Truth-telling And Leadership Responsibility In American Jewish Life
TRUTH-TILLING AND LEADERSHIP RESPONSIBILITY IN AMERICAN JEWISH LIFE A MOMENT SYMPOSIUM How shall American Jews relate to the policies and actions of Israel's government? No question has more...
...It's hard to feel free to dissent when we encounter the snare that was set for us at Camp David, where the Prime Minister achieved a postponement of the sovereignty issue for many, many years— more than the five years that are often cited, since the five year period hasn't even started to run yet, and three years have already gone by...
...It was just before he resigned from the cabinet...
...And I try again and again to explain that literature comes not to praise people but to describe them...
...To which the Prime Minister responded by putting his hand on my shoulder and saying, "For a boy that speaks such a wonderful Yiddish, you really should call it Judea and Samaria, not the West Bank...
...Not, essentially, because they are so very smart, but because they truly love the State of Israel...
...And the reason is obvious—we know that we're not going to like the answers...
...We're allegedly not allowed to talk about it...
...At about nine, Eppie Evron, the Israeli ambassador, called with the same message...
...Is it not over our right, as American Jews, to seek to affect policy decisions in Israel, especially decisions that have to do with life and death...
...I must say that I am not sure that it is better to be united in a struggle when you have grave doubts about the wisdom of the course of action that you are supposed to be united about...
...Alfred Kazin: Rather suddenly, American Jews have become respectable—and powerful...
...My purpose would be to convince him that some of his views on matters such as, for example, the "moderate" nature of the Saudi regime, are dangerously wrong...
...When I attended the demonstration in Tel Aviv on that famous Saturday night, I don't know if Begin heard me...
...The audience of some 80 invited guests included many lay and professional leaders of the American Jewish community...
...The transcript of the symposium was edited for clarity and brevity...
...There's been almost no reference, however, to its impact on the American Jewish community itself...
...Ted Mann: Some of us did speak out on the Falwell embrace...
...Its principal cost is that it demeans and degrades our own community...
...Be that as it may, those of us who count ourselves part of the liberal Western tradition, in which doubt pervades much of our belief, disdain absolutist dogma...
...it has happened in France...
...If there is such division, if there is such dissent, is it not the result of Prime Minister Begin trying to shlep a world Jewish community in a direction in which it clearly does not want to go...
...But we don't have that constraint when we're dealing with Israel...
...There's been talk here about the impact of truth-telling on Israel's prime minister, on the leaders of its opposition, on Congressional opinion, on public opinion in general...
...We had a preliminary meeting with some of the leaders of the National Council of Churches, and they were clearly hell-bent on berating the President for disadvantaging the poor, for taxing the rich at the expense of the poor, and so on...
...there, caution is required...
...Last but not least, with regard to the issue of communication, there ought to be some kind of ongoing parliament of Jewish life, of the Jewish people, where things can be openly and honestly discussed...
...Ted Mann: I don't see the evidence that these constraints on debate that have been referred to have operated very restrictively in the past half year...
...My concern is with why such questions are not even raised...
...And the number of those who do seems to be growing these days...
...I was one of 400,000...
...So the counterproductive aspect of public dissent has to be folded into the equation...
...I have very little confidence that we will have much success in that effort...
...Ted Mann: We don't—I don't—because we know that the West Bank is occupied territory, and it is occupied territory because there has been no peace agreement, and there has been no peace agreement—at least in large measure—because of the attitudes and the actions of the Arab governments and the people who live in the West Bank...
...If I were to accept that, the answer is simple—you lobby your elected officials, through letters and political activity, to urge that course upon them...
...It is true that the problems we are discussing have now, because of changed circumstances, assumed a greater reality than they used to have...
...I grew up thinking as a matter of course that Jews are against killing people, even in the electric chair...
...It's not always easy for a congressman to deal with the issues and the pressures...
...Of course there is a question of propriety...
...So let's not be bullied by a geographic and expansionist interpretation of Zionism...
...Non-Jews were often intimidated when it came to dealing with Jewish issues, because of the memory of the Holocaust...
...But love knows no such conditions...
...I believe that the American Jewish community is now wracked deeply by the issues of Israeli behavior and of our response...
...There was even one individual present—you all remember the type from your college days—who wanted desperately to make a good impression, and so proceeded to ask about the Lebanese situation in great detail, about the relationship between the Sunni Moslems and the Shiite Moslems and the Marxist Moslems, and Begin took that as a wonderful opportunity to go on for another half hour...
...We feel that we have to be true to our own convictions, and we are also convinced that we owe the Israelis the truth...
...Let's leave aside the question of why we should speak, and of whether we have the right to speak...
...Alex Schindler: Lest there be any doubt whatever regarding my position, let me state plainly that I believe with every fiber of my being that there should be absolutely no inhibition to any internal discussion...
...And time does pass, things do change...
...The Nazi threat, and then the struggle for the establishment of the State of Israel, occasioned great debate and much apparent disunity...
...And that's what bothers me, of course...
...Why don't you understand Rabin's opposition to Schindler's statements...
...Since when have Jews avoided looking at the questions because they are afraid the answers might not please them...
...These are not pleasant issues...
...In my view, there is something unhealthy about a community that debates the major issues it confronts in whispers...
...But that is a principle that must be applied very carefully...
...It's my impression that the reaction of most of the American Jewish leadership to the Reagan speech was quite favorable...
...So the problem is that the occupation continues, and continues, as I see it, against Israel's will...
...I recall my own feelings during the Viet Nam War, to which I was strongly opposed...
...Dayan simply could not abide Sharon's overbearing figure, his tone of voice, his use of crude language or the way he would pound the table at cabinet meetings...
...And even with that, the media reported this moderate response as evidence of a rift in the Jewish community, and you started reading reports of widespread alienation from Israel...
...it's not a media creation...
...How do we account for the gap between what our leaders say and think and what their organizations say and do...
...And the fact is that in a period of three years, not a single Jewish organization decided to do that...
...Do we not raise, with regard to other places, such issues as the nature of self-determination, subservience, colonialism...
...Finally: In the past, the Holocaust has given us a kind of advantage...
...If you have a crush, and you discover that the object of your infatuation has a wart, you walk away in disgust...
...In my view, support for Israel exists mainly because Israel is committed to the same democratic processes we have in this country...
...They wanted me to influence the American government on the issue of Phantoms, and then on the issue of AWACS, and so forth...
...It would be a great sin if we were silent...
...If we're not united, who will support Israel...
...Nothing should be undebatable—and yet, in every forum, there's an enormous reluctance to get to the painful, essential heart of the question...
...About six months ago, when Mr...
...As to the issue of Palestinian nationalism, my only point was that I do not know whether there is such a thing as Palestinian nationalism—using "nationalism" in the Western sense— that really goes beyond the desire of the Palestinians to rid the Middle East of a Jewish presence...
...That's the conclusion the media drew, and we've got to be aware that they're going to draw that kind of conclusion when we make critical statements...
...That is the dilemma we here are struggling with...
...You can be an atheist, a blasphemer, a what-have-you, and not be regarded as outside the pale—but a critic of Israel...
...Nor is the World Jewish Congress such a parliament...
...And I arranged for them to meet with Begin...
...Those decisions were relatively simple...
...Sure, people tried to avoid giving it their blanket approval, but the general reaction was favorable, even though the Reagan proposals were immediately denounced by Prime Minister Begin...
