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The Cost Of Mixing Agendas |
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by haaretz via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
17 Feb 2003
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Commentary on the Lerner exclusion |
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Not so simple to protest the war
The anti-Israel tone of current peace demonstrations raises a dilemma for American Jews.
By Nathan Guttman
(Photo caption: Anti-war protest near the United Nations, New York, last Saturday: ANSWER's policy has caused many American Jews to stay away.)
Ever since the 1960s, American Jews have been an inseparable part of the protest movement against war and for peace. Although this has not always been the official position of the Jewish establishment in the United States, the Jewish presence in the protest movements far exceeded their relative weight in the U.S. population.
The impending war in the Gulf is indicating for the first time that there is a fracture between American Jews and the opponents of war. Jewish activists who have been following the demonstrations and protest activities since last summer, cannot help but notice their evident anti-Israel line. Alongside the placards and exhortations against President George W. Bush, there are always placards attacking Israel and the occupation of the territories. Moreover, speakers at the demonstrations have often mentioned Israel as one of the key factors (alongside oil and his inheritance from his father) that are impelling President Bush to wage war against Iraq.
One of the reasons for this is that the main organization in the coalition of protest movements is ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), which has always had an aggressive anti-Israeli line. In its publications, the organization depicts Israel as "the other apartheid."
ANSWER's policy and the consistent anti-Israeli line in the protest demonstrations has caused a considerable number of American Jews who are against the war to stay away. Even those who have wanted to participate are not always welcome. Last week, Jewish leftist activist Rabbi Michael Lerner experienced this personally.
Rabbi Lerner, editor of the leftist Jewish periodical Tikkun and a severe critic of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, was supposed to have spoken at an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco. Lerner, who is against a military campaign in Iraq, attacked ANSWER for "exploiting the demonstrations against the war to promote anti-Israeli propaganda." In an e-mail message he sent out after his appearance was canceled, Lerner stated that the organizers boycotted him because he refused to accept this policy. He wrote that he had intended to speak against the war but also against the anti-Semitism in the protest movement, and therefore he was not allowed to speak.
In the demonstrations last weekend, one Jewish speaker stood out in New York. This was Ruth Messinger, a veteran peace activist and formerly a Democratic candidate for mayor of New York. She herself also expressed reservations about the anti-Israeli line of the protest demonstrations, but said that she recognizes the fact that protest coalitions are made up of a variety of organizations with different agendas.
The Jewish establishment, through the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), which constitutes a kind of political umbrella organization for Jewish bodies, has begun to act in recent weeks to change the tone in the protest organizations. JCPA representatives have contacted the various organizations, local and national, and have asked them to distinguish between protest against the war and protest against Israel and thus enable Jews and supporters of Israel to participate in the anti-war events. Response to this request has thus far been partial.
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