“We Don’t Want You Here!” – Bereaved Palestinian and Israeli Parents Speak to J Street
“Anachnu lo rotzim etchem po — Ma bidnaash an takuunu hone! — We don’t want you here!”
30 Israeli and Palestinian men, women, and children spoke these words alternately in Hebrew and Arabic in a short film shown to 3000 delegates of the J Street National Convention in Washington, D.C. this past week. Each person had lost a close family member to Palestinian or Israeli violence, and they wanted no more to join them in grief.
At the film’s conclusion, Robi Damelin and Bassam Aramin walked arm-in-arm onto the stage.
Robi is an Israeli mother whose 28 year-old son David, a student who was working on his masters in the Philosophy of Education at Tel Aviv University, was murdered by a Palestinian sniper a few years ago. The murderer had witnessed the killing of his uncle when he was a child, and when he was grown stepped onto a path of revenge and took David’s and 9 other Israeli lives.
Bassam is a Palestinian father whose 10 year-old daughter, Abir, was shot dead by an Israeli border policemen in 2007 as she walked down the street with her sister and two friends after buying sweets in a shop across the road from her school in the West Bank village of Anata at the end of a math exam.
When David was murdered, the first words his devastated mother spoke were: “Do not take revenge in the name of my son…get out of the occupied territories.”
Robi and Bassam are the Israeli and Palestinian Spokespersons for The Parents Circle, a group of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents who have lost children to violence (see http://www.theparentscircle.com/). They say, “There is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… More war creates more victims on both sides … The power of Israel and the resistance of the Palestinians doesn't work. We need to sit down and negotiate.”
J Street is a pro-Israel pro-peace American organization based in Washington, D.C. that advocates before Congress and the President the necessity of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. J Street has 180,000 members, a college division of thousands of students on 125 American campuses, 60 chapters in cities around the country, and a rabbinic cabinet, that I co-chair, of 850 rabbis from across the religious streams of American Jewish life.
J Street represents, however, the opinions of far more American Jews (and many thousands of Israelis) than its membership numbers reflect. J Street's positions are held by roughly 70% of the American Jewish community who believe that a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is in Israel's best long-term interests. J Street has endorsed more than 90 members of Congress (its endorsees are growing by roughly 15-20% in each Congressional cycle) who agree with J Street’s principles and who have welcomed J Street as a pro-Israel organization that does not necessarily agree with every policy position taken by any particular Israeli government or Prime Minister.
Like Robi and Bassam, J Street recognizes that there is no military solution to this conflict, that the only way Israel will remain secure, Jewish and democratic is in a negotiated two-state end-of-conflict agreement.
Specifically, J Street agrees with the broad consensus of the international community of what a two-state solution will look like. The border will be drawn roughly along the 1967 Green Line with land swaps that would include within Israel 75% of all Israelis living in the large settlements blocks in the West Bank and around Jerusalem. Jerusalem will be the shared capital of Israel and Palestine. Palestine will be demilitarized except for necessary police forces. There will be firm security arrangements in place for the benefit of both Israel and Palestine. Palestinian refugees will have the right of return to the new state of Palestine and not to Israel. Appropriate compensation for refugees will be given.
My purpose here is not to get into the weeds of this conflict which are long, deep and complicated, but rather to communicate the human costs of this conflict as embodied by the pain and suffering of only two families, that of Robi Damelin and Bassam Aramin, and to articulate what I believe is ultimately at stake for the Jewish people and state of Israel if a two-state resolution to this conflict is not reached soon.
Without a negotiated settlement, in a short amount of time Israel will cease either to be a democracy or a Jewish state. Settlement building by Israelis and population growth among Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza and within the Green Line of Israel, all taken together, ultimately will doom the Zionist enterprise, arguably the most important historical event in the life of the Jewish people in the last two thousand years.
Yes – there is still time for a two-state solution, but time is running out.
For the sake of the future of Israel and the Palestinians, the status quo is unsustainable. “Managing the conflict,” as many in Israel believe is their only option, is unsustainable. Only a two-state solution can, as J Street's communication Vice President and journalist Alan Elsner recently wrote, “complete the Zionist dream” of Israel being Jewish, democratic and an or lagoyim, a light to the nations.