...And I conclude that when they taught me in high school and college that evolution is progress, they made a mistake...
...How would those of you who are charged with responsibility for leadership convey your views to your own organizations...
...But we cannot get close to it if we ignore such matters as these, for we must begin by trying, at least, to be true to ourselves—and that is what so many American Jews are having so much trouble doing these days...
...And just a few minutes after nine, Yehuda Hellman, of the Conference of Presidents, called, with the same message...
...There is no ongoing communication between the Conference and any counterpart body in Israel...
...Jewish credibility in advocating Israel's cause is enhanced rather than diminished if Israel's blemishes are acknowledged, even if there is disagreement with particular policies of this prime minister...
...Quite likely, there is no "last word" to be written or spoken about them...
...Can the Jewish people handle such debate...
...And American Jews can actually strengthen support for Israel if they are perceived as people who understand the complexities of the issues and are willing to speak out on them...
...The morning that it appeared, the phone rang a few minutes before nine, and it was someone from AIPAC, the Israel lobby, chiding him for speaking "out of turn" to Evans and Novak...
...But people in the audience always say things like, "Isn't Saul Bellow an anti-Semite...
...In my meetings with him, I tried to persuade him of three things—that his view on the subject of the West Bank was wrong, that American Jews don't support that view and that his insistence on that view was jeopardizing support for Israel in Washington...
...And so far as American Jewish opinion is concerned, I don't know what it is we're talking about...
...Leonard Fein: But then what of the Jews...
...So I played two roles...
...But even as I was in the midst of the debate with myself, I found that—almost against my will—Begin was winning...
...Do we not know where we stand on such matters...
...They speak Hebrew, they've been to Israel, one is there now, and my concern is that they understand me and know what I have stood for and what I stand for...
...And if that's the cause of the dissent, then we have to look at it rather differently...
...Because they do not, there is more passion attached to the question of dissent than there used to be...
...we know how in America the security blanket is sometimes inappropriately applied to issues that are really not security issues...
...And we will destroy our own credibility...
...Jewish organizations in a voluntary society like ours are created in order to magnify the voices of like-minded Jews who gather together in those organizations...
...So if you get past the first few days of press reaction, it turns out not to be so terrible...
...I think that is in part because advocacy has become so critical a part of the agenda of American Jewry...
...In Begin, I can still recognize all the things that made me a Zionist and a Jew, I can understand him even though I disagree so fundamentally with him...
...The birth and existence of the nation were so tied to the Labor Party and its policies that it became very difficult to think of criticizing the policies of the government without that criticism being seen as criticism of the country itself...
...I have three daughters...
...With regard Michael Neiditch to the PLO, there is at the moment a convergence between Israel and the United States, a substantial agreement that on this issue, what's good for one is also good for the other...
...If we abandon that search, we abandon the most fundamental characteristic of being Jewish, at least as I understand what being Jewish means...
...Now, when the truth is tailored in order to help the cause, it is often the case that not all of the audience "has been clued in, not everyone is aware that he is hearing or reading a tailored version of the truth...
...We examine and reexamine our premises because we doubt them...
...They are means, manifestations of an undergirding reality, and that reality is the Jewish people and its continuity...
...There are many planes of Jewish values and there are different values and there are different priorities in different generations...
...They will not do anything that in any way threatens, or appears to threaten, that support...
...And I sense that the exasperation and frustration on the part of liberal and moderate— and often secular—American Jews are due to the fact that they are often less in touch with some aspects of the Jewish tradition than those with whom they differ politically...
...Alexander Schindler We owe it to the truth to say that the problem we are discussing here did not begin with the election of Menachem Begin...
...And sure enough, that's what happened...
...That famous picture from the Ghetto of the little boy with his hands raised over his head does not defend us any longer, does not provide us the answer to all questions...
...Begin, and my impression is that he doesn't care very much to hear my views...
...Our job is to speak the truth, for its own sake and for no other reason whatever...
...He spoke for an hour and a half about how Israel and he were so misperceived, and there were a couple of people who responded by telling him what a great job he was doing and how everybody loved him...
...And that being so, how can we presume to intervene...
...Balfour Brickner: We have talked about the American Jewish community addressing itself to the government and the prime minister of Israel...
...In 1947 at Lake Success, Zionists no less robust that Moshe Sharett and Chaim Weizmann were willing to give up Beersheva in order to secure a Jewish state...
...So let us once and for all reject the notion that by speaking the truth as we see it, by giving the Israelis our own perception of events, we are somehow treasonous...
...Don't you understand that Rabin is an officer of the same corporation of which Begin happens to be chairman of the board...
...A serious debate, which is what I think we need, means that different perspectives all get put on the table...
...Sam Gejdenson: I don't think the problem is as grave as it's being made out to be...
...Sam Gejdenson: I think we tend to over-react to press reviews of the debate within the Jewish community...
...And it is those shared values, it is Israel's democratic tradition, that make it appropriate to criticize Israel's policies when, in our judgment, they warrant criticism...
...But what I have seen over the last several months is that Israel's position in Congress has improved in direct proportion to the rise of informed criticism of Mr...
...I would try to persuade him that those views are wrong, that they are not shared by most American Jews, and that he is jeopardizing American support by pressing those views...
...But the world isn't as simple as we might like...
...When you criticize the Saudis, you're criticizing the only government they will have in the foreseeable future, the only government that is available to support American aims in the Middle East—at least as those aims are perceived by some people...
...And here we have it...
...People are dying still today...
...We have all learned, these last five years, that the nightmares are infectious...
...Let me start with the Conference of Presidents, which, generally speaking, comes to Israel to make representations only in times of crisis...
...In the mid-1940s, when we faced equally serious questions, we did not come together in the ways we should have to deal with what were then rumors as to what was happening in Europe...
...For the "dissenters," the questions tumble over each other...
...So I would imagine that Mr...
...To my knowledge, that organization has yet to deal in any serious way with the questions that Rita Hauser has raised here today...
...Can we really imagine that the Jews here don't know that Israel is flawed...
...The hearings in Israel on the massacre once again show the strength of Israel's democratic system, and prove beyond any argument that the interests of Israel and the United States are bound together—not because of Israel's military strength, and not because of any particular administration, but because the two countries share the same important values...
...The great tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have not had decent leadership...
...Is it right to dissent, is it wise, when, how, where...
...it goes to the very heart and nature of what the Jewish state is all about, and to be silent on such a fundamental issue would be a tragic mistake...
...What if it turns out to be best, for all these different groups, to recognize the change of circumstances in the Middle East since this summer, and to have the United States start talking with the PLO...
...And for that reason, the struggle between those who favor annexation and those who oppose it is uneven and unfair...
...We are simply not used to criticizing Israel...
...At the end of World War II, the United States had to make some decisions regarding where its assistance was to go in Europe...
...I am profoundly committed to Jewish life, to Jewish sovereignty in the State of Israel...
...There are many of us who raise these questions consistently...
...Israel is a sovereign nation...
...And that impacts on us...
...Over the last three or four years, more and more American Jews have come around to his way of thinking about the West Bank, and, so far as the United States is concerned, financial support has not only been maintained, it has been augmented...
...And the bond between Israel and the United States, which grows out of the same considerations, will remain intact...
