Thursday, October 4, 2007
‘The Israel Lobby’ Goes International
Marc Perelman | Wed. Oct 03, 2007

After hitting Europe earlier this month, “The Israel Lobby” is preparing for a frontal assault on the Muslim world.


The controversial book by American academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, who accuse the pro-Israel lobby of hijacking American policy, hit bookstores in Europe in September and soon will be published across the Arab world and in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world.

Hebrew-only readers, however, will have to wait. To date, no Israeli publishing house has agreed to translate the book.

“We are hoping that the most liberal publishers in Israel might consider publishing it, however, it has proven very difficult,” said Christine Hsu, assistant to Walt and Mearsheimer’s agent at the William Morris Agency, Raffaella De Angelis. The agency declined to be more specific.

The book will be translated into Arabic by All-Prints, a Beirut-based publisher that also translates books from the likes of the late anti-Zionist Israel Shahak, soccer star David Beckham and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Readers in Indonesia, where some 220 million Muslims live, will be able to buy it from Pustaka Utama a mainstream publisher. And in an indication of the strong interest the book is attracting in Europe, it is being translated into German, Dutch, Danish, French, Italian, Spanish and even Catalan.

“The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” is an extended version of an article that appeared last year in The London Review of Books and on the Web site of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The two scholars contend that a wide array of Jewish and pro-Israel groups has tilted American foreign policy in favor of Israel to the point of endangering America’s national security.

In recent weeks, the authors have been crisscrossing the United States, where they have been criticized for having an anti-Israel agenda and for shoddy research, but also hailed for provoking a long overdue debate about Israel’s influence on American policymaking.

The controversy has been covered heavily by the foreign media, particularly in the Arab world on television channels such as Al Jazeera, on which both authors have appeared.

“Books don’t sell all that well in the Arab world, where the tradition is more oral and visual,” said Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “But people are aware of it because of satellite TV.”

While no information was available as of press time about a Walt-Mearsheimer book tour in Muslim countries, the authors are embarking on a European visit next month, with speaking engagements scheduled at prestigious universities and think-tanks in Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Vienna and London. In London, they will also have an event at the House of Lords.

In Germany, where the book was released September 4 and received mixed reviews in the media, the publisher opted not to hold a promotional debate after the organization that was asked to host the event proposed inviting critics of the book. The publisher, Campus, did not return calls seeking comment.

A similar issue arose in the United States when the Forward rejected a proposal by publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux to host a debate on the book. The Forward instead proposed to be a participant in a conversation with the authors.

“I am concerned about the indirect impact this book could have,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee’s office in Berlin. “It reinforces stereotypes in Germany that are probably even stronger than in the U.S. about the alleged influence of Jewish organizations on American foreign policy.”

Wed. Oct 03, 2007

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON at 11:07 AM

Labels: Europe, Israel, Israel lobby, Mearsheimer, Muslims, US foreign policy, Walt, Zionism

Re: The Baltimore Sun Article
From: Mona Drooby
March 24, 2007

ZIONIST AIMS ARE TO TAKE ALL OF PALESTINE AND CONDI RICE IS MERELY THE
MEANS TO SECURE THIS OBJECTIVE. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ZIONISTS
FOR PEACE WITH THE PALESTINIANS===YOU ARE FABRICATING AN UNTRUTH THAT
ULTIMATELY WILL BRING ABOUT MORE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO THE REGION.

SO PLEASE, AS GANDHI SAID: "TRUTH HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN".

THE JEWISH PEOPLE DESERVE BETTER THAN TO BE LED BY ZIONISTS.
ZIONISM IS DOING TO THE JEWS WHAT HITLER'S NAZIS DID TO GERMANY.

THESE TWO PEOPLES, DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM, ARE EITHER GOING TO LEARN
TO LIVE TOGETHER TO SHARE PALESTINE/ISRAEL, OR CONTINUE ON THE ROAD TO
MUTUAL SELF-DESTRUCTION.

SHOULD YOU CHOSE THE PATH OF COEXISTENCE, IT COULD MOBILIZE OTHER
NEIGHBORING STATES TO CREATE A MIDDLE EAST ECONOMIC UNION THAT WILL BE
AN EXAMPLE TO ALL THE WORLD OF HOW TRULY THE CHILDREN OF ABRAHAM HAVE
BROUGHT GLORY NOT ONLY TO HIM, BUT TO ALL THE WORLD---FOR PEACE IN AND OF
ITSELF IS A MIGHTY AND GLORIOUS QUEST THAT ALL GOOD PEOPLES SEEK TO
SECURE FOR THEMSELVES AND THOSE WHO COME AFTER THEM.

Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 23:44:45 -0500
From: "jim.vitarello"
Subject: The Jewish People, Zionism and the Question of Justice
To:
Note: Mark Braverman makes the distinction between Judaism and Zionism. He writes: "We (Jews) must become willing to overcome our profound denial about the current reality and the injustices wrought by Zionism." Dr. Braverman lives in Bethesda, MD. He is a member of Jewish Voices for Peace and serves on the Boards of Partners for Peace and the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace. He sees "the ferocity and depth of the current split within the Jewish community in the Diaspora as an opportunity for dialogue." "We need to question where we get our information about the history of the State of Israel and about the current political situation." Contact: m_braverman@yahoo.com. Peace, Roy



Click here: Sharing the Land of Canaan - Mark Braverman

The Jewish People, Zionism, and the Question of Justice

Mark Braverman, Ph.D.

When I was a boy in the 1950s attending Hebrew School in Philadelphia, we would receive little cardboard folders with slots for dimes distributed by the Jewish National Fund. On the cover was a picture of a tree being planted by handsome, tanned people in shorts. When the card was full, you sent it in and in return received a certificate with your name on and a bigger picture of a tree, which was the tree you had planted in Israel. It was fun and it was a thrill – I was reclaiming the homeland. I saw pictures of kibbutzim and orange groves filling the valleys and dreamt of going there someday.

Four decades later, now a middle-aged man, I saw pictures of Israeli bulldozers uprooting three hundred year-old olive trees and Jewish soldiers restraining Arab villagers crying hysterically over the destruction of their groves. I traveled to the West Bank – Israeli occupied Palestine – and saw the hillsides denuded of trees to build concrete Jewish settlement cities. I saw Arab houses leveled and gardens taken to make way for a 30 foot-high concrete wall cutting through Palestinian cities and village fields. I saw that this was wrong. I didn’t buy the story that this was for defense. I could see that it was a lie.

When I returned to the United States and began to talk about my horror, sadness and deep concern over what I had seen, I was told by many of my fellow Jews that I must not talk like this. I was informed that this makes me an enemy of the Jewish people and that I was opening the way for the next Holocaust. I was told by many Jews that I was disloyal to my people, that I had “gone over” to the “Palestinian side.” One Jewish rabbinical student informed his colleagues that I was obviously a convert to Christianity “masquerading” as a Jew in order to cause the destruction of the Jewish people. I have spoken about my experiences before many groups, almost all of them in churches. I have yet to speak in a synagogue. I am trying hard to make sense out of this and to figure out a way forward. Here is what I have figured out so far.

Jewish History: Survival and its Shadow

Zionism was the answer to the anti-Semitism of Christian Europe. The failure, despite the Enlightenment, to establish Jews as an emancipated, accepted group in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the rise of political anti-Semitism in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century gave birth to political Zionism under the leadership of Theodore Herzl. Zionism expressed the powerful drive of the Jewish people to establish ourselves as a nation among other nations, with a land of our own and the ability to achieve self-determination. This is why, in sermons from synagogue pulpits, in lectures on Jewish history, in classroom lessons for small children, and in spirited discussions about the Israel-Palestine question, you will so often here the preamble “throughout the centuries…,” followed by a description of the suffering of the Jews at the hands of our oppressors. Indeed, it’s in our liturgy, notably in the Passover Seder. The story of Jewish survival despite constant persecution is in many ways our theme song -- it’s in our cultural DNA, it’s the mantra of our peoplehood. It runs deep.

This unique Jewish quality is not the product of some cultural aberration or collective character flaw. Developing this particular brand of “character armor” has been part of our survival throughout long ages of persecution, marginalization, and demonization. We survived, in part, by creating rituals, habits and attitudes of insularity, pride and persistence that allowed us never to forget, never to let down our guard, and to always be proud of our stubborn vitality in the face of “those who sought to destroy us.” When, in our modern liturgical idiom, we talk of the State of Israel as “the First Flowering of our Redemption,” we are reflecting the reality of our survival, the meaning of the achievement of political self-determination in the context of Jewish history. It is good to have survived.