There are risks no matter what Israel chooses to do, but the risks are far greater in doing nothing.
Perhaps the insights of one of Israel’s greatest poets, Yehuda Amichai, will inspire clarity and hope:
“From the place where we are right
flowers will never grow
in the spring.
The place where we are right
is hard and trampled
like a yard.
But doubts and loves
dig up the world
like a mole, a plough.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
where the ruined
house once stood.“
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Benjamin Netanyahu: The new Republican hero
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just won a startling re-election by linking his fate not to the United States as a whole, but to the U.S. Republican Party. Risking opprobrium for alienating President Barack Obama as well as Israel’s international support, he nevertheless bet the house on uniting a militant right in Israel with an already mobilized American conservative movement. He ran to the right, not to the center. Netanyahu is now a Republican hero.
All the while, the White House and Democrats had quietly hoped that a center-left coalition would oust Netanyahu. Had Israel’s center left been victorious in Israel’s March 17 election, it would have bolstered Obama’s domestic case for a negotiated deal with Iran and would have made it more difficult for Republicans to portray him as anti-Israel.
To a degree never before seen, Israeli politics is now integrated into American politics. It is almost impossible to predict where this will lead, but it is well worth consideration. No other nation shares this kind of relationship with the U.S. Consider, by contrast, how little interest Americans are currently showing in the closely contested electoral battle between Labor and Conservatives in the United Kingdom. Does it really matter for American foreign policy which party wins?
The attention so many Americans devoted to last week’s Israeli elections is certainly a testament to how intimate the Israel-U.S. relationship is now, for better and for worse. It is also due very specifically to the deep affinity and connection between right-wing political parties in the two nations. (England’s conservatives are quite liberal by the standards of the American Republican Party and therefore unlikely candidates for a political marriage.)
An Israeli election these days, especially for Republicans, is starting to seem like a domestic political bellwether, much like an American off-year gubernatorial election in a major, closely watched “purple” industrial state. Say Wisconsin. Republican Scott Walker wins re-election by running a hard-right campaign for governor that mobilizes his conservative base, not by reaching out to the center. Winning this way in a state that normally votes Democratic makes Walker an instant hero to Republicans and a serious candidate for his party’s 2016 presidential nomination.
There’s lot of pundit commentary about how “irrational” this hyper-partisan path is as a political strategy, because it turns off the “center.” But a strategy can be unreasonable without being irrational. It is certainly working for Walker. In a system like ours — historically made up of two soft, flabby parties — when one tightens up and becomes unified, aggressive and mobilized, it can be very successful, at least until the other party wakes up and becomes itself less soft and flabby.
In following the Walker model, Netanyahu is now a Republican hero and may well become the most revered Republican leader since Ronald Reagan. He will certainly be more popular and more uniting among Republicans in the U.S. than among the people he serves in Israel, where he remains a divisive figure. And because he is not actually running for office here, he won’t be subject to careful ideological scrutiny in Republican politics.
To a degree never before seen, Israeli politics is now integrated into American politics. It is almost impossible to predict where this will lead, but it is well worth consideration. No other nation shares this kind of relationship with the U.S.
Republicans have suffered for years from a shortage of political heroes; since Reagan, they haven’t had one. I can easily imagine Netanyahu campaigning openly for the Republican ticket in 2016 — from the presidential candidate down to congressional and state races. He could appear in campaign commercials paid for by Sheldon Adelson, a deep-pocketed American funder of conservatives in both Israel and the U.S. whose Adelson’s Israeli free newspaper, Israel
HaYom is heavily pro-Netanyahu. Explicit cross-national partisanship worked for Netanyahu in 2015, despite dire political predictions to the contrary. The barrier already had been crossed with his speech to Congress. House Speaker John Boehner and a delegation of congressional Republicans are heading to Israel this week for a hero’s welcome.
