Hey, Bibi, yes or no?
Benjamin Netanyahu's evasion of the question of whether or not he supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the main reasons his coalition government will not include Kadima, the centrist party Tzipi Livni heads, or any left-of-center party.
Netanyahu favors first creating the conditions necessary for peace, strengthening the Palestinian economy and Palestinian institutions. After that -- who knows? Bibi steadfastly has refused to say where, exactly, the process will lead.
So when Zalman Shoval, a foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, addressed the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in New York on Thursday, I put the question to him simply and directly, and asked him for a simple and direct answer in return: Does Mr. Netanyahu favor the eventual creation of a Palestinian state?
Shoval's response: Um... we'll get back to you on that.
"We're not going to rule out anything at this stage, but we're certainly not going to determine anything at this stage," Shoval said. "We think it would be foolhardy today to agree to a set formula. There's no justification for a rush into a solution."
Except, perhaps, the prevention of more bloodshed on both sides.
Netanyahu has been careful to leave his options open. While he is on record against a Palestinian state -- he fought the idea when his predecessor at the helm of Likud, Ariel Sharon, backed the notion in 2002, and when Sharon announced his plan to unilaterally withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu resigned from the government in protest in 2005 (Bibi was finance minister at the time) -- Netanyahu has been more cautious in the last couple of years.
He and his representatives often try to deflect the issue, depending on the audience.
Shoval told me: "The Netanyahu government does not see itself as a government which would lord over the Palestinians."
Think that means yes to a Palestinian state? Thing again.
"I want to state our position very clearly," Shoval said Thursday. "The two-state solution has become a mantra."
"As far as we are concerned," he said, "it's a formula that has to be judged by its practicability, and not ideology for or against."
"Netanyahu's approach to the Palestinians is pragmatic."
But what is it, exactly? To help build Palestinian institutions, "not instead of political negotiations, but as a conduit or corridor for political negotiations," Shoval said.
And then what?
Shoval and Netanyahu's formulations leave the door open for any number of options, including transforming Jordan into the Palestinian state -- something many of Netanyahu's supporters favor -- or giving the Palestinians limited control over their own affairs and calling it a day. The latter option seems more and more along the lines of what Netanyahu is thinking.
That idea once was the prevailing approach in Jerusalem -- in 1985.
But it's 2009, and the Americans, Israel's last three prime ministers and the majority of the Israeli public support the idea of a Palestinian state; indeed, many argue that it's the only way to secure Israel's future as a Jewish democracy. This, to say nothing of the Palestinians themselves, who will accept nothing less than full statehood. Is Netanyahu trying to turn back the clock?
Shoval argued in his presentation that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, appear to agree with Netanyahu's approach of strengthening Palestinian institutions as a conduit for negotiations. He took pains to note that Mitchell did not bring up the two-state solution in his meetings with Netanyahu during his recent trip to the region.
Is Shoval trying to suggest that the Americans don't really favor a two-state solution?
As on many other topics -- such as Israeli-Syria negotiations -- the burden is on Netanyahu to make his positions clear. So long as he refrains from doing so, his detractors will assume the worst.
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United Synagogue makes its choice
Courtesy of The Jewish Exponent (Rabbi Wernick's hometown paper):
Rabbi Steven Wernick, religious leader of Adath Israel in Merion Station, has been tapped to be the next professional leader of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the movement's congregational arm.
"I'm coming into this job with no illusions about all the challenges that exist," said Wernick, a Philadelphia native who has led the Main Line synagogue for seven years. Before that he spent six years at Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill, N.J.
"I still feel that United Synagogue has something very important to say to the Jewish world," the rabbi said in a phone interview. ...
The article includes some biographical details and information about his tenure at Adath Israel: In just a few years, Wernick helped to revitalize Adath Israel and also became involved in the larger community. He serves as co-chair of the adult education committee of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia's Center for Jewish Life and Learning. At his congregation, he said, one of the most innovative programs he helped fashion was the Tuttleman Leadership Institute, which each year identifies some 15 congregants who engage in text study, leadership training and personal growth programs.
Click here for full story.