But we must also see clearly the shadow that this history casts on us today. We have striven to be the masters of our fate – but, having achieved this, we must also realize that we are responsible for our actions and for the consequences of these actions. Being free, we have free choice. The tragedy of Jewish Diaspora history, in our own cultural narrative as well as in reality, is rooted in our history of powerlessness and passivity. Zionism came to correct this, and it has undeniably succeeded, indeed far beyond the expectations of Jews and non-Jews alike. But if we now become slaves to the consequences of empowerment, then we are not free, and we are not truly powerful. The Nazi Holocaust in particular casts its shadow over our modern history and the history of the State of Israel. The Nazi’s campaign to eradicate world Jewry has become part of our uniquely Jewish “Liturgy of Destruction,” the way we Jews throughout the ages have made sense of our suffering by turning to the broader context of Jewish history. From this matrix of vulnerability, victimization and meaning-making comes the Zionist cry, “Never again!” But the modern State in its policies, carried out purportedly to preserve our people, and using the Holocaust as justification for unjust actions, is betraying the meaning of Jewish history. You cannot achieve your own deliverance, even from the most unspeakable evil, by the oppression of another people. Indeed, in this current era of power and self-determination for Jews in Israel, we face risks to our peoplehood that far exceed the physical perils brought by millennia of persecution.

Israel and Palestine: Reality Stood On its Head

The stormy controversy over the Israel-Palestine question today – a controversy that is splitting the Jewish community here in the United States as well as Israeli society, stands as evidence of this risk. The history of conflict and bloodshed between the State of Israel, its Arab neighbors, and the indigenous inhabitants of historic Palestine is the unavoidable and predictable result of the colonialist nature of the Zionist enterprise. Although Zionism, unlike the other European colonial projects, was not directed originally toward the occupation and exploitation of a subject people – the Zionists sought only to create a refuge for a themselves – it is no less a settler colonial enterprise for that. What is uncanny and tragic is that in the current discourse, the roles of the combatants are turned upside down: The Jews are portrayed as the victims, and the Palestinians as the aggressors. In truth, it is the Palestinians who are the victims: dispossessed, powerless, and pained. In every way, the Jews are victorious and all-powerful. The Jews of Israel are, to be sure, pricked by acts of popular resistance on the part of Palestinians. But in the perspective of the current power balance, these are pinpricks, no more. At the same time, this resistance, fueled by the desperation and humiliation of a displaced and occupied people, has been amplified and exploited by political forces within and outside of Palestine. As terrifying as acts of resistance such as suicide bombings and cross-border shellings are, Israel’s current hegemony, power, and certainly her security are not threatened by these acts. Suicide bombings are horrible and terrorizing. But it is too easy, too convenient to tar an entire people with this brush, which is precisely what has happened. The image of the Palestinians as a violent people, as “terrorists” bent on the destruction of Israel, is not a true picture. The truth is that by and large the Palestinians are a peaceful, patient people – and at this pass an angry, humiliated and pained people. Their sin over the last 60 plus years has been their relative lack of organization – set up effectively by the British during their 30-year rule -- in the face of the highly organized and effective Zionist colonial project. They are paying for this now as they face the ongoing dismantling of their economy and their infrastructure, and the continuing program to disable their leadership and ability to self-govern. Israel has taken over where Britain left off – and with far greater efficiency and thoroughness.


The Jewish Discussion

Although it is painful and deeply troubling, I see the ferocity and depth of the current split within the Jewish community in the Diaspora as an opportunity for dialogue. This is an issue of crisis proportions for Jews, and we need to take it seriously. We must encourage this conversation -- we stifle it at our great, great peril. It is our responsibility as Jews to examine our relationship to Israel, rather than to passively accept the story fed to us by the Jewish establishment: the synagogues, Jewish Federations, lobbying organizations and the rest of the apparatus devoted to maintaining the mighty stream of financial and policy support for Israel from the US government and from private sources. We must examine our convictions and feelings about the meaning of the State to us personally, especially in relation to anti-Semitism. For example, do I, as a Jew living in America, believe that the State of Israel is important to me as a haven if I should feel unsafe or disadvantaged in my home country? Do I personally feel that the existence of a Jewish State is an essential or part of my Jewishness, or of the religious values and beliefs that I hold as a Jew? Do I believe that the world owes a state to the Jews because of the centuries of violence against and persecution of the Jews, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust? These are all important questions – they need to be asked, confronted, and measured against the realities of contemporary life. Furthermore, as Diaspora Jews we need to question where we get our information about the history of the State of Israel and about the current political situation. What news services do we rely on, what websites do we visit? What do we know about the discussion going on inside Israel today, exemplified by the active dialogue to be found in the pages of Haaretz, the organizations voicing opposition to Israeli government policy, and the accelerated pace of revisionist Zionist history being produced by Jewish Israeli historians?

