tel selves 1T. the us all as, but com- se per- hority, :ligious etation tunities erstand ng and :would able to provide Indeed, 3 partly ience of )ught to irces, to nmunityEternal :s in the undation is not in inst God, that we of The Rhetoric of Gecupation David Bz'ale hen I spoke this past November at the Tt'kkun conference in San Francisco, I began my remarks with an of?cial disclaimer: I was speaking, I said, only for myself?my institutional af?li- ation was for identi?cation purposes only. One might well ask why I began by stating the obvious. I did so because it is no longer possible to speak out freely on Israel without the risk of incurring venomous wrath and threats, both veiled and unveiled, to one?s very livelihood. There is a witch-hunt abroad in the land and many of us in the Jewish community are the witches. Let me cite a few cases, taken more or less at random. - Arthur Waskow is forced to resign from the Reconstruc- tionist Rabbinical College for advocating the creation of a Palestinian state; - the Zionist Organization of America maintains ?les (which it publishes for its members) on American Jews who have taken pro?peace positions such as endors- ing the Jewish Peace Lobby and signing ads sponsored by Tzhkun, - a branch of the American Jewish Congress loses its funding from a major Jewish foundation because it allows another organization to use a room in order to hear a Palestinian speaker; - newspapers in the Bay Area report that the Israeli consul-general has spied on and harassed Jewish educa- tional and communal organizations that have dared to engage in dialogue with the insidious P-people; - activists in Friends of Peace Now in Toronto report that they regularly receive death threats whenever they mount any kind of program or demonstration. The list goes on and on. Who among us in public life has not been the target of similar vili?cation, threats, and pressure? I myself recently had the honor of being called a Kapo by a worthy member of the Jewish community for advocating dialogue with the Palestinians. Read the letters column of any Jewish community newspaper, if you can bring yourself to do so, and you will have the dismal ex- perience of seeing Jews accuse other Jews of being ?worse than Hitler? for suggesting that Israeli policy might be misguided. Or read the venomous character assassination David Bz'ale 2's director of the Center for Jewish Studies and a Professor ofJewt'rh history at the Graduate Theological Union or Berke!er Califormh. His latest hook is Power and Power- lessness in Jewish History (Schochen, 1986). of Michael Lerner written by Edward Alexander and now being reprinted in Jewish papers around the country. Alexander?s screed is McCarthyism with a Jewish face, an ad hominem use of selective quotations from the distant past in place of any substantive and serious debate over the issues. Having demonized the Pales- tinians, the next step for these self-proclaimed defenders of the faith is to demonize those Jews who step out of line as Arab-lovers and traitors to the Jewish people. Our situation in this country is not, of course, as desperate as it is for our allies and friends in the Israeli peace movement. For them, reaching our to the Pales- tinians means not only censure and threats, but even the possibility of jail sentences. Abie Natan, one of the true zaddikim of our time, served four months in jail for meeting with Arafat. Even the judge found it hard to fault his intentions. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem was arrested and charged for wearing a small lapel pin with Israeli and Palestinian flags at a ceremony honoring Yitzhak Shamir. And twenty-seven Israelis, including a number of contributors to Tzi?hun, were arrested and charged with sedition for traveling to the West Bank and meeting with Palestinians. The charges were dropped on a technicality, but the harassment continues. And now we read in the papers of a group called the Sicarii that has planted bombs and threatens to execute seven members of the Knesset for the crime of advocating dialogue with the Palestinians. Need one add that these severe measures come at a time when a settler who kills a fourteen?year-old Arab girl gets a seven-month sentence and soldiers who beat an Arab to death have their sentences reduced to a few months? We all know that while Israel may be a democ- racy within the Green Line, it deprives the Arabs of the territories of most democratic and civil rights. For more than half of its existence, Israel has maintained this double standard. As inevitably had to happen, this im- possible state of affairs has begun to erode democratic rights within Israel itself. Jewish life today is mortally threatened by a disease that af?icts not only the State of Israel, but the Jewish community worldwide. The disease is the occupation and it is attacking the cohesiveness of the Jewish people, sowing