...Since Israel's establishment, ; and in the wake of the threats to the i Jewish State, we have come to regard unity as an absolute requirement, as the "proper order" of things...
...the pages that follow provide an accurate rendering of the presentations and the discussion that followed...
...If we believe that such meetings, both formal and informal, unshackled, unfettered, might advance the cause of peace, should we press for them...
...Michael Neiditch: I think it a marvelous thing that we have the opportunity to come together to talk about the crisis in American Jewish life that we are living through...
...If I were speaking to an official of the United States government, I would be speaking to someone who, most likely, shares my views on the future of the territories, and who already knows what my views are in that regard, since one does not become an "American Jewish leader" by remaining silent on such things...
...In fact, one could argue that the Sharon plan—crisscrossing the West Bank with Jewish areas, allowing little villages of Palestinians to remain and be autonomous in their tiny settlements—a plan that I despise—is precisely the kind of self-determination that Palestinians living on the West Bank always wanted, and is all they wanted...
...I have been through endless meetings with Mr...
...What if five years from now it's Sharon we're looking at...
...You know the Israelis never make the case for annexation, because they don't admit that annexation is what they are about...
...Alex Schindler: There are different ways in which we might seek to improve the channels of communication...
...We have yet to find a proper way of communicating our views to Israel, of telling the truth to Israelis even in private...
...Finally, if I were speaking to an American journalist, I would have no interest in persuading him that the American Jewish community is united, since the audience I would be trying to reach through him is the general American public, and what that public needs to be reminded of from time to time is not the unity and power of American Jewry but rather the constant threat and danger under which Israel must live—and the great unlikelihood, no matter what anyone does, that the threat and the danger are going to change in the immediate or even middle-term future...
...That's not, after all, so difficult to understand...
...That is a profoundly troubling issue to me...
...I remember one of the last long conversations I had with Moshe Dayan...
...I have never been certain that they are wrong...
...You make a statement in the press one morning and the next morning someone will invoke it on television, someone will fling it into our faces, asking, "Why do you come to the support of Israel when, after all, even leading Jews agree that Israel is wrong...
...The panelists included the Honorable Sam Gejdensen, Member of Congress of Connecticut's Second District and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee...
...After all, while we might disagree as to whether or not an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank would threaten Israel—an issue on which none of us in this room is qualified to decide—don't we all agree that it would at least be very risky...
...As a matter of fact, so far as I personally am concerned, Begin has been more understanding of my disagreements than the leaders of Labor were...
...We did that even though there were grave disagreements between us and some of the leaders of those countries—say, for example, DeGaulle...
...If I speak of valid inhibitions and constraints it is only with respect to public statements...
...The principal cost of a policy of silence has very little to do with the shape and the substance of Israeli policy...
...Those ethics, that tradition, our own history—all these require that we treat each and every individual with the same measure of human integrity and respect with which we would hope and expect to be treated...
...The truth about the Jews—and that is the truth from which we must start—is that there are certain things we believe, we hold dear...
...The implication of the question is absolutely correct...
...For beyond the policies of any particular Israeli government, we can be confident that the democratic process will continue...
...Those Israelis who are of the same mind as we may well resent it when their views are uttered by American Jews...
...Now, the more difficult question has to do with our rights as American Jews...
...Spinoza once said that it is impossible to have a true idea without knowing in your guts that it is true...
...And it made no difference, none at all...
...Rita Hauser: I'd like to return to the point I raised in my opening remarks...
...And that is why dissent must never be I equated with disloyalty...
...From what corner of the Jewish experience does Arik Sharon come to us...
...Given those circumstances, it is time to focus the debate on other matters, on the ultimate truths of Jewish ethics and the Jewish tradition...
...Then we might try, on the political level, to arrange for groups of senators and representatives to meet periodically with their counterparts in Israel, where there might be a candid discussion of American political realities on an ongoing basis, again not merely in response to crisis...
...Our function as Jews is not to praise Israel, which is a state like any other—and no state is virtuous...
...I am not insensitive to the costs, but the benefits of open discussion— as well as the costs of silence—seem to me to outweigh the costs of debate and dissent...
...It's a curious thing...
...I do not accept that it is in the best interests of the United States to sit down in formal negotiations with the PLO...
...So what's left to talk about...
...It faces no serious threat from the inhabitants of the West Bank, and it no longer faces a serious military threat from the PLO...
...My subject was the future of the territories, and I decided to try to make the evening more interesting by engaging in a debate with myself...
...First I was Moshe Dayan, and then, when I was done being Dayan, I sat down, and then I stood up and I was Menachem Begin...
...Congressmen who come from Jewish districts have to be careful lest somebody who appeals more directly to their Jewish voters runs against them...
...But in the case of Israel, we can be certain—as certain as one can be—that though the government of the day will pass, the democratic process will continue...
...Sure there are different Jewish values, different Jewish traditions...
...We re-examine the premises that underlie our premises because we doubt them...
...But those who are struggling/or annexation are not, I think, plagued by such doubts...
...Together with the pressure for unity, do we not risk an attenuation of our ability to engage in civil debate...
...So far as truth-telling on this issue is concerned, I have experienced tremendous disappointment in that leadership...
...When Rita Hauser says that nobody has ever asked the Palestinian Arabs what they want to do with their lives, I beg to differ...
...In general, the farther from the center of power they are, the more inquisitorial they become...
...And you can't lay the blame for the failure to achieve a peace treaty on Israel...
...They have come to me and to you and asked us to use our good offices and our influence to persuade the American government to do that which they, the Israelis, believed was best for themselves, best for the world, best for America...
...I spoke to the annual meeting of a federation in a very good Jewish community in the Midwest...
...I'd like to refer back to our discussion of awe and inhibition...
...There's the snare...
...And when Jordan occupied them, they didn't seem to care...
...Now, if we accept that as the basic premise, then we must also accept the corollary—that all sovereign nations, even the very best of democracies, are capable of electing officials who are prone to error, and sometimes commit very serious and disgraceful errors...
...In whispers, sometimes in shouts—and neither is an especially convincing or enlightening voice...
...He was distressed— and that's an understatement—by Arik Sharon's style in meetings of the cabinet...
...Well, the saying in the Soviet Union is that there's no izvestia in Pravda, and there's no pravda in Izvestia...
...There are pressures on the American people that work in the other direction...
...And they all agreed that I had no business saying these things, that I had no business coming to Israel under these circumstances, that I had no business telling the truth...
...Now I come to Ira Silverman's point...
...And that one of the reasons it has triumphed is our own timidity...
...it can tolerate and absorb the discovery of flaw...
...Obviously, there are problems with this position...
...I want to hear the Orthodox view that regards the land as holy...
...If you want to affect Israeli policy, you've got to do what Ben-Gurion said you've got to do—that is, come on aliyah, become a citizen of Israel...
...Rita Hauser, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the American Jewish Committee...
...And it is in trying to answer that question that I have come to resolve the dilemma, for myself, in favor of truth—as far as it is possible for any one of us to see the truth...
...That may be the source of our error over the years, and it is certainly involved in our confusion today...
...Back when I was Chairman of the Conference of Presidents, I did in fact urge every Jewish organization to put the item of the West Bank on its agenda, so that we could let the Israelis know what we thought, how we felt...
...what we got out of it was Arik Sharon...
