security has been diminished because of the war in Iraq and missteps at home. Europe is teetering toward ever-growing weakness in the areas of counter-terrorism, as well as security for Israel and its own Jewish communities. The idea is growing in circles of opinion makers in Europe and in this country that it is too dangerous to take Israel’s side or even that Israel is a mistake.
Polling out this week from the BBC naming Israel as the least popular country in the world is yet one more piece of evidence reinforcing this reality. And, combined with these disturbing enough trends, Israel’s regional enemies really truly are amassing increasingly lethal missile arsenals — a taste of which was hurled from Lebanon last summer — and may soon possess nuclear weapons. We may not be close to the next holocaust, as Benny Morris and others have recently warned us; then again, perhaps we may be.
It is true that in the face of these developments it is important for community leaders to keep their heads and not allow panic to cloud clear thinking for properly measured responses. It is also important that vital principles and legal protections must not be set aside. People should and do have a constitutional right to criticize Israel, even harshly, including challenging its right to exist. There must be robust debate about the wisdom of Israel’s policies, and there is much to criticize.
However, this is not a normal time and we are not permitted to ignore reality. Searing criticism rightly branded as delegitimization of Israel is truly dangerous, all the more painfully so when it comes from Jews. The community, given its own right of expression, should decry defamations of this kind.
For commentators with a public audience to delegitimize Israel at this time is hurtful, undermines existing needed support and, at least in that manner, encourages Israel’s enemies. We should and must say so — as Alvin Rosenfeld has done.
Lee Adlerstein is a former vice chairman of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and former chair of the council’s Task Force on Jewish Security and the Bill of Rights.
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Gee. A Former Vice Chairman of a major American Jewish organization, interested in security, writes a nice letter in support of Mr. Rosenfeld. What a surprise. Thanks Mr. Adlerstein, this really helps. We liberals really are sick and dangerous.
In his paper, Rosenfeld said that progressive Jews harbor a barely concealed genocidal hatred for their fellow Jews. That should be all that needs to be said. No one accused Rosenfeld of trying to stifle debate. We accuse the AJCommitee of doing so, by publishing his crappy paper.
good peice except one thing. this is not about Jews moving from a liberal to a conservative mindset. The idea on self determination is a liberal idea going back to Wilson. The Jews of Israel should have this right just like all other peoples in the world... including the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. To critisize Israel is fine but when the Israelis are denied there right to self determination...as Judt and others do... it is no longer a liberal cratique.
The Forward editorials are sad...Rosenfeld has seen the light and has the guts to write forthrightly unlike shivering, peaceloving Jews that will bring pain to their own people while marching for peasants...
Alvin Rosenfled exposed the ugliness of these hypocritcal self-important Jews. They didn't like it because the truth hurts. Self-hatred and the appeasing of gentiles in the Jewish community has to stop. The commentator "S" is not Jewish but an anti-semitic anti-Israel activist. Please keep in mind while reading his comments.
Just who is it who has the right to rightly brand others... and how do they go about doing so? Rosenfeld makes his errors, but he's a scholar who attempts, at least, to be precise in language and prepared to look again at evidence. Those who want to line up with what they think is his position do little justice to him and nor to others in our community struggling to maintain intelligent as well as civil discourse among ourselves as well as with those listening in.
Did anybody see Winston Churchill's recently released wartime letter regarding Jew's,and their own complicity in their problems due to the disinclination to assimilate ? In reading this column,can we understand what Sir Winston was speaking about ?
My only response is: That which is hateful to you, do not do unto others.
Norman, your logic is as skewed as your worldview. Just because some Israeli "post-Zionists" are so consumed with elitist, post-modern self hatred to equate Israeli treatment of Palestinians with Nazi treatment of Jews doesn't mean that it's Kosher for American Jews to do that. Yes, I said self-hatred. The Nazis sought to destroy Jews because of their perverse, all consuming hatred and pseudo-science of racial superiority. Conversely, while the Palestinians are suffering to be sure, that is more a function of their desire to extinguish the Jewish state. If the Palestinians were interested in redressing their grievances through negotiation, not terror, they would long ago have had peace with Israel, as did Egypt and Jordan before them. No one can equate the two without (1) being stupid or (2) having an ulterior motive. Interesting that of all the conflicts in the history of the world that one could analogize to, people like you in looking at the Middle East somehow always hone in on the Nazi analogy. I submit that is an issue that should be explored by psychiatrists, not political scientists. One thing more - I remember getting a fortune cookie that said "the sun will rise without your assistance." So it is with those who would deligitimize and snuff out Israel. Norman and your oh-so enlightened bleeding heart compatriots, the likes of Hizballah are doing fine without your help.
Let's remember what this debate is about: Many Jews are horrified to see the Israelis treating Palestinians the way the Nazis treated Jews. Jews in Israel are saying this, as they have been quoted in Haaretz and The Foward. Alvin Rosenfeld is distressed because American Jews are speaking the way Israeli Jews have been speaking. In his double standard, Rosenfeld has falsely accused us of anti-Semitism. The only way to deal with Rosenfeld is with the facts. In my opinion the best source of facts is B'Tselem http://www.btselem.org/English Here's the significant paragraph from Nicholas Kristof's op-ed, Talking About Israel, in today's New York Times: "B’Tselem, a respected Israeli human rights organization, reports that last year Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians (including one minor) and six Israeli soldiers. In the same period, B’Tselem said, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, triple the number killed in 2005. Of the Palestinians killed in 2006, half were not taking part in hostilities at the time they were killed, and 141 were minors." http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/18/opinion/18kristof.html