gratuitous hatred between Jews, and poisoning our public life. I submit that the price of continuing 41 the occupation will not only be the deterioration of democracy in Israel, but also the progressive disintegra. tion of the American Jewish community. We can no longer speak about the Israeli?Palestinian con?ict as though we were innocent but concerned bystanders. The real moral and political question today, then, is not the price of peace, but the price of the occupation. ow, more than ever, the occupation can be 1 maintained only by a process of deliberate obfuscation, by hiding behind linguistic masks. The of?cial rhetoric, for example, speaks of peace when it means occupation, of negotiations when it means capitulation. We are sucked into a seemingly endless process of initiatives, counterproposals, ten points, ?ve points?all concerned with negotiation about who will negotiate about who will elect who will negotiate, and so on. The real point of this dreary Charade is to stall endlessly for time and to distract attention from the relentless entrenchment of the occupation. Whenever we dare to raise questions, we are told not to weaken Israel by criticizing it and not to do the work of the PLO. When we point out the immorality of the occupation, we are told that practices far worse exist elsewhere in the world, and that any other country would have ended the intifada a long time ago by much bloodier means. There is, of course, much truth in this. But those who make this argument never show the slightest interest in injustices elsewhere in the world unless they can be used to make Israel look good. Their sudden embrace of universalism smells very ?shy. We have been constantly urged to regard Israel as a special country, as our country, but when we pay special atten- tion to what is happening there, we are suddenly urged to pay more attention to the rest of the world. And worsr of all is when the Holocaust and the suffering of our own people are invoked as a way of trumping the obviously lesser sufferings of the Palestinians. A variant on the rhetoric of comparison is the argu- ment from context. The occupation must be put in his- torical context, we are told: the refusal of the Arab states to accept Israel and their systematic exploitation and mistreatment of the Palestinians. Again, there is consid- erable truth here. But there are some things that are not permissible in any context. The argument from national security cannot be made to justify every instance of col? lective punishment, demolition of houses, and breaking of bones, especially when these policies have only fueled greater resistance. Will our great-grandchildren also be told that the historical context justi?es the occupation? Those who criticize are admonished to remain silent if they are not willing to move to Israel and put their own lives on the line. A compelling argument on the face of it, but one that quickly leads to absurdity. ?Who 42 TIKKUN VOL. 5, N0. 2 would argue that just because I have chosen not to live in the Soviet Union or Nicaragua I have forfeited my right to criticize their regimes? But more to the point, the consequences of this argument are profoundly anti- democratic; these right-wingers envision what used to be called democratic centralism, in which the citizens of Israel elect a government and all Jews around the world are expected to adhere to the party line. But we all remember the devastating consequences this policy had for the moral and political integrity of Communist parties around the world in the 19305 and ?405. For all the differences, do we want to see the same process happen to Zionism? Aren?t Zionism and the Jewish people strengthened by free and open debate? It is no longer possihle to speale out freely on Israel without the risk of incurring venomous wrath and threats, hoth veiled and unveiled, to onefs very livelihood. Those who wish to suppress debate are no more eager themselves to move to Israel: they devote them- selves to urging the critics to make aliya. I am reminded here of the slogan from the Vietnam War: America?love it or leave it. The slogan of right-wing Jews is: Israel?- love it or move to it. They are certainly eager to ?ght to the last Israeli. Moreover, they are not really leaving Israeli policy up to the Israelis. Their silence is a powerful form of consent to a policy with potentially disastrous consequences, and since they are willing to criticize the critics publicly?often in the most vicious and violent terms?they are not really silent. Israeli peace activist Hannan Hever puts it even more strongly: ?If American Jews want to genuinely help this country that we all love, then they _must regard all silence about the occupation and all support of the current Israeli regime as an attack on those of us who are fighting for a moral Israel." For the defenders of the occupation in this country, the