...If we're going to see and know the others—not just the Palestinians and the Egyptians, but those Israelis with whom we don't agree as well—then the starting point is to acknowledge that they have a morality on their side...
...It is not so easy to call on, say, Vice-President Bush and to say to him, "I'd like you to do such and so, but I think you're right, Begin is a thug...
...But I need to say something here...
...And those who are given to such uncertainties are likely to accept the view they hold rather lightly, to act and to speak moderately...
...Would Congressman Gejdenson agree that such meetings should be advocated by an independent American Jewish community...
...Sharon was then Minister of Agriculture and in charge of the settlements...
...The problem is that there are very few informed people who can accept that argument...
...Begin's policies...
...So it becomes very difficult to criticize the Saudis...
...If, for example, I assume that regardless of Israeli behavior, the Arabs cannot and will not be induced to make a permanent peace, or if I assume that the Islamic revolution is not merely a ten-year spasm or aberration in the region, but is instead a permanent condition, then it becomes a very close question...
...Ira Silverman: One problem that we've discussed has to do with telling the truth to the Israelis...
...But if there are people around whose support for Israel is undoubted, yet who do not support Begin—well, then you have an important model...
...So I cannot evade the things that have been happening recently...
...They were asked by the United Nations in 1947...
...Sam Gejdenson: There are a couple of assumptions in the question that I do not accept...
...There was an American reporter who followed me, and went to see all of the people I had seen, and he asked them—Rabin, Eban, Berman—how they felt about my saying the things I'd said, about my calling for a credible judicial review and asking for Sharon's resignation...
...Take the reaction of American Jewish leadership to the Reagan speech of September 1, and especially to that portion of the speech in which the President expressly opposed the idea of Israeli annexation of the West Bank...
...Will they ever face this issue...
...Leonard Fein: Before turning to the members of our distinguished audience for their questions and comments, I want to add one observation regarding constituencies and the telling of truth, and then give the panelists a chance for one more go-around...
...If we were able to introduce these concerns into our debate, we would be getting closer to the real truth of these matters...
...In each of these four cases, I'd be telling the truth—even though I'd be saying something different in each of the four...
...Does that really enhance your credibility...
...Most American Jews have never known what it is to believe in God so completely that your whole life—your politics as well—is guided by Him...
...My reasons for opposing Israeli annexation of the West Bank have very little to do with the issue of self-determination or with the rights of minority groups...
...Let's leave the tactics aside...
...What we need, perhaps, is extremism in the defense of moderation—but that's not so easy to imagine...
...For while it may be true that moving in a particular direction would raise certain dangers, it may be as true that the status quo creates dangers that are no less real...
...And to this day, any one of us who utters a word of criticism regarding Israel's lack of interest in Ethiopian Jewry is accused of being anti-Zionist, even anti-Semitic...
...Why not...
...We do not serve Israel when we tell them only what they are pleased to hear...
...The Jews can't get the Holocaust out of their bones, and their view is that Israel is totally dependent on the United States...
...Other people here have made reference to the inadequate discussions we held during the time of the Holocaust...
...And I don't want to have to deal with a Jewish state of Israel that has ceased to be a democracy...
...If any of us whispers the word "racism," even if the whisper is in a room where only Jews are present, it is immediately made clear that such talk is anathema...
...He repeated the image to Evans and Novak, and they published it in their column...
...I want all the ingredients to be discussed...
...Leonard Fein: I've refrained from substantive interventions until now, but I've been suffering from withdrawal pains, so I will take the last word for myself...
...Prime Minister, it's time to go...
...Admittedly, that is a pathological case...
...If we're not united, our enemies will j use our disunity against Israel...
...I'm very active in the United Jewish Appeal...
...Moreover, public dissent tends to lessen our political clout...
...That cannot be healthy...
...Is that love diminished in the slightest when I assert that the incorporation of these territories into Israel represents a threat to the Jewish essence of the State...
...And the answer is that you never read any criticism of the government in those newspapers...
...The question is, how do the Russians know that they can't trust their leading newspapers...
...But we— we have anguish...
...Sidney Troy: I want to add one dimension to this discussion, a dimension that I feel very strongly about...
...Don't attribute more strength to that lobby than it has...
...There are differences of view between Israel and the United States...
...If, by supporting Israel, you're made to think you're supporting Begin, that can give you a real problem...
...These operate especially with regard to the problem of public dissent, or public truth-telling...
...I worry instead about my children, about what they know and what they think...
...At first I considered it more than passing strange that a man like Dayan, utterly fearless on the battlefield in the face of real bullets, could withdraw into his shell in the face of mere verbal assault...
...Whether it is Begin's policies or his personality that make it somewhat more difficult for people to support what he's doing, that doesn't have to diminish their support for Israel or detract from the weight of their advocacy when they come before Congress...
...And Ben looked at me and said, "Young man, you've just seen the Jewish lobby's muscle flex...
...Arthur Hertzberg once suggested that you could understand the degree to which Israel had replaced God as the cornerstone of Jewish theology in our day by understanding that it was only for heresy regarding Israel, and not for heresy regarding God, that a person today could be excommunicated...
...I was in the Soviet Union about a year ago, talking with refuseniks, and I asked how they got their news, how they knew what and whom to believe...
...And, for that reason as well as because of the other inhibitions that have been mentioned here, American Jewish leadership in its public statements has tempered the truth, has sometimes preferred silence...
...Take, for example, the subject of the territories, which is the obvious substantive issue that occasions this discussion...
...When a state was offered them, they didn't want it...
...And even the debate is limited, because most Jews don't see it as we here see it, most of them are stirred up all the time by their own fears and by the Jewish press in this country, they are more and more paranoid all the time...
...Whether we in New York like it or not, Israeli democracy has spoken, and the Israeli prime minister, whether it is Golda or Eshkol or Ben-Gurion or Begin, is going to act as he sees fit in the context of the political support he has in his country...
...In fact, the government of Israel has often urged me to do just that...
...I am not a leftist, I am not anti-American, but I am a Jew, and the questions that Rita Hauser has raised have occupied me all my life...
...And America will make the decisions it makes not because of the strength of the Jewish lobby...
...Somehow we forget that...
...I am by profession a trial lawyer...
...To love the State of Israel is different from having a crush on the State of Israel...
...The two and a half hour discussion was moderated by Leonard Fein...
...Now, some of the public means that have been chosen to express our views are damaging, and despite the fact that the present private arrangements are not satisfactory, I nonetheless oppose such public acts as the taking of ads in the New York Times...
...The President could well have left that meeting convinced that the religious establishment of America was firmly in his court, in support of his economic policies...
...I don't know how to make the contest more even...
...You may have observed that lawyers are increasingly assuming leadership roles in American Jewish communal life...
...The Jewish community is not supposed to talk about sovereignty, and it's not supposed to talk about settlements...
...Begin came to Washington, he met with some members of Congress...
...Moreover, there are some issues that are so fundamental in determining the character of the Jewish people's future that we have to assert our views even at the risk of overstepping propriety...
...Begin, and the changes he has brought...
...The other day, there was a meeting of ordinary Jews in Queens...
...But there is a third dimension we ought to talk about just for a minute, and that is the effort of an American Jewish community, of its leadership and its un-leadership, to try to influence its legislators, the Congress...
...That may or may not be possible...