We must become willing to overcome our profound denial about the current reality and the injustices wrought by Zionism. Walter Brueggemann, the Protestant theologian, in his work on the prophetic imagination, writes about the prophetic call to grieve and to mourn, that only in this way can we hope to move on to a new and better reality. Only when we are able to cry, in Jeremiah’s phrase, for our own brokenness, and to confront the implications of the suffering we have caused, can we be the beneficiaries of God’s bounty. In other words, we must break through the denial about what we have done. The power structure, of course, is committed to the very opposite. The State turns the story on its head in order to paper over the truth: “This is done in the name of national security.” “These others are the terrorists, they are the obstacles to peace.”

One particularly “slippery” form of denial, of this failure to grieve, is how some Jews take issue with some of the actions of the Israeli government while still avoiding confronting the fundamental issues of justice. This can take several forms. The first is the “pragmatic” approach, which can also be called the appeal to “enlightened self-interest.” “The Occupation,” so this position goes, “was a mistake. It’s bad for Israel. Denying self-determination for Palestinians and subjecting them to the humiliation of a military administration breeds hatred and desperation, which is then visited upon Israelis in the form of violence.” Some American Jewish organizations, hoping to avoid being marginalized by the mainstream community, or labeled “Pro-Palestinian” adopt this position, ignoring the issue of justice.. “Israel,” they say, “should smarten up and change its policies if it wants to live in peace and limit the economic drain of unending conflict.” In informal conversations with some Jewish Americans who articulate this position, I have heard confessions that their position is really much more extreme with respect to their feelings about Israeli policy, but that they feel it important to hew to this line for strategic purposes, in order to maintain credibility with the Jewish establishment as well as with government legislators.

A second kind of denial, for me more serious and more disturbing, is to be found in the ranks of what has come to be called the Jewish Progressive movement. In his critique of this element of American Judaism, Jewish Liberation theologian Marc Ellis notes that whereas this element of Jewry critiques aspects of Jewish ascendancy by recognizing the validity of Palestinian aspirations, it limits the scope of the critique by accepting the need for this same Jewish ascendancy as a solution to Jewish history. This viewpoint acknowledges the issue of justice, but attempts to do this within the context of Jewish mainstream assumptions of entitlement with respect to the rights of the Jews to historic Palestine. “If we can just clean up this messy business of the Occupation,” say these people, “things will come out alright, and we will be able to enjoy the land with a clean conscience.” This viewpoint limits the discourse to actions post-1967: it denies the history of Palestinian displacement prior to that. Indeed, Progressive Jewish organizations avoid discussion of the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” used to describe the ethnic cleansing of three quarters of a million Palestinians from historic Palestine by Israeli forces between1948 and 1949. Indeed, progressive Jews have been known to become quite irritated with fellow Jews who raise it. Finally, it avoids the fundamental question, which is how a Jewish State, founded as a haven and a homeland for Jews, can be a true democracy, providing justice and fair treatment for its non-Jewish citizenry. It avoids the related and equally fundamental question of demography – the issue that, above all others, drives Israeli foreign policy and fuels the current political and military conflict. On the whole, Jews outside of Israel across a wide spectrum from “establishment” to “progressive want to avoid these questions – indeed, they are off limits.

This is denial – it is a fundamental failure to accept the consequences of Jewish actions in pre- and post- 1948 Palestine-Israel, and thus a failure to grieve over the particularly Jewish tragedy from which we as Jews suffer today. Returning to the pre-1967 borders (as if that will ever happen) will not make everything better. It will not make Israel a just society with respect to its Palestinian citizens. It will not erase what was done to the Palestinians who were driven out of their cities, towns and villages in 1948. It does not place the issue of justice as primary. Rather, it places the interests of Israel as primary, and promotes an entitled, supremacist, paternalistic stance with respect to non-Jewish inhabitants of historic Palestine, on whichever side of the final status border they may reside when a political settlement is finally achieved. It pre-empts our horror over the crimes we are committing and the suffering we have caused. It muffles our own cries of pain over our sins and our cruelties. It squelches the agony of confronting the contradictions and the excruciating dilemmas. It blocks the discussion. It closes our hearts.