buzzword for all discussions of the Middle East is ?balance.? But by balance they do not mean the reasoned examination of the legitimate claims of hath sides?that, after all, is our position. Thus, the recent statement of American Catholic Bishops calling for a Palestinian homeland balanced by equal concern for Israel?s security was automatically denounced as ?one-sided.? ?Balance? is a code word for hearing only the Israeli government line. The voices of peace from both Israel and the Palestinian camp must be silenced. This brings me to the most important component in the rhetoric of the occupation: the claim that there isn?t anyone to speak with. According to the of?cial rhetoric, any dialogue that attempts to ?nd common ground with the Palestinians must be condemned as serving their nefarious purposes, as giving a forum to the enemy. They must be kept silent because whatever they say is really a clever trick aimed at destroying Israel. Even listening to their side of the story is regarded as tanta- mount to saying that Israel has no right to exist. In this zero-sum game, every gain for them must be a loss for us. But the claim that there is no one to talk to be- comes ever more contorted as the evidence mounts that dialogue is exactly what the PLO is ready for. As Abba Eban has put it, Israel is only prepared to talk to Palestinians who won?t talk to Israel. And we are sup- posed to follow suit and to refuse any such contacts here. Instead of engaging the Palestinians in public dialogue, instead of listening to their story so that they might listen to ours, they mu5t be denied any voice and kept silent. Again, out of sight, out of mind. The day of reckoning with reality is fast approaching. Our role is to help create a space within the politics of this country for the possibility of a political settlement. We must defy the threats and intimidations and continue to speak the truth as we see it. We will defend Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. We must stand ready to criticize the rejectionists, whether Israeli or Palestinian, and to encourage anyone who is committed to a genuine and realistic peace process. We must continue to meet with Palestinians in order to ?nd common ground, but we must also stand our ground where we cannot agree. By our actions, we must give courage to the peace movement in Israel as it ?ghts for By "Me bat! it: America on Ho/ocmm #7213." Elie Wiesel FILM AND THEHOLCAST SECOND EDITION ANNETTE INSDORF FOREWORD BY ELIE WIESEL powerful, passionate and poignant undersranding of?lm is superb and her sensitivity to the Holocaust is ri?e/me! Georgetown Unive rsiry How does one create a ?lm on the Holocaust that is borh morally just and marketable? Annette Insdorf recognizes the inherent dilemma of dealing with such a sensitive and controversial subject and probes the issue of how to prompt the audience to think about the screen's horrific images. This new paperback edition takes into account 45 recent films, including 5% err/1, ll?hij and Retriembmnee, Inside Me T?im? Rafe/i, and Hotel $16.95 At bookstores or from Cambridge Press 40 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011 Call toll-free: 800-872-7423 outside NY State. 800-227-0247, NY State only. MasterCard/VISA l. I. I. I. l. .Isurvival. Above all, we must repeatedly expose the bank- ruptcy of the language of occupation and call to account those who are destroying democratic discourse both in the American Jewish community and in Israel. El Assistant Editor Being an editor at Ti/ekmz requires top-notch editorial and language skills, a deep understanding and com- mitment to the editorial philosophy and perspective of the magazine, a sophisticated understanding of contemporary issues in American politics and culture, Judaism, and Israel, plus a willingness to work endless hours editing, reading and responding to manuscripts, and promoting the magazine in public forums. Salary depending on experience. Send a self- revealing letter telling us in detail (1) why you?re the person for this job; (2) what you understand to be the central ideas that make Tz'kkzm unique; and (3) your speci?c suggestions for articles, direction, or changes in the magazine. Also send a sample of your writing. Employment at Tikkun Administrative Assistant to the Publisher This position involves keeping the business side of the magazine functioning, soliciting ads, working on conferences and special projects, fund raising, general of?ce work, record keeping, and data entry. Computer competence, secretarial skills, and good public rela- tions skills are required. Working on Commission 1. Fund raiser for the magazine. 2. Selling advertising space in the magazine. To apply for any of these: Write a detailed letter about yourself and why you are the person for the task. Send to: TIKKUN EMPLOYMENT, 5100 Leona St., Oakland, CA 94619. THE RHETORIC or OCCUPATION 43