...Moreover, it is important that you understand that when the Jewish community disagrees with this or that aspect of Israeli policy, with the policies of a particular Israeli administration, that disagreement adds credibility to the Jewish representations on Israel's behalf before Congress...
...I don't require of a people that is occupying territory containing people who will not make peace with it the same standards that I apply in my civil liberties work...
...Theodore Mann, currently Chairman of the National Conference on Soviet Jewry, and past Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations...
...Gejdenson's argument regarding Jewish credibility is undoubtedly true, but the matter is more complicated than that...
...Yet I think it fair to observe that there has been a change in the world view of the Palestinians since 1947...
...Perhaps it is better to challenge that unity frontally, in the name of a greater truth, even if that means facing the opprobrium, the criticism that will inevitably follow...
...I look at Mr...
...Still, there are certain inhibitions that have operated when it comes to the telling of the truth...
...We have to be skeptical of claims that are based on the word "security...
...It doesn't take a genius to figure out that if the only thing somebody presents you with is an entirely rosy picture, something's probably missing...
...But based on my experience in my debate with myself, they may be making a mistake by their silence, because the case for annexation can be made quite compellingly...
...What the truth "is" we will never know with any kind of finality...
...In fact, if you walk along the streets of Brighton Beach and places such as that, where there are masses of Jews, they would feel completely estranged by this meeting and this discussion...
...There's a third inhibition against public dissent and disagreement, and it is that in asserting the views we have, we may be acting counter-productively so far as our counterparts in Israel are concerned...
...Today, those of us who challenge the correct- [ ness or the wisdom of various Israeli I actions are told that we are disrupting the necessary unity, that unity which, it is alleged, will enable us to avoid the unfortunate consequences of fragmentation...
...What follows is my rationale for resolving the dilemma this way...
...it happens everywhere from time to time...
...the man with a true idea harbors no doubt whatever as to its truth...
...And therein lies the rub, the problem of truth-telling...
...And so it is with American Jewish leaders in this day and age...
...Nessa Rapoport: I want to comment on the question of Jewish ethics, the question posed by Rita Hauser...
...to this came the reply that Israel doesn't have shvartzes, either...
...Later, I had the chance to read a transcript of their conversation with him—and their outrage had turned into substantial agreement...
...That's even true here...
...Will they ever learn...
...If there had been an analagous situation here in the United States, who would have been in the vanguard of opposing any kind of loyalty oath...
...One can argue that their current nationalism is just the flip side of Jew-hatred, and nothing more...
...That has certainly happened in this country...
...Now, I never succeeded in any way in convincing him of any of those three things...
...But that memory is fading, and our job will become much more difficult in the decades to come, and we will have to be more articulate and more capable—and that, in turn, may well mean that we will have to be both more critical and more supportive at the same time...
...I went there and I called for a judicial review...
...Rita Hauser I was a child back in the 30s and 40s, so I have only my reading to draw on in recalling that period, a period when it was very much in the order of things for Jews to debate the proper course of Jewish action...
...Let's for the moment take all that as given...
...And the West Bank, it seems to me, is surely such an issue...
...Whatever else one says about the West Bank, the basic fact is that since 1967, the Israelis have repeatedly said that they don't want to occupy it, they want a peace treaty...
...I think that an inappropriate way of expressing dissent, just as I think it inappropriate for 20,000 Satmar Chassidim to demonstrate in front of the Waldorf-Astoria with signs reading, "Menachem Go Home...
...And he's easy...
...Is the administration not entitled to take those statements as expressions of American Jewish sentiment...
...It is irhproper because sovereignty is not an issue under Camp David, it's not allowed to come up until God only knows how many years from now...
...So I'm not troubled morally...
...My zeyde of blessed memory used to equate the terms "lawyers" and "liars...
...In my view, those sources go beyond the kind of strategic and military value that Israel offers the United States, aspects that are so much talked about these days...
...There was as much opposition to any kind of expression of dissent in the 30 years of Labor governments in Israel as there has been since Begin...
...Israel has become the most efficient arm of the CIA...
...The anguish is ours, those who are Jews in every sense, who know Israel and love it and have visited it many times, as I have, but who are increasingly concerned about what is happening everywhere to Jews—in Queens, in Petach Tikvah, everywhere...
...Mostly Dayan could not understand why the Prime Minister permitted it...
...Maybe we don't have to deal with the moral issues of annexation, but if we don't, are we not liable to wake up one morning and discover that apartheid has come to Eretz Yisrael...
...It is also a people of dreams...
...They have a different perspective from my own...
...All of you are just minority stockholders, and who the hell wants to listen to minority stockholders...
...But I look at Sharon and I say to myself, "Where does this man come from...
...So it does provide wood for the axes of Israel's enemies...
...Things don't change much...
...And so far we have not dealt with the question of our entitlement...
...I don't know whether it is, but that's not my concern here...
...As I see it, the issue is not that we are the defenders of Jewish values, but that we have here a conflict between different sets of Jewish values...
...But when I'd go to Europe and hear some British or Germans making remarks about the Americans and Viet Nam, I'd find myself on the other side, defending the American point of view...
...Marcel Lindenbaum: Given that the ways in which objections to Israeli policy have been expressed are counterproductive in Israel and dangerous in Washington, what new means is Rabbi Schindler proposing for their expression...
...That may surprise you, so let me tell a story that is apposite...
...These questions, and dozens more, have been raised, directly or indirectly, on many occasions in moment's pages...
...But even if you accept as a premise that he is not interested in hearing what we think and believe about his and Israel's actions, it is still incumbent on us, for our own sakes, to address these issues, in our terms...
...You know that pravda means "truth" and izvestia means "news...
...It is even so with respect to relatively straightforward and simple matters of "fact...
...These accusations were made, these pressures were applied—and continue to be applied—less by the Israelis than by their self-appointed minions here in the United States, by minor functionaries who strut about as the guardians of the State's security...
...Most American Jews, at least until Menachem Begin became prime minister, did not favor his policies, did not support him...
...Rita Hauser: It's easy to account for it: We lose all the battles...
...I would have you know, Pancho, that if the naked truth were to come to the ears of princes, unclothed in flattery, this would be a different age...
...Lest anyone doubt that there is pressure to conform, let me share just one anecdote with you...
...Non-Jewish congressmen have traditionally had some squeam-ishness about criticizing Israel, for fear of being labelled anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic...
...What is missing in our community that prevents us from asking such questions of the place that is closest to our hearts when we are perfectly prepared to ask those questions of places remote from anything in our lives...
...So, for the record here, let us mention certain details...
...Having said all that, I need to say what I hope is obvious on the other hand...
...They know who put up the lights for the killing by the Phalange...
...The World Zionist Organization is not such a parliament, though I wish it were...
...That's the issue I have to deal with, and I think that that is what Rita Hauser is talking about...
...I was sitting there just knowing that before it got to be my turn, there would be that familiar voice from the back of the room, saying, "Mr...
...Ted Mann Our subject this afternoon is truth-telling and leadership responsibility, and I would like to start by asserting that American Jewish leadership tells the truth—as it sees the truths—to most of the people most of the time...
...I don't know what else there is to say about it, except to add that Rita Hauser and I disagree in some very, very fundamental ways...
...Some months ago I was part of a delegation of clergy that went to see the President, to talk about Reaganomics...
...How can we, why should we, avoid the knowing...
...It does not permit us to evade the question of what happened to Zionism, of how Israel became a holocaust state—as it is right now, supported by the American military...