Conclusion: Christians, Jews, Anti-Semitism, and Our Accountability

The issue of anti-Semitism is complex and deeply embedded in two thousand years of Western history. Among liberal Christian theologians and religious leaders, Supercessionism – the concept that Christianity, embodied in the Gospels, came to replace Judaism as God’s plan for humankind – has become the Great Evil. The argument, well supported by history, is that this idea, developed in the first centuries after Christ and central to Christian belief and doctrine, laid the groundwork for anti-Semitism. But in their zeal to correct the injustices of the past, and to in effect atone for anti-Semitism, Christian leaders and thinkers are in danger of losing sight of an important aspect of early Christian thought. Christianity, in its reframing of the relationship of God to humanity, produced a revolution -- in effect, it moved the concept of “Israel” from the tribal to the communal. In the Christian reframing, God’s commitment to humanity through his election of the seed of Abraham, assigned a special role in history, was transformed into God’s love for humankind and the invitation to all to become part of a universal spiritual community. This was a great contribution, a great step forward, and it has special relevance today, as all religions struggle to move from “Constantinian,” power-based religions to communities based on a commitment to diversity, human rights and Justice. The choice between religion based on and consorting with political power and oppression, and religion grounded in a concept of community is one that must be faced by all the faiths. Jews and Christians must talk about this, indeed they must come together with their Muslim friends and colleagues to together confront what may be the central challenge of our times. We stifle this discussion at our peril.

To our Christian sisters and brothers I say – do not, out of a sense of guilt for anti-Semitism, give the Jewish people a free pass. Do not confuse anti-Semitism with critique of Israel, and in so doing fail to hold Jews accountable for our choices and our actions, as members of the human community, as individuals, and as a nation state -- especially as a nation state. To make this mistake, to allow yourselves to be – I will use the word – bullied by the threat of the charge of anti-Semitism, is to commit a pernicious fallacy. As Jews we sought political self-determination, and we got it. Now we must behave in accordance with principles of justice and in accordance with international law as an expression of universally agreed-upon principles of justice. As Jews, we are confronted daily with this choice as we witness the illegal and oppressive actions of the Jewish State toward the Palestinian people it is so rapidly displacing. Empowerment – political empowerment – presents a mighty challenge to values. The Prophets knew this well, continually speaking this truth to the power structures of their day. To the crushed and exiled Jewish people of his time, Second Isaiah declared that redemption and comfort was coming, but only when the people acknowledged the divine meaning of their suffering. To my coreligionists in Israel and America, I say that we will ultimately survive as a people only to the extent that we can understand how our own suffering makes us part of humankind, and responsible for suffering wherever and whenever it happens. It was Roberta Feuerlicht, the Jewish ethicist who famously wrote, “Judaism survived centuries of persecution without a state; it must now learn how to survive despite a state.”

Mark Braverman lives in Bethesda, MD. He is a member of Jewish Voices for Peace and serves on the Boards of Partners for Peace and the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace. Contact: m_braverman@yahoo.com

© 2007 mbraverman@bravermangroup.com

Israel's Flag Is Not Mine September 1949

By Alfred M. Lilienthal


My late husban, a Palestinian who died last year, was fond of
Alfred Lilienthal and owned most every book he wrote. I found
this on the Internet yesterday and decided to share it with
my readers.

Dear Mother:

I brought you my hurts and troubles when both they and I were little: in that same spirit I bring them to you today.

Only last year, a new white flag with single blue six-pointed star was hoisted to a mast many thousands of miles away on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea. This flag of Israel is the symbol of a new nationalist state, with its own government, army, foreign policy, language, national anthem and oath of allegiance.

And this new flag has brought every one of us five million American citizens of the ancient faith of Judah to a parting in the road.

Judaism, I have felt, was a religious faith which knew no national boundaries, to which a loyal citizen of any country could adhere.

By contrast, Zionism was and is a nationalist movement organized to reconstitute Jews as a nation with a separate homeland. Now that such a state exists, what am I? Am I still only an American who believes in Judaism? Or am I—as extreme Zionists and anti-Semites alike argue—a backsliding member of an Oriental tribe whose loyalty belongs to that group?