Netanyahu’s embrace of the Republican Party dovetails well with the Republican imperative to move the American political debate away from domestic issues, on which Democrats may soon enjoy a decisive edge in a strengthening economy and in the wake of successful health care reform. Republicans already have begun trying to center the 2016 election around foreign policy and terror threats. Just as Netanyahu moved his own nation’s debate away from talk of income inequality and other shaky domestic ground to focus on foreign policy and security, he can help Republicans do the same in the U.S.
There will be tactical lessons from the 2015 Israeli election. Don’t be surprised when, the week before the 2016 presidential election, if the polls look good for the Democrats and they sit on their lead, the Republicans warn that “buses are bringing (fill in the blank) to the polls” in order to mobilize white voters or say that terror threats are imminent. Both resemble Netanyahu’s last-minute appeals in 2015.
Netanyahu also certainly will try to break the Jewish link to the Democratic Party by arguing that he alone represents Israel on the world stage and that Jews who support Democrats are not supporting Israel. Republicans will enjoy watching Democrats struggle to hold together their multiracial coalition, which is very supportive of Obama and deeply resents Netanyahu’s approach. We don’t know how many Jews will move right in response to these appeals or whether Jewish Democrats will respond in angry defense of their party.
Democrats will have to be better prepared for these developments than the Israeli left was. A militant party that unites the American and Israeli right is very formidable. Many Democrats continue to believe that positive polling on issues and an image of “reasonableness” can combat a passionate, united, angry and mobilized conservative movement. Republicans in the United States and conservatives in Israel are, by contrast, building electoral strength by uniting and mobilizing their base.
There are, however, weak links in this tight conservative alliance. Conservative foreign policy leaders, including Netanyahu, brought us the disastrous Iraq war, and some are making noises about starting another one with Iran. Voters are much more supportive of “strength” than of actual war. Democrats could argue that we listened to these people the last time and look at the mess the Iraq war created. Why should we listen to them this time? (This is one way Hillary Clinton might deal with the problem of having voted for the Iraq war.) Of course, Democrats will have to avoid being drawn into an election season that focuses only on foreign policy and neglects the domestic issues that are their ticket to victory.
For their part, Israeli voters may decide one day that tying their nation’s fate to an enraged American political party whose stance is in total opposition to and disrespectful toward a U.S. president who won two electoral majorities and actually directs foreign policy may not work outside the hermetically sealed binational right wings.
By tying himself to the Republicans, Netanyahu risks blocking Israel from gaining ground with the rising multiracial generation of Americans who, inevitably, one day will play a major role in America’s relationship with Israel. They are not as easy to reach with Israel’s story as today’s Republicans, but it may be unwise to give up trying.
Finally, what will happen to this political alliance if the Republican base realizes how socially liberal, cosmopolitan, scientifically sophisticated, and only moderately religious much of Israel is? Right now, Republican voters likely see Israel just as a symbol of the approach they support in the world, but this comes at the cost of not knowing the diversity of opinions and worldviews within Israel itself. I doubt Netanyahu will choose to enlighten them on this front.
Hoping that one party in another country has the answers is not completely the province of Netanyahu and the Republicans. Obama and the Democrats may find that tying U.S. policy in the Middle East to the electoral success of a center-left coalition in Israel is a weak reed on which to rely. Any peace agreement in the Middle East requires more than one coalition; it will require a greater comfort level among the broad swath of Israelis. Just because Netanyahu has painted himself into a partisan corner doesn’t mean the Democrats have to. The real test will be America’s ability to win the trust of at least some of those Israelis who do not support the center left.
To see another path, we have only to look back at how Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Tory Prime Minister Winston Churchill managed to overcome ideological differences over domestic politics to forge the relationship that saved the world from the Nazis during World War II. Their collaboration proves it isn’t necessary to have a partner in another nation whose political views mirror one’s own.
In fact, agreements often have a better chance of lasting if leaders from different political camps can join together across nations. The price of such a successful relationship is giving up the pipe dream that any leader can or should control the internal politics of any other nation, let alone one with which a productive alliance is sought.
All electoral results are transitory. Although political struggles within both Israel and the United States are going to continue, our common interests still may overcome domestic fluctuations in power bases. The electoral victory of either the left or the right confers only momentary standing to speak for the nation.