...I agree with Ted Mann that most of the Jewish leadership is pledged to tell the truth...
...Well, there is a minor holocaust happening today...
...There are both costs and benefits attached to public debate and to public disagreement with Israel's policies...
...But on reflection I came to regard this as an uneven contest between a man—Sharon—utterly certain of both his vision and how to get there, and a man—Dayan— plagued by doubts about his vision and the road by which to achieve it...
...Ted Mann: But that's not only our problem...
...But I have searched my mind and my memory, and I cannot think of one instance since the State of Israel was established when American Jewish leadership, or any other Jewish leadership, was able to affect Israeli policy, not one iota...
...It may at times take some effort to speak out critically, and there will surely always be people, as there were in this country during Viet Nam, who view any disagreement as subversive...
...So is the challenge, is the debate, really about truth-telling...
...In order to understand it,->Wl to resolve it, we ought to examine the sources of American support for Israel...
...During the recent so-called war in Lebanon, we American Jews saw every night in our Cape Cod homes the pictures of West Beirut being blasted, children dying, Lebanese being killed...
...If we let go of these things, we let go of the truth...
...Israel is today the overwhelming power in its region...
...One of the dangers we now run into by depending so heavily on private communication is that invariably the prime minister of Israel, whoever he is, responds to those private communications by picking up a sheaf of telegrams and waving them in front of his critics and saying, "But the American Jews are behind me...
...My principal quarrel with Prime Minister Begin is that he has made of his obsessive nightmares a national policy...
...Compare Begin's categorical rejection of the Reagan plan with the Conference statement that the plan is "unbalanced...
...And if I make certain plausible assumptions, the question becomes closer still...
...We have talked about American "Jewish community leadership" trying to influence the American Jewish community...
...There is no single American Jewish opinion...
...I don't worry about whether Mr...
...For them, the problem is what to make of, and how to respond to, those who do...
...Rita Hauser: I'd like to take note of a somewhat different way in which the taboo on debate gets expressed...
...And can we really suppose that it is healthier for us to repress all discussion of such flaws, to let the criticisms fester...
...Many Jews, of course, take no exception to either the policies or the actions...
...I, of course, say, "No, he's a Jew," and they say, "Look at his books, look at what he says about Jews...
...It is a remarkable renaissance...
...There has been a failure, and it is our failure...
...We supported Western European democracies...
...And so I am distressed when I hear Ted Mann respond to Rita Hauser by saying that the Palestinians had their chance in 1947 and rejected it...
...we serve them best when we tell them the truth as we see it...
...I do a fair amount of talking around the country about the matters that we've here discussed...
...The State of Israel is not an end in and of itself, nor are the institutions of the Diaspora...
...It is they who will have to defend whatever has been decided...
...To be sure, when it comes to issues that truly deal with security, we have to defer the decisions to Israel and to those who live under the gun...
...This is so with respect to matters theological, as also with respect to matters political and philosophical...
...And in that context, I said some things to the Prime Minister about American perceptions of Israeli policy on the West Bank...
...So it seems to me that a representative grouping of the Conference should meet on an ongoing basis with a counterpart group in Israel, at least quarterly...
...Let there be no doubt about that...
...Just last month, I had an interesting experience in this regard...
...1 was appalled at what happened this past summer, when anyone who had any kind of reservations about Israel's actions was immediately pounced upon as disloyal not only to Israel but even to the Jewish people...
...It is not an operational detail...
...The part of the debate that distresses me the most is that there is a feeling in Israel, and surely in the Prime Minister's circle, that it is improper even to talk about the question of sovereignty on the West Bank...
...Begin will hear my remarks or accept my opinions...
...virtually every point of view on the American scene is reflected there...
...I hope Spinoza was wrong, but for my part, I must tell you that I have never been able to bring myself to believe any more than this: The annexationists are most probably wrong in terms of what is in the long-term best interests of the Jewish people...
...We have great debates, in wonderful style...
...I do not deny his right to the nightmares, but the Jewish people is not just a people of nightmares...
...I saw some of the articles that popped up the first time somebody heard a Jewish voice complaining about Israeli policy, and then, within a week or two, once the novelty of that wore off, the press realized that there was still broad support for Israel in the American Jewish community and in the non-Jewish community as well...
...I remember that when I was Chairman of the Conference of Presidents, various groups would come to see me and voice their outrage at what Begin was doing, and they would ask me to arrange for them to meet with Mr...
...But if we choke off debate within the Jewish community we will be guilty of destroying the essence of that community...
...With all due respect to the intellectuals, writers and scholars here, those masses would be completely incredulous at the things that are being said here...
...Why once again, on an issue where our traditional views are so very clear, were we reluctant to speak up and speak out...
...So that doesn't exactly arouse my moral concern for them...
...It simply doesn't hit me in my gut that the people in the occupied territories have the kind of personal rights and freedoms that you are describing, or should have them...
...They resented it, they didn't like it...
...I worked for Congressman Ben Rosenthal for two years, and I remember vividly that he once addressed a meeting of a group of Herut supporters, and he ever so gently suggested to the audience that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank is like someone carrying a heavy pack on his back—the longer you carry it, the more you stoop over, but the less you are aware that you are carrying a burden...
...It asks to be accepted as a sovereign nation, and that is certainly what we all struggle to insure...
...The other has to do with telling the truth to American Jews...
...In the course of their discussion, one of them, who does agree, observed that Israel doesn't have capital punishment...
...Berman put it most interestingly...
...I mean here the right of self-determination, the right to determine one's own future, the right to engage in one's daily activities free of coercion and intimidation of any sort...
...And although the disagreements have continued through the years, though there has been criticism of European policy in this country and criticism of American policy in Europe, the bond has remained intact...
...If we don't discuss those issues in the context of those standards, we will be in worse trouble...
...I want to hear the view of a Jew from Brooklyn whose background may be so very different from my own...
...Even President Reagan is not supposed to talk about these things, because to talk about them is to depart from Camp David...
...Of course they can...
...issues cannot be discussed there...
...But what our friends in our communities and what our children hear and understand may matter more...
...It was only about three years ago that a General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Federations finally decided to place the item on its agenda, to recognize it as a problem...
...Clearly, they do not lack reality today...
...Sam Gejdenson: Those who argue that Israel should adopt new policies are not necessarily risking Israel's security...
...Now, there are many different ways of trying to do that, depending on whom one is trying to convince and of what...
...That's the real source of our dilemma, and that's why we can't do very much except talk, debate...
...But I know that I could come home to my children and they understood their father and mother and what their father and mother stood for...
...Leonard Fein: The formal response of the Conference of Presidents to the Reagan proposal was in fact quite critical, was it not, as was the formal statement of the Chairman of the Conference of Presidents...
...And, almost invariably, the response of the people I'm talking to is, "Thanks so much for saying out loud what we've been whispering to each other...
...No question has more vexed American Jewry in recent years...
...It is not easy for us to accept the idea that the Israeli government may be determined to exercise permanent authority over a sizeable number of people against their will—indeed, without even knowing what their will is, since there has been no determination by Israel of what it is the people under their military control care about or do not care about...
...If we accept that even in a democracy, even after the majority has spoken, error is possible—and I do accept that—then it seems to me that we must ask how we are to respond to such error...
