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Jews against occupation say they love Israel, not tactics

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Message: If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/17625/full/17625/jews-against-occupation-say-they-love-israel-not-tactics/ Jews against occupation say they love Israel, not tactics Friday, April 19, 2002 | by ALEXANDRA J. WALL Who are the Jews arrested while protesting outside the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco last week? Many are the same Jews who have been rallying with Bay Area Palestinians to protest Israel's policies. With tensions at a boiling point in the Mideast, many mainstream Jews can't understand how other Jews could criticize Israel at such a time. The views of such left-leaning groups as A Jewish Voice for Peace, Women in Black and the Tikkun Community can be summed up in a few words, as viewed on a sign at one of their rallies recently: "It's the occupation, stupid." While the mainstream can often be quick to dismiss them as self-hating Jews, most involved in these groups strongly refute that claim. Most say it is precisely because of their concern for Israel that they want it to get out of the West Bank and Gaza. They say it is not only in the Palestinians' best interest but also in Israel's. Few are naive enough to suggest that the creation of a Palestinian state would put a final end to terrorist attacks, but most of these left-wingers believe that suicide bombers are borne out of the hopelessness and desperation of the Palestinian people, deprived of a homeland for 35 years. If the Palestinians had a state and hope for the future, they maintain, it would be a lot harder to recruit young people willing to blow themselves up. The April 10 JVP rally, in which 16 were arrested outside the consulate and later released, was covered by major Bay Area news outlets and seen on television in Israel. Both that event and an April 11 protest rally sponsored by the Tikkun Community drew hundreds of participants. The rallies, held on consecutive days, drew attention to the fact that the Bay Area's Jewish community is not of one voice regarding the intifada. In fact, many Jews on the left feel that to stand behind Israel, even now, is to support the policies of a man they deplore—Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. There was some overlap among the participants at the two rallies. While much of their ideology is the same, the Tikkun Community—an outgrowth of the S.F.-based magazine of the same name founded by Rabbi Michael Lerner—adds a spiritual dimension to its platform. JVP's weekly e-mail newsletter goes out to 1,800 subscribers. A few months ago, the 1,500-subscriber Jewish Peace News, JVP's daily news service, was voted a favorite alternative news source in a poll done by The Nation. More than 300 Bay Area Jews signed a Tikkun Community-sponsored declaration calling for an end to the occupation and protesting the Israel Defense Force's incursions into the West Bank. The group held similar rallies in New York and Washington on April 11. The movement among Jews who disapprove of Israel's policies is "growing exponentially," according to Penny Rosenwasser, a member of JVP and Bay Area Women in Black. A resident of Oakland, Rosenwasser was among those arrested at the Israeli Consulate last week and is on the organizing committee of an April 26-29 conference in Washington, sponsored by a coalition calling itself Brit Tzedek v'Shalom—A Covenant of Justice and Peace. Both Rosenwasser and Lincoln Shlensky of Berkeley, another visible member of JVP, have been called self-hating Jews by critics. And Shlensky, a U.C. Berkeley graduate student who sits on the board of the Jewish Community Relations Council as the representative of Berkeley Hillel, has been openly called a traitor. Emphasizing that his views in no way represent those of the JCRC or Hillel, Shlensky said that his political activism is only one of the ways in which he is involved in the Jewish community. Rosenwasser believes she is misunderstood, as she often prays for her people. "I love and care about Jews," she said. But she added that reports of Israelis mistreating Palestinians in the Jenin refugee camp are troubling. "Some of these things were done to Jews in the past. And I can't help but ask how can we as Jews heal the ways we've been hurt so we don't inflict hurt on other people?" Peter Gabel, long affiliated with Tikkun magazine and now the Tikkun Community, said simply, "We are an occupying power, humiliating another people. That contradicts what it means to be a Jew." While most Israelis and American Jews agree with former President Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is to blame for the failure of the 2000 Camp David talks, Jewish groups on the left think differently. Conceding that Barak's offer was more generous than that of any prior Israeli leader, Shlensky said that nonetheless, the Oslo peace process was doomed from the start as it never specifically mentioned that the end result would be a Palestinian state. Additionally, he said, under Barak's leadership, settlements in the West Bank continued to expand and their population doubled in the years following the 1993 Oslo accords. "Barak's offer didn't go nearly far enough in offering the Palestinians a viable, contiguous territory to form a future state," said Shlensky, holding a view that also has been expressed in such publications as The New York Times and The New York Review of Books. According to Shlensky, 80 percent of the settlers would stay in place, as would some 200 miles of bypass roads linking one settlement to another, and Palestinians would have to cross constantly through checkpoints still staffed by the IDF. "The Palestinians recognized that this would be a formula for a dependent, rump state that would not offer them the freedom and sovereignty they crave," he said. JVP's platform calls for the abolishment of U.S. aid to Israel. It also calls for a just solution to the plight of the Palestinian refugees, but opinions vary from member to member on what that solution should be. Mainstream Jews contend that allowing the right of return of refugees would end the Jewish majority in Israel and therefore be the death knell of the Jewish state. Shlensky conceded that allowing the right of return would be unrealistic; nevertheless, he said, Palestinian refugees have rights that should be recognized under international law, as do Jewish refugees from Arab countries. Rosenwasser said that if Israel would just take responsibility for forcing 800,000 Palestinians into exile, and negotiate from that standpoint, it would be a first step. While most mainstream Jews maintain that Arafat has proven himself a terrorist, and Israel should not negotiate with him, Shlensky counters that like it or not, he is the chosen leader of the Palestinian people. "Arafat, like Sharon, is a veteran politician and a veteran war-maker," he said. "Both of them use the tools they have at hand, and both do this badly and immorally." Shlensky, Rosenwasser and Gabel say that they are not anti-Israel but instead are saving Israel from itself. "I hate it when people or the news fit you into a slot, either pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian," said Rosenwasser. Emphasizing that she is heartbroken for her Israeli friends who are fearful every time they leave their homes, she said, "I'm for both peoples." Gabel said as far as he could tell, members of the Tikkun Community would not have been out of place at Sunday's Jewish community rally in San Francisco, which drew between 5,000 and 7,000 people. But his group's point of view is that Jews need to "overcome the hardened nationalism that is a significant part of a legacy of our own oppression, the Holocaust especially." Both Jews and Palestinians share responsibility for the Mideast crisis, Gabel added. And while he "would love to see a Palestinian voice parallel to the Tikkun Community that stops denouncing Israel and starts looking at its own leadership and saying we must make a shift to non-violence," Jews can take responsibility only for themselves. The Tikkun Community's perspective is much more than "just get out of the West Bank and Gaza," he maintains. "It's a point of view that tries to have compassion for the humiliation that we have suffered and distortions that exist in our people as well as the Palestinians and to pursue the process of healing among both communities."

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