A symposium on Israel-diaspora relations at the B’nai B’rith International headquarters here Tuesday quickly turned into a debate over whether American Jews should participate in Israel’s political controversies.
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, vice president of the World Jewish Congress, declared that it must “cease being heretical within the diaspora for all the various opinions in Israel to be supported and be supported publicly.”
He said that up to now it has been acceptable within the Jewish community to be to the right of Israeli policy or more hawkish than Israel, but not more dovish. He said the American Jewish community is liberal and must not allow the perception to continue that it is part of the right, in Israel or the U.S.
Yoram Peri, a Tel Aviv University political science professor, said that American Jews should participate in the debate between Labor and Likud. He noted that since 1967 there has been no official “Israeli line” since the country has been divided on issues.
KEEP OUT OF DEBATE
But M. J. Rosenberg, a special assistant to Sen. Carl Levin (D. Mich.), disagreed, saying American Jews do not have the “obligation” to get into this debate. He said if American Jews would bombard Congress with opposition to Israel’s policies in the West Bank, as Hertzberg urged, it would undermine support for the $3 billion annual aid Israel receives from the United States.
Rosenberg, former editor of the Near East Report, published by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said neither AIPAC nor most other Jewish organizations take stands on the issue of the administered territories or other political issues debated in Israel.
He said their main concern is to ensure continued support for U.S. aid to Israel and a strong U.S.-Israel relationship.
Hertzberg charged that American Jews and their leaders have considered criticism of Israel as “treason” because they see Israel as the guarantor of Jewish survival in the U.S. “You don’t have to go to shul, you don’t have to be terribly learned, and you don’t have to be terribly involved in anything, but so long as Israel is there and you are with it, the American Jewish community will survive,” Hertzberg said.
He said the general situation has been “Israel decides and the diaspora obeys.”
But Abraham Foxman, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, disagreed, declaring while “Israel decides for itself … the diaspora decides whether they obey.” He said the question is not whether to dissent, but to exercise this right “with responsibility” by weighing the consequences of dissent.
Rosenberg said the reluctance of American Jews to criticize Israel is due to a feeling by American Jews, only a generation after the Holocaust, that the previous generation of American Jews “didn’t do a damn thing” to help the Jews murdered by the Nazis. He also stressed that Jewish criticism of Israel is used by the minority in Congress and the Administration who are anti-Israel. Hyman Bookbinder, of the Washington office of the American Jewish Committee, said that since the Pollard espionage affair there has been a change for the better in a greater willingness to criticize Israeli policy. Daniel Thursz, executive vice president of B’nai B’rith, seemed to agree, noting that a few years ago B’nai B’rith would not have been able to sponsor such a debate.
ATTITUDE OF YOUNG ISRAELIS
Peri gave a brief outline of the Israeli view of this issue. He said the founding generation of Israelis believed “the only place for all Jews was in Israel.” Jews who did not make aliya should support Israel economically and politically “and must not disagree with Israel,” he said. Their Israeli-born children held the diaspora in contempt and also agreed that Jews outside Israel had “a secondary role,” Peri said.
But, he added, the next generation, now in their 30s and 40s, have come to realize that Israel is not always right and that Jews both inside and outside Israel “have a right to criticize and dissent.”
He said that while Israel is the center of Jewish life and only through the exercise of political sovereignty can Jews live a full Jewish life, other Jewish communities are “legitimate.” “American Jewry is not heading toward annihilation by anti-Semitism or by assimilation,” he added.
He said Jews in Israel and the diaspora “influence each other whether we want it or not.” he said this means not only the right to dissent, but also that “we have an obligation to assist each other.”
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