...Does that make it easier to lobby for support for Israel, or harder...
...That, in fact, is the whole point...
...I'm not sure that it makes it easier...
...But when the time comes to vote, people are afraid to say anything that might harm Israel...
...No one mentioned Pravda or Izvestia...
...And, at the same time, Israel's right to settle the West Bank as much as it wants to was maintained...
...That office over-awes, it tends to stifle those who enter it...
...I sometimes have the feeling that Jewish leaders, in their concern for presenting whatever version of the truth they think will have the...
...Why not have regular columns in the Israeli press written by American Jews...
...Is it not the task of a serious and responsible leadership—here and in Israel—to succor the people, gently to help it back to its dreams...
...Now we have reached the opposite extreme...
...They only had the Conference of Presidents' statement to work from...
...They know what Sharon means when he avoids meeting with the Commission of Inquiry...
...So our private protestations must find a more effective means of communication, one that will not suffer from this problem of awe...
...We might take a leaf from Albert Shanker's book, follow his precedent of a regular paid column expressing his views in the New York Times...
...Since when have Jews not sought to find the truth...
...Ted Mann: No one has ever accused me of being over-awed by Mr...
...there are instead many truths...
...And we are always reexamining our ultimate conclusions because we doubt them...
...As I talk with my colleagues on the floor of the House of Representatives, Jews and non-Jews, it seems to me that they are taking Jewish lobbying on Israel's behalf more seriously these days precisely because Jewish criticism of Begin has grown in recent months...
...But it's really not so difficult to distinguish between disagreement with a particular administration or policy, on the one hand, and disloyalty on the other, whether we're talking about the United States or about Israel...
...But when they actually came in to see the President, not a single, solitary voice was raised in opposition...
...Sometimes I talk about dissent, more often I talk about the substantive issues themselves...
...Accordingly, I would be trying to persuade them to remain united as a community even if they hold sharply differing views on this one subject...
...What do we mean and what do we stand for in the eyes of our children, our friends, our neighbors, our communities...
...they had their opportunity to have a state and they did utterly nothing about it...
...And the result is that the Jews themselves may end up accepting a tailored truth as a whole truth, may therefore be unprepared for serious debate and discussion...
...Most of them told me about the BBC and the Voice of America...
...For me, those terms, above all else, are the terms of Jewish ethics, of the Jewish sense of justice, of the Jewish concept of the sanctity of the person and the requirement, therefore, that those people who fall within the shadow of Israel's sovereign authority be dealt with in the same fundamental ways that we have all for so long demanded Jews be dealt with, both within and without Israel...
...My view is that fundamentally we have every right to participate in the debate on Israeli policy because whatever happens in Israel affects us, too, and we obviously have the right to be concerned with our own future, with the Jewish future...
...There are, there have been, there will be...
...We did that because the countries involved shared our values...
...They have a different belief system Balfour Brickner and a religious framework that will always be extremely powerful...
...That support was certainly strained by the situation in Lebanon, but it turned out to be solid, and it survived the debate...
...Perhaps Isadore Hamlin's point about the Jews of Brighton Beach is correct...
...For myself, I don't agree with and don't accept the interpretation of Jewish theology that stresses the sacred-ness of the land or the chosenness of the people or an ahistorical interpretation of events, but I can't deny the validity of these as elements of the Jewish tradition, as a Jewish point of view...
...Three calls within 13 minutes...
...We live here...
...And so, on January 11, such a symposium was conducted...
...Sam Gejdenson The confusion that is so widely felt regarding the propriety of criticizing Israeli policy may derive from the fact that Israel was, historically, governed by the same party from the time of its independence until 1977 and the first Begin election...
...Finally, when all is said and done, when we have argued this thing back and forth with every argument we can think of, the bottom line is that the Israelis go to the polls and vote, and the policy of the government of Israel is the policy the people of Israel have decided on...
...In the end, the standards we hold in general need to be applied on the issues that are nearest and dearest to us, as difficult as that may sometimes be...
...Those who support the status quo cannot do so on the basis of an assumption that it is risk-free...
...Take as just one small example the issue of loyalty oaths for faculty members of West Bank colleges...
...I'm a past president of the federation in my community...
...Alex Schindler made a heroic attempt to give us all kinds of alternatives on how American Jewish leadership might convey its opinion to Israeli leadership...
...There is even some truth to that...
...When the Israelis fought against the British, or when the Americans fought against the British, there was a good deal of hatred towards the British, but that hatred was secondary to the desire of both groups for a state of their own...
...And I am profoundly committed to the democratic tradition...
...It will continue beyond Menachem Begin, whether power goes to the Labor Party or to others or back to Begin's own Likud Party...
...I don't think the Jews of the world as a whole would be able to tolerate the course of action on which Israel is embarked unless its apprehensions were outweighed by a clear showing that any alternative Israeli policy would present grave risks, grievous threats to the security and integrity of the State of Israel...
...Where is our leadership...
...I have in mind my recent visit to Israel in the wake of the events of the summer...
...That's true, of course, and if there is such a thing as original sin in the political context, culpability must rest with the Palestinian Arabs who chose not to accept partition...
...But out on the street, Jews are saying to each other and to themselves, "All these anti-Semites are after us, behind every bush there is an anti-Semite...
...their children are on the line today, or will be tomorrow...
...Our shared values are at the heart of the matter...
...For a decade, the issue of Ethiopian Jewry has been brought before the leadership of our community...
...For example, open dissent does provide wood for the axes of our enemies...
...They were not privy to the conversations between Jewish leaders and the Secretary of State...
...It turns out that many of my fellow Jews in Queens don't agree...
...But is it not in its own way a part of what we are talking about here...
...Begin feels pretty good about himself...
...My own district is less than one-half of one percent Jewish, so I may have a bit more freedom than some of my colleagues...
...They had simply been over-awed by the office...
...And if the organizations duck this question, the most important question in Jewish life today, and choose not to discuss it, then you begin to wonder what the purpose is of having American Jewish organizations...
...and Alexander Schindler, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and also a former Chairman of the Presidents' Conference...
...Well, if that's not so, then we should establish a regular forum where the fact that it is not so can be made clear...
...Discussions about the West Bank and its future lacked reality in the past...
...Those of us who are opposed to annexation are generally not as certain of our truth as those who favor annexation are of theirs...
...But my understanding is that Judaism comes without a map, that no Jewish tradition tells us where the boundaries of the State of Israel must be...
...We've had the problem of dissent for a long time, and we ought to acknowledge that...
...Then why, for example, do we find that we feel perfectly free to attack the government of South Africa—a government that is infinitely farther removed from our concerns— for its policy of apartheid, yet that we are not even prepared to ask ourselves whether the Israeli government is a racist government...
...If I have a role to play as an American citizen, it is incumbent upon me to try to persuade those in positions of political power of what is right and desirable...
...It was not a particular administration or president or prime minister...
...Mostly, my purpose would be to convince him that just because American Jews are of two minds on the subject of the territories does not mean that they are not strongly united behind Israel and its quest for security and peace...
...They come down to the view that annexation is bad for Israel...
...Other Americans know, in one way or another, what is happening in Israel...
...So if the purpose of speaking out is to strengthen those who share our views, we'd best deal with the reality that they may not welcome our intervention, that we may, in fact, not be helping the cause we endorse...
...That's for openers...
