Rubber Stamps and Rhetoric

...Why indeed—if the solution had been preordained...

...To believe that it is or can be is a form of idolatry...

...Surely everything we do in the diaspora affects Israel...

...The relationship between the Irish nation and Irishmen living elsewhere, between the Greek nation and Greeks living under other national suzerainties, is in no way comparable to the dilemma we Jews confront...

...Rayacha means all the citizens of Israel— Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Falashas—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform—the adherents of every political faction and group...

...The matter transcends by far the situation of the moment...

...whatever the Israelis do in their land makes its indelible impact on all of us everywhere...

...Either we and the Israelis are partners or we are not...

...As an American citizen—forgive me for saying, a patriotic one who wore the uniform of a Marine Corps Chaplain on Iwo Jima—I have never failed to criticize my government when I believed it to be wrong...

...I am satisfied that this is what the relationship between the Zionist movement and the State of Israel should be...

...Of course the people of Israel are the ones who must, in the final analysis, face daily danger and suffer or enjoy the consequences of whatever decisions are made...

...It was a Jewish prophet—one who loved his nation and his people It must not be the function of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency to serve as rubber stamps for whatever government happens to be in power in Jerusalem...

...Either the WZO and Jewish Agency have authentic voices in helping to shape Israel's policies or let it be acknowledged, once and for all, that they are merely fund-raising adjuncts, that their financial and political assistance is desired but their opinions are not...

...No matter...

...But that will remain forever only a guess, because the choice never came to a vote...

...Neither, however, have we the right to desist from reminding them and ourselves...

...with unbounded passion—who conceived these words to be no less than a Divine Imperative: "Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel...

...His demand that the resolution be tabled was dutifully— meekly?—accepted...

...The great prophets and rabbis of our tradition never hesitated to criticize their governments on moral grounds...

...My refusal to cringe before military or political authority in either the United States or Israel is compelled by my understanding of Judaism...

...When Labor was in power, it called for unquestioned endorsement of governmental decisions no less vigorously than do Begin's supporters today...

...Footnote: The Chairperson in question was by no means the only one to report to the plenum recommendations which Committee members had no recollection of having discussed or approved...

...But the people of Israel are themselves painfully divided on the issue of settlement...

...There can be no two ways...

...Or would they...

...a most unusual, most unique kind of people, the only people in history to exist at one and the same time as both a national and an international entity...

...Having prevailed upon the Council to accept his imperious advice, and having conveniently left the room immediately thereafter, he was not available to comment on whether a subsequent resolution declaring settlement on the West Bank to be legal did or did not come under the rubric of the motion he had successfully asked us to table...

...And if Judaism rigidly prohibits anything it prohibits idolatry...

...I have never believed that military experts per se are necessarily the best judges of what constitutes security in its broadest terms...

...Either the Jewish people is one or it is not...

...What could be more obvious or self-evident...

...Hence the dimension and depth of our dilemma...

...Yes, indeed, it's hard to be a Jew, harder yet to be a Zionist...

...I'm still struggling to establish the perimeters of my responsibilities as both...

...So here I was, within the family, where my criticisms would be welcomed...

...So why two days of intense Committee debate...

...But I shall also criticize the government of Israel—whichever party is in control—when I am convinced that its proposed policies are wrong...

...I do not believe the choice he offered was an exclusive either/or...

...must be provided with the physical means of remaining secure and safe...

...It was, after all, a Jewish prophet who dared point his accusing finger at King David and say, "A tan ha'ish—you are the man...

...2) There should be no such settlements anywhere outside the Green Line, the pre-1967 borders of the State...

...At the last, most dramatic moment, Leon Dulzin, Chairman of the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency, took the floor to insist most urgently that the WZO had never taken a stand in opposition to the government of Israel and never would take such a stand...

...1) The posture of the government, that Jewish settlements must be established and expanded everywhere on the West Bank, should be endorsed...

...My guess is that the third position described above probably would have carried...

...It was a Jewish prophet who heard God say, "Lo v'chayeel v'lo v'koach kiim b'ruchi—not by might and not by power, but by My spirit...

...In all fairness to the current government, and without regard to whether one agrees or disagrees with its policies, the politicizing of the WZO has prevailed since the inception of the State...

...For we are indeed an am segulah...

...I am, moreover, convinced that in acting thus, I am being as loyal as I can to my Israel, my Judaism, my humanness and my God...

...If they succumb to that temptation, both will become ridiculous jokes, their public posturings no more than pretentious charades...

...The one thing I will not do is surrender my right to independent judgment—neither as an individual nor as part of the World Zionist leadership...