Let us start, Mother, with how I feel about this new State of Israel. I wish it well. I hope that several hundred thousand suffering displaced persons will find in it a happy home. I hope it will prosper as a center of democracy in the Middle East. But when its flag was first raised on May 14, 1948, I had no impulse to dance in the street with hysterical joy, as did so many in New York and London. For I was born and remain an American. I have no ties with, no longings for, and feel no responsibilities to Israel. And I believe that the future happiness of the Jews in America depends on their complete integration as citizens of this—our true—country.

I am sure that if we Jews as a group are persuaded to divide that love which people normally give to their native land, it can lead only to disaster.

The Irish? They are a nation and Judaism is a religion. Irishmen here have left Ireland only in recent generations. The Jews left Palestine in Roman times, and have come here from every European country.

My one and only homeland is America. I am proud of my belief in the age-old Judaic concept of one God in Heaven and one Humanity here below. But my faith does not pull me into a feeling of narrowly tribal kinship with all others who worship God in this way. Whenever I read of Americans singing the Hatikvah, Israel's national anthem, or see youth groups raising Israel's flag beside the Stars and Stripes. I am outraged. For Israel's flag and anthem are symbols of a foreign state; ,they are not mine.

The most powerful weapon which Zionism is using on Americans of Jewish faith is its outward cloak of humanitarianism. The argument runs that Israel was set up primarily as a haven for the persecuted, the homeless, so why should we be critical?

Mother, the truth is that Israel was not created primarily for displaced persons. Instead, Article 3 of its proposed constitution proclaims it to be "the national home of the Jewish people." Meaning, Mother, you and me! As early as 1917 Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, was proclaiming: "We have never based the Zionist Movement on Jewish suffering in Russia or any other land. These sufferings have never been the mainspring of Zionism."

Rabbi Abba H. Silver, a recent head of the American Zionists, declared: "We must stand foursquare on the proposition that Zionism is not an immigration or a refugee movement, but a movement to rebuild the Jewish State for the Jewish nation in the land of Israel."

And what is the attitude of Israel toward those who adhere to the faith of Judaism but are citizens of other countries? Our "nationality" they insist is Jewish, no matter under what flags we were born; and, since we are not in Israel, we live "in the Diaspora," which is to say in exile. And their plans for us?

"We must," explained Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, in his first speech after the Israeli elections, "save the remnants of Israel in the Diaspora. We must also save their possessions. Without these two things, we shall not build this country."

So the vast Zionist propaganda machine strives to cement national ties between Israel and all persons of Jewish faith. And sending money to Israel is only a small part of our supposed obligation. The deeper objectives are given by Dr. Margoshes, an executive of the American Section of the Jewish Agency, as being:

" - to Zionize world Jewry. . .to establish Zionist hegemony over the developing Jewish communities throughout the world."

Daniel Frisch, newly elected president of the American Zionists, feels that "the American Jewish community will soon arrive at the inevitable conclusion that the all-day school plus a chain of summer camps is the only solution to the problem," and that "we ought to be able to send to Israel American—bred young people who want to live as Jews minus the hyphen under the smiling skies of the reborn Israel. Our task has not ended with the birth of the Jewish State. It has but begun."

Have these misguided zealots forgotten the indignation which was aroused in America In the '30's, when the Bundists tried to tell Americans of German ancestry that they owed loyalty to Germany, and set up in America youth camps dedicated to German culture?

Today we see Zionists boasting of "Jewish" political strength, Zionist picket lines around British consulates, Zionists demonstrating against Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin when he arrives here to sign the Atlantic Pact, New York stores plastered with posters screaming "Do Not Buy British. Made Goods."

Are these people acting as Americans? Europe's recovery through the Marshall Plan is the keystone of our bipartisan foreign policy, which the Communists are trying to sabotage. Any boycott of British goods, organized or unorganized, helps this destruction. Now I know these Zionists were not consciously trying to tear down American foreign policy, but their actions were the inevitable result of living under segregation is not solely the fault of the other guy. Part of the responsibility is on our shoulders. True, the Jew is sometimes segregated by Christians. But it is also true that the Jew sometimes sets himself apart from Christians.

We have moved out of the ghetto, but sometimes scars of the long imprisonment remain. This is why many Jews even today feel at home only with other Jews. Many carry their Jewishness on their sleeves and are extremely self-conscious and sensitive to their separateness.