...Must we indulge in annexationist fantasies in order to prove that we are passionate Jews...
...Wig are in the vanguard of the people who raise such issues...
...The White House, the Congress, Commentary— maybe they have problems...
...And the only way any of us can answer that question is in terms of what he or she understands Judaism to be and to require of us...
...There can be no effective Jewish leadership that does not respect its followership, and Jewish leaders display no such respect if they refuse to open up the issues that confront our people to the kind of painful and anguished discussion they merit...
...Let me put it in the words of Cervantes, who has Don Quixote say, "It is the duty of loyal vassals to tell their lords the truth without enlarging out of flattery or softening for any idle reason...
...Begin has used to a fare-thee-well...
...When the United States deals with the Shah of Iran or with the Saudis or with King Hussein, we cannot separate the regime from the country...
...But because they are being asked with special urgency in the wake of this summer's events in the Middle East, the editors of moment felt that it might be helpful to us all to convene a special symposium to deal with them...
...And it's very difficult to keep my community united, to maintain concern and support for Israel in the face of its policies...
...I did, by writing to Mr...
...I had told the audience before I began that I do not share Prime Minister Begin's views on the subject under discussion...
...Take the American Jewish Committee, with which 1 was associated for some years, and of which Rita Hauser is a national leader...
...And that's what's important...
...They met to discuss what to do about crime and about capital punishment...
...We most often put it somewhat differently: "If we're not united, Congress won't support us...
...What we discover in our practice is that in most cases there's some truth on both sides of a dispute, and we are in the business of convincing juries and judges that our truths are more compelling than the other fellow's truths...
...Now there isn't any body that we have that is more representative than the Conference...
...We must speak out in a constructive way, but speak out we must, in order to try to exercise what influence we can over the direction of the policy that is unfolding, the error that is, in our view, compounding...
...Why do we not when it comes to Israel...
...Recently, we were witness to the bizarre spectacle of a mass excommunication of Jewish dissidents by the Supreme Rabbinic Court of the Holiday Inn of Tewskbury, Massachusetts...
...One such group represented some of the leading foreign policy academics from some of the elite universities...
...One element of the American Jewish agenda, certainly of the agenda of our organizations, has been the protection of the separation of church and state, opposition to what might be called the Jerry Falwells of this world...
...The election of Menachem Begin has changed all that...
...They do not operate under our set of mental constraints...
...But with regard to the Palestinians, the hatred seems to me more central than the patriotism...
...Isadore Hamlin: As one who was brought up in a Labor Zionist home, as one who disagrees vehemently with Revisionism in general and with the Begin policy in particular, I'd like to say a few words here...
...I'd be stressing now this element, now that, of the truth as I see it...
...By what right do we participate in matters involving Israel's security...
...But if I were speaking to an American Jewish audience on exactly the same subject, I would be speaking to people whose views on the future of the territories are fluid rather than fixed...
...worse than unfair, such a response ignores the passage of time...
...I have a couple of other observations on the discussion so far, and the first is that I'm concerned about our ability to forget that 34 years have passed since the creation of the State...
...I'm a Jewish patriot...
...My sympathies are always with those concerned with morality, but I can't agree that the ethical question here is simple, that those who oppose annexation are ethical while those who support it are not...
...And perhaps that has caused us to overlook certain things we might not have overlooked before our transformation...
...America will make its decisions based on its perceptions of what's best for America...
...It's terribly ugly that we should have reached this level...
...And we sit and do not talk about the matter, and we do not have an adequate forum where we can talk openly and candidly...
...Begin...
...But the question did not begin with Begin...
...Begin...
...Begin is not my problem...
...That, of course, is the argument that Mr...
...There was a fundamental commitment to Western-style democracy, and it was that commitment that tied Western Europe to the United States...
...Alex Schindler: If you look at that statement, it was quite temperate, not nearly as sharp in its criticism as earlier statements had been...
...And lawyers know, as rabbis know, as surely congressmen know, that there is rarely a single truth...
...In the life of any people, attitudes change and perceptions change...
...Edith Everett: I'd like to comment on my own personal experience with the American Jewish leadership over the last several years with regard to another issue entirely, with regard to the issue of Ethiopian Jewry...
...Then you can support Israel because of the unwavering argument that Israel has a fundamental commitment to democracy and to democratic values...
...Must I justify every single restrictive measure in Judea and Samaria in order to demonstrate my love for Israel...
...If we start with the assumption that we have the right, we nonetheless find that very many Jews are profoundly reluctant to raise the question of whether current Israeli policy, particularly as regards the West Bank, does violate norms which, under other circumstances and in other contexts, we assume all of us share...
...It is unfair to respond in 1983 with an argument from 1947...
...And that brings me to my second general point about truth-telling...
...For five and a half years we have given Begin a kind of grudging acquiescence...
...Ted Mann: But most American Jewish leaders expressed themselves individually during the course of that week, both in newspapers and to George Shultz, and there is no question in my mind that the administration came out of the week knowing that to most American Jewish leaders the Reagan plan was largely acceptable...
...But for those of us who come, out of our analysis and out of our feelings, to believe that the current government of Israel is embarked on a profoundly erroneous course of action, does it not follow that we must speak out...
...But mostly it's not so...
...that cannot be the policy of a serious leadership...
...And that, together with the lack of a tradition of criticism, has created the current confusion...
...Well, what if it turns out that what may be best for the world, may be best for peace, may be best for the Palestinians, may be best for America, may be best for us, may even be best for Israel, is for us—the American Jewish community—to try to persuade the American government not to take its marching orders any longer from anyone but itself...
...And what do we do if we feel that the annexation of the West Bank would present a real danger to the future of Jewish life...
...I believe instead that Israel is, indeed, the possession, the treasure and the burden of the entire Jewish people, and that gives us both the right and the responsibility to speak out...
...I have friends who have seen the death with their own eyes...
...But what we are really asking, when we ask these questions, is whether and how we can remain united in the face of our very serious doubts regarding the wisdom of a course of action now unfolding in Israel that will have consequences not only for the future of Israel, and not only for the future of the Arabs living there, but also for the future of the Jews as a people concerned with ethical and religious beliefs...
...The question is the same one that I hear when, as a writer, I talk to Jewish audiences about the amazing renaissance of American Jewish literature in our time...
...If I were speaking to the prime minister of Israel or to one of his top aides, I would be speaking to one whose views on the subject of the territories are both mature and fixed...
...And I don't remember any of us being very bold in opposing the Begin flirtation with the American New Right...
...I don't mean by this to imply that we will all agree on the definition of error...
...Now, I cannot influence the government of Israel, nor do I consider it my primary responsibility to try to do so...
...But I was determined to have my say, and so I went over to the Prime Minister, and, speaking in Yiddish, I recalled the story my mother used to tell that if two people independently tell you that you're drunk, maybe you ought at least to sit down and assess the situation...
...And this applies with particular force to representations on the highest level, with delegations that go to meet with the prime minister...
...Hauser speaks of Israel as an established fact, as a strong nation with the luxury of debate...
...More important, he turned out to be right on the second and third of them...
...most impact in Jerusalem or in Washington, neglect to take into account the fact that the Jews are listening, as well...
...Above all, does such dissent harm Israel...
...We're always busy talking and worrying about whether Begin will hear us or whether the government will hear us...
...Begin...
Vol. 8 • March 1983 • No. 3