...3) Settlements should be approved in the so-called Administered Territories, but not in areas of concentrated Arab population...

...I assumed my relatively new responsibilities in Zionist world leadership with the assumption that all this was axiomatic, that the Zionist rhetoric about one Jewish people was more than just rhetoric...

...But I shall simultaneously strive to insure that the State which survives will be in the fullest sense a Jewish State—one whose population and culture will be predominantly Jewish, whose values and goals will reflect the highest ideals of our heritage...

...Either all Jews are responsible for and to each other or we aTe not...

...Of course political decisions must be made by that government, not by the WZO...

...One has to love Israel and the Jewish people passionately to remain a devoted Zionist after being directly exposed to the Kafkaesque world of Zionist politics...

...Agitated debate followed before the plenum...

...These observations are prompted by my experiences as a member of the World Zionist Organization Executive, most recently as a delegate at the Jerusalem meetings of the Zionist General Council and the Jewish Agency last June...

...I shall do everything within my power to assure the security and survival of Israel...

...I had been consistently told, for example, that basic to the entire Zionist philosophy was the concept of Jewish peoplehood, the notion that every individual Jew and each Jewish community bears a clear responsibility for all others...

...It could be relevant to no other people on earth...

...Our tradition ascribes to God Himself the injunction, " Vahavta I'rayacha kamocha—you must love your neighbor as yourself...

...Why the "theme" of the sessions in the first place...

...The prophet was not naive...

...Why, then, should I supinely yield to the insistence of some military authorities in Israel that the civilian settlement of Elon Moreh is essential for that nation's defense—especially when other Israelis of equal military competence have publicly disagreed...

...My disappointment and anger must not be permitted to distort reality...

...We cannot be too harsh with those Israelis who—under the nearly intolerable pressure they must endure—may from time to time forget the full scope of our tradition...

...The views he expresses here are his own, not necessarily those of ARZA...

...It was with considerable enthusiasm, therefore, that I learned the theme of the General Council meetings was to be The Relationship Between the Zionist Movement and the State of Israel...

...Of course the government of Israel is sovereign...

...I shall support Israel with full strength both in Washington and at the U.N., even when it means vigorously disagreeing with the White House and State Department...

...Roland B. Gittelsohn is President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, a past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Israel in Boston...

...Dulzin's tactic was consistent with many of the maneuvers which preceded and followed it...

...Let me be even more radically, more fundamentally Jewish: rayacha even includes any Arabs who are willing to be so considered...

...I refused to accept the judgment of the Pentagon that the security of the United States demanded our armed intervention in Vietnam...

...It must not be the function of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency to serve only as rubber stamps for whatever government happens to be in power at a given moment in Jerusalem...

...The Chairwoman of the Settlement Committee—who professed to be impartial even though she had violated both parliamentary law and objectivity by voting a straight-line Likud position on every matter before the Committee—cavalierly pronounced that the legalizing resolution had been a separate item before the Committee...

...Israel today must have koach and chayeel...

...For there is no other people quite like ours...

...On one count or another 1 have publicly castigated every American President since Harry Truman...

...For substantial parts of two days I sat with the Committee assigned to that subject and heard three basic positions fervently debated...

...A complicated and intricate relationship indeed...

...Coming to the recent meetings with this premise, I was warmed by the fervent pronouncement of Prime Minister Begin in his opening comments to the Zionist General Council: "We will always regard you as full partners in the building of our country...

...Though severely tempted when asked to sign that statement, I had resisted...

...It was he also, I believe, who said—with reference to the public statement of fifty-nine American Jews who had sharply and publicly criticized the settlement policies of the Begin government only a day before our meetings opened—that such criticism should be expressed in private, within the family...

...Governments can be and often are wrong—all governments...

...It was passed anyway...

...And—irony of ironies—it was then the adherents of the Likud point of view who pushed for more democracy in the WZO...

...But if it forgets ruach elohim, God's indispensable spirit, it will be lost, and we with it...

...And no government is God...

...I agreed...

...The most crucial issue before the General Council was the one to which the fifty-nine had addressed themselves, the current settlement policies of the government...

...Several if not most of us who attended her meetings distinctly recalled that the Committee had formally attached it to the omnibus resolution which, at Dulzin's insistence, had already been tabled...

...Much of what I witnessed and learned there was a gross travesty of the Zionism I had been taught since childhood...

...The Committee rendered its report and the two alternatives were proposed from the floor...

...All of which is inextricably related to the meetings which disturbed me so greatly...