ALL OF THIS I understand: most of it I forgive. After all, six million Jews were wiped out by Hitler and anti-Semitism does exist, even in America. Why should each of us not be at least a little sensitive? This I think most non-Jews understand. But when anyone criticizes, however mildly, either Zionism, the State of Israel or the hysterical behavior of some groups of Jews. we have no right to shout "anti-Semitism!"

In any religion one can find a small group of fanatics who hate those of other faiths. Such fanatics are not numerous or important. It is Semitism—the constant effort of some Jews to assert themselves as Jews—and not their religion of Judaism which feeds anti-Semitism.

'No one knows better than you, Mother, that I, too. suffered humiliation from being a Jew. I have felt the arrows of discrimination. In my deep hurt I have cried out. But the discipline of two nationalisms. Were Hitler alive today, how he would laugh!

The plain fact is that we Jews are not a race and we should not let the Zionists persuade us that we are. Proof to the contrary lies in Palestine, plain for all to see. You had my letter, Mother, from my Army furlough there. I was second to none in my enthusiasm for. what my co-religionists had done—for a desert brought to bloom, for clean new cities rising out of age-old sand dunes. All of these wonders had come to pass while only a few fanatics talked of statehood. One evening I went to see a performance ,of an opera in Jerusalem. In that theater lobby you could distinguish almost at a glance the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazic Jew from Poland, the Spanish-speaking Sephardic Jew from North Africa or Turkey, the German Jew, Jews from a score of countries all differing in dress, language, manners and mental attitudes. I had visual proof of the arguments of anthropologists. who laugh at the notion of a distinct Jewish race.

Anyone who tells me those foreign Jews are exclusively my people that I should be closer to them than to Bob McCormick, the kid on the block with whom I used to play ball: or to Nick Galbraith, who roomed next to me at Cornell; or Dave Du Vivier with whom I studied in law school—that man is talking dangerous nonsense. I have also learned, Mother, that when something. goes wrong in my relations with non-Jews. I avoid the habit of thinking that it happened just because I am a Jew. Such self-pity is comforting, but it is usually wrong and therefore dangerous.

There is today a deep split among Americans of the Jewish faith. The Zionists are the more vocal; they have more organized political power. But they do not speak for all of us, and I hope not for most. On the other side there is, for instance, the American Council for Judaism, which insists that the nationalism of Israel must be confined to the boundaries of that state. There are also countless other Jews without any affiliation who revere Judaism as a religion and scorn to degrade it into a cheap racial nationalism which competes with their Americanism.

But when we protest the right of the Zionists to speak as "American Jewry" on the question of Palestine, we are told that Jews should not be disunited, must not fight among themselves on Palestine or any other issue. And if we still speak out against what we feel is a dangerous trend, we find ourselves reviled and ostracized as traitors. Coercion, often economic, frequently silences the freethinker.

But why should Americans of Jewish faith be any more united on questions of American foreign policy than are Presbyterians, Baptists or Methodists?

Have we forgotten the words of Woodrow Wilson in 1915 when he warned all Americans: "You cannot become true Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And a man who goes among you to trade on your nationality is not worthy to live under the Stars and Stripes."

Politicians of both parties who in the last election played to "the Jewish vote"' in connection with Israel will do well to reread those words.

The answer to bigotry and anti-Semitism does not lie in fanatical Jewish nationalism. Of course the blowing-up of the King David Hotel, the hanging of the two British sergeants, the assassination of Bernadotte, the massacre of Arab women and children at Dier Yasin were all acts of tiny groups. But they have weakened the moral and spiritual stature of the world's oldest religion. Israel's terrorist Beigin and Hollywood's Ben Hecht, who encouraged such lawlessness by saying, "Every time you let go with your guns at the British betrayers of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts!" such people are doing the Jews more harm than any words which Goebbels spoke.

There was no holiday in my heart, nor in that of the late Rabbi J. L Magnes, president of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who said sadly following that Hecht statement: "We had always thought that Zionism would diminish anti-Semitism in the world. We are witness to the opposite."

All too many Christians have supported Zionism because they felt that Jews, having been persecuted, should now have what they want whether it is good or bad for them. Christian leaders can help us greatly. But Christian sympathy for Jews should be measured not in terms of support for Jewish nationalism in distant Israel but in accepting us as friends, neighbors and first-class citizens of this our country. That is true liberal Christianity. And also, Mother, good Judaism, that fine old faith which you taught me as a little child.

1949 The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. Pleasantville New York

Reprinted from the September, 1949 issue of The Reader's Digest.