Israel can elect and re-elect Netanyahu, but this hard-won election also suggests that the voters might sooner, rather than later, knock him out of office. Obama’s two election victories followed the two-term George W. Bush, and who knows who will win the U.S. presidency in 2016? In just two years from now, there could be a Republican in the White House working with Netanyahu’s opponents in power in Israel.
I spent a semester teaching in France during the 2008 American presidential election. Europeans told me that they had been shocked by past U.S. presidential races — not that Bush won in a disputed 2000 election but that voters had with full knowledge of him re-elected Bush in 2004. Many Europeans were also extremely skeptical that this same nation would elect the first African-American president just four years later. I thought: “It’s the same country!” America is neither red nor blue. We’re purple, and if you are going to love America, you have to love all of our political colors.
The same goes for Israel. Like us, it’s purple — we are both passionately divided democracies, but tied together in an unbreakable family pact. Elections come and go, but national affinities like ours with Israel must outlast the twists and turns of domestic politics.
Raphael J. Sonenshein is executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.
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A Mishkan for all: A communal approach to mental illness
I grew up with my younger brother, Zack Thomas, who has struggled with bipolar disorder since he was a very young child.
What it has taught me is that as individuals, and as a community, encountering mental illness is a blessing and a challenge — and one that we need to do a much better job of talking about.
I say blessing because I am who I am today because of the empathy, humility and strength that my experiences have cultivated within me. I say challenge because struggling with mortality, whether of the mind, body or soul, is perhaps the greatest challenge we know in this life. Mental illness exists in my nuclear and extended family, as well as among many of my close friends, two of whom tragically committed suicide during my high school and college years. I hold their memory in my heart today.
There is a brokenness that reaches into our hearts and our minds. A brokenness that causes alienation and disrupts our plans and our dreams. It is a brokenness that breeds loneliness, guilt, despair and anger. I am speaking of the brokenness that comes from the suffering and stigma of mental illness, a brokenness I have known in my personal and professional life.
As Zack’s sibling, I learned how to differentiate between my brother and his disorder. I learned that empathy and forgiveness, instead of anger, fear and blame, are crucial in speaking with someone who struggles with manic highs and lows. For much of my life, I have lived in terror, trying to prepare myself for the worst, while still trying to live as though everything is “fine” and “normal.” I have tiptoed, compensated and shed many tears. I am familiar with what Rebbe Nachman poignantly names “יונפה ללח,” (hallal hapanui) an emptiness that arises in the face of suffering. I have learned and continued to learn that mental illness for many is a wave, ebbing and flowing, with good days, better days, bad days and worse days, and that healing is a matter of perspective.
But I have also learned kindness from my brother, Zack. I have learned sensitivity from his Betzalel-like artistic talents and his literary brilliance. I have learned love from his willingness to greet and accept anyone he meets. My brother, who as a child always gave away his toys to his friends, quite clearly embodies what the Torah describes as the בל בידנ (nadiv lev) and בל תמכח (hachmat lev), the generous heart and wise heart. My brother is my role model in living both in his brokenness and in his wholeness.
Today the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health estimates that one in four Americans has a diagnosable mental illness. One in four people in our families. That is an astounding figure, especially given how much stigma exists around mental illness and how little psychiatric care and psychological care we seek out as a country. Mental illness does not affect “other people,” “them” or “the disenfranchised.” Mental illness affects everyone, and has no boundaries or awareness of financial, religious or cultural differences.
Diagnosable disorders include but are not limited to anxiety disorders, mood disorders, schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, dementias, intellectual disabilities and eating disorders. Many of these diagnoses also have a high comorbidity with addiction and substance abuse. And some tragically include suicidal ideation. Although suicide is a much larger topic, I want to mention that statistically, those who attempt suicide do not want to die, but instead want to stop their pain. These are disorders with which many of us live and, perhaps despite of or even because of, have deeply meaningful lives.