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Weiss takes shot at RCA over prior conversions
The seemingly interminable war of words between Rabbi Avi Weiss and the Rabbinical Council of America continues this week with an op-ed in The Jewish Week challenging the council's refusal to validate a conversion performed years ago. Weiss writes:
The case involved a young woman who attended my synagogue’s supplementary Jewish Youth Encounter Program (JYEP). This is not an unusual case as, over the years, the JYEP has had a profound impact on the religious lives of hundreds of young men and women. Subsequent to the conversion, this woman fell in love with a man whose rabbi turned to the RCA to validate her conversion. The RCA refused to do so, insisting that for its validation, the young women needs to convert once again. This refusal to validate without reconversion is being interpreted by the community, in the current climate (created by the GPS), as an invalidation of this convert’s Jewish status.
The RCA based its ruling on the fact that one of the converting rabbis was a convert himself. This concern is unjustified. A convert may serve on a Beit Din when the judgment is regarding another convert (Talmud Yebamot 102a, Yoreh Deah 269:11 and Hoshen Mishpat 7:1). Additionally, a convert may be a judge on a non-coercive Beit Din, i.e. one to which the person appearing before the court has willfully submitted him or herself (Shakh CM 7:1; Sema CM 7:4 and Shakh YD 269:15). A convert serving on a Beit Din of conversion should thus be valid for both of these reasons.
Weiss notes that in an opinion piece last March, the head of the RCA's conversion committee, Rabbi Barry Freundel, wrote that “it is important to emphasize that nothing in this system is designed to change anyone’s previous status as a convert."
No word from the RCA yet, but we'll keep you posted.
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Apartheid week was bigger than ever
Or so Golda Shahidi, a spokesperson for Students Against Israeli Apartheid, told the Jerusalem Post:
Forty-four international cities held IAW events, which is twice as much as last year, and in Toronto thousands of people attended events. Almost every building was filled to maximum capacity.
Good for them. But the activities are causing worry, as we reported last week, because the anti-Israel rhetoric is becoming more heated and, in some cases physically aggressive. The Post reports:
In one example of such violence, Isaac Apter, a Jewish alumnus of the University of Toronto, attended an Israel Apartheid Week event on the campus and was assaulted. According to Apter, one of the paid speakers evaded a difficult question regarding Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel, prompting him and his friends to yell, "Answer the questions!" A private security guard hired by Students Against Israel Apartheid then approached Apter from behind. He turned around, only to be grabbed by the neck and pulled face to face with the guard, who repeatedly yelled, "You shut the f*** up!" Another Jewish student was threatened with beheading.
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Headline of the day
On CNN:
Pope: We should have Googled Holocaust bishop
This was flagged by a commenter on the blog of Ruth Gledhill, the redoubtable Times of London religions columnist; she liked it so much she flagged it on her Facebook page, which is where I saw it. Gledhill awaits the Pope's Twitters.
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Jews need to get over it
Writing in the Independent, Antony Lerman, former director of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, says Jewish anxiety over anti-Semitism makes it difficult to think clearly about how to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
In the wake of Israel's attack on Gaza, eager voices are telling us that anti-Semitism has returned – yet again. Eight years of Hamas rockets and the world unfairly cries foul when Israel retaliates, they say. Biased media are delegitimising the Jewish state. The Left attacks Israel as uniquely evil, making it the persecuted Jew among the nations. Even theatres keep wheeling out those anti-Semitic stereotypes, Shylock, Fagin and the "chosen people", just to torment us. If this bleak picture were an accurate portrayal of what Jews are experiencing today, who could deny that suffering is the determining feature of the Jewish condition?...
The problem, Lerman says, is that such thinking is a "distorion and deeply damaging":
Some pioneering research, published as Israel's bombing of Gaza began, throws some light on this. It reveals just how much the feeling that no matter what we do, we are perpetually at the mercy of others applies to Jewish Israelis. A team led by Professor Daniel Bar Tal of Tel Aviv University, one of the world's leading political psychologists, questioned Israeli Jews about their memory of the conflict with the Arabs, from its inception to the present, and found that their "consciousness is characterised by a sense of victimisation, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanisation of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering". The researchers found a close connection between that collective memory and the memory of "past persecutions of Jews" and the Holocaust, the feeling that "the whole world is against us". If such a study were to be conducted among Jews in Britain, I suspect the results would be very similar.
For Jews to see themselves in this way is understandable, but it's a distortion and deeply damaging. As Professor Bar Tal says, this view relies primarily on prolonged indoctrination that is based on ignorance and even nurtures it. The Jewish public does not want to be confused with the facts. If we are defined by past persecutions, by our victimhood, will we ever think clearly about the problem of Israel-Palestine and the problem of anti-Semitism?
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