My prayer is that we will begin a conversation that will continue to evolve. We must educate ourselves about mental illness to reduce stigma and create a safe space, and to empower us in providing support to each other. In seeking to better understand and empathize with those living with mental illness, we have the ability as a community to decrease the suffering and shame that come from stigma and to even encourage comfort and dignity. For example, when we say the misheberach, the prayer for the sick, we can pray for a friend fighting cancer or heart disease as well as for a friend struggling with depression or anorexia. Or we may be able to sit with a mother or father who is worrying and praying for normalcy in the face of a child’s recent mental-illness diagnosis.
On the other hand, given how stigmatized mental illness is, it is crucial to respect and honor others’ privacy and boundaries, as we are not always ready or in need of sharing our suffering publicly. Even the language of “mental illness” and “disorder” can feel like labels that alienate and isolate. I encourage us to be creative and rethink our language with informed empathy.
In the Gemara, Masechet Bava Batra 14b, we learn that the ark in the Temple contained both the first set of broken tablets, תוחול (luhot), and the second set of whole tablets. Why do we keep the broken tablets? We have all experienced brokenness, we have all known fragility, and it is not something about which to feel ashamed. It is an inevitable part of being human. We do not seek it out. Yet through our breaks, cracks and fissures, we have the opportunity to allow more light in. At times, our brokenness is part of our wholeness.
As a chaplain specializing in psychiatric care and suicidal ideation, I have learned this Gemara of the broken and whole tablets with patients of varying cultures, backgrounds and faiths, and it resonates. Each time, the same themes arise: guilt at having broken the tablets in our own lives, anger at ourselves and others for that brokenness, pain and longing in learning how to forgive ourselves, and comfort in knowing that brokenness and wholeness can coexist.
God does not ask us to be “fixed,” but instead to recognize all of the raw, broken parts of ourselves. The ark, the center of God’s holy home, holds our broken selves and whole selves. We need the presence of the broken tablets to remind us to be patient when we are fragile and to help us value and not shy away from the shared human experience of brokenness.
Alissa Thomas-Newborn is the Kehilla intern at B’nai David-Judea Congregation. She is also a chaplain specializing in palliative care, end-of-life care and psychiatric care. She is a writer for Metropolitan Jewish Health System’s Center for Jewish End of Life Care. Thomas-Newborn is completing her final year of studies at Yeshivat Maharat.
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Hebrew word of the week: Tapuz
Tapuz, the word for the orange fruit, is an acronym of tapuah zahav “apple of gold,” as is done in English when we say “SAT” for Scholastic Aptitude Test, or “AIDS” for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Tapuz contrasts with similar “apples”: tapuah(-ets) for “tree-apple,” tapuah-’adamah (or tapud) for “potato” (ground apple). It is named for its color, just as in Italian, tomatoes are pomodoro, “apple of gold.”
The English word orange is from Persian naranj,* as is the Spanish naranja. Originally from northern India, brought by the Portuguese to Europe, hence in modern Greek: portokali, in Arabic: purtuqal, in modern Aramaic: pirtiqala (or tarinja).
*The English word “orange” is probably a mistake, derived from norange.
Yona Sabar is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic in the department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA.
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Prosecution concludes arguments in murder trial of Syracuse Jewish leader
The prosecution concluded its arguments in the trial of a leader in the Syracuse Jewish community accused of murdering his wife.
Prosecutors finished up their case against Dr. Robert Neulander in upstate New York’s Onondaga County Court on Tuesday. They contend that he killed his wife, Leslie, in their bedroom in DeWitt in 2012 and moved the body to make it look like she fell in the shower.
Neulander, 63, and his attorneys say he is innocent and that he had no motive for killing his wife. The defense began its arguments late Wednesday morning.
Both Neulanders were active in the Syracuse Jewish community.
In five days of testimony, prosecutors claimed that Leslie Neulander’s injuries and the location of blood stains were not consistent with a shower fall, that she died hours before 911 was called and that Neulander’s account contradicted those of other key witnesses, Syracuse.com reported.
Prosecutors also argued that Neulander’s account of his wife’s death is not plausible because there was no reason to move an injured woman 50 feet before performing life-saving efforts.
The Neulanders chaired the Jewish Federation of Central New York’s annual campaign in 2012. Leslie chaired fundraising events at the Syracuse Hebrew Day School in DeWitt, and Robert played a key role in the expansion of the local Jewish community center.
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