Israeli Defense Forces

When attacking the ideology of the neoconservatives, the big enchildada is dual loyalty: in their hearts, do they feel allegiance to Israel? Gabriel Schoenfeld of Commentary Magazine said that this was the clear thrust of Walt and Mearsheimer's paper, they were accusing supporters of Israel of being a fifth column. W&M have responded (in their recent rebuttal) that "we recognize that all Americans have many affinities and commitments," including to other countries. That's the American way. They're echoing the Louis Brandeis line, which he came up with 90 years ago to assuage concerns about dual loyalty held by assimilated Jews who didn't care for Zionism, such as Jacob Schiff and Arthur Sulzberger.

Where academics fear to tread, the blogosphere doesn't. I think it's a legitimate issue. But how to talk about it?

The question has come up lately in the Jimmy Carter brouhaha. Critics of Israel are justifiably upset that Amazon.com is not being evenhanded in its listing for Carter's book: in its "Editorial Reviews" heading for the book—"a space normally used either for the publisher's own description of a book, or for short, even-handed summaries from listing services such as Booklist and Publishers Weekly"—Amazon offered only the full text of a sharply-critical Washington Post review by the New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg, accusing Carter of being unChristian in his approach to Israel/Palestine. (Amazon.com would seem to have amended the heading, to include a PW review alongside Goldberg's.) The critics point to Goldberg's background—that he "is a citizen of Israel as well as the United States, and that he volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, for which he worked as a guard at a prison for Palestinian detainees." The critics are saying, You should say where Goldberg's coming from.

(Goldberg doesn't mention citizenship on his website bio. Henry Norr, who wrote the petition to Amazon, tells me, "Glenn Frankel of the Washington Post, in a review of [Goldberg's book] "Prisoners," includes the following in his summary of Goldberg's personal story: "Like all new citizens below a certain age, he enters the Israel Defense Forces...")

The issue is a long-held concern among Jewish critics of Zionism. In 1970, a leading Jewish anti-Zionist, Rabbi Elmer Berger, learned that several Jewish Americans had served in the Israeli Defense Forces, having gained automatic citizenship in Israel.

[T]his peculiar dual nationality extends only to Jews...It is extended to citizens... who have never been to Israel and whose only relationship to that state is the Israeli presumption—written into its nationality legislation—which claims as a national anyone identified as a Jew. [In allowing them to serve without question,] the United States government...is acquiescing in this religiously-discriminatory presumption...[and it] is contrary to the constitution.

Berger worried about Jewish identity. He feared that American Jews would be called upon to define their religious identity in terms of identification with a neo-colonialist "theocratic" state that was dehumanizing Arabs. (He was right!) And he feared that American Jews would be torn in allegiance, or be seen to be torn in allegiance.

I called one of the leading experts on dual loyalty, John Fonte, of the neoconservative Hudson Institute. Fonte doesn't write about Jews and Israel (probably a Career-Limiting Move at Hudson!), he writes about Mexico. He is concerned that in granting Mexicans in the U.S. a right to vote in Mexican elections, Mexico is making those citizens "supra-citizens," with more rights than other citizens—and also slowing the process of American assimilation.

That's his word: assimilation. This neocon scholar says that assimilation is a democratic value in America: for immigrants or their children, or grandchildren, to take on Americanness.

"I don't think it's a good idea" for American citizens to fight for or vote in other countries, Fonte said. Before America entered World War II, some Americans went over to fly with the RAF, and neocon Fonte thinks Americans joining the Israeli army are in the same category, taking part in a war that's in America's interests. Still he thinks that the State Department should sign off on this kind of thing on a "case by case basis."

"I don't think Israel's interests and ours overlap completely," I said.

"There's never a complete overlap of interests," Fonte said. "Even Britain and the U.S. differed on the Grenada invasion."

You used to forfeit your citizenship by voting in another country or fighting for one. The law on forfeiting citizenship ended in the late 60s on a 5-4 Supreme Court vote in a—you guessed it—Israel-based case, where a Jewish-American artist who had voted in Israel wanted to move back here. Thus a 200-year precedent crumbled.

I told Fonte that the revolving door between Israel and the U.S. disturbed me. One of my relatives just came back from his "birthright" trip to Israel ("Israel is about Jews. It is about saving Jews...") and showed me photos of American kids proudly holding guns and serving in the IDF—serving the apartheid-like Occupation. My relative's commemorative t-shirt for the trip was IDF olive-green, to show solidarity with an army that helps to deprive Palestinians of their rights. On campuses here, Jewish students are told to wear blue and white in solidarity with Israel, something that would have horrified Elmer Berger.

"I find this confusing," I said.

"Definitely there's confusion," Fonte agreed. "Right now you can do anything."

He pointed out that after one of his articles on Mexico, fellow Hudson Institute hawk Max Singer told him that he was going to stop voting in U.S. elections, just in Israeli ones.

So a big neocon was voting in both countries? I called Singer in Israel.

"Correct," Singer said. "I felt I should vote in one country or another but not both."

"John Fonte said you came to that realization not that long ago."

"Yes."

Singer says the dual loyalty issue in his case did not arise from his being Jewish but from being a citizen of both countries. (Which he could be because he's Jewish). He even served in the U.S. Army reserve, according to Hudson's website. But he's decided to be "politically active in Israel."

Of course, he's politically active here, too, helping to shape our foreign policy. Hudson describes him as "Senior Fellow, Board Member, Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters. Areas of Expertise: Middle East..."

I guess I'm still confused.

There's been an important, wonderful development on the Israel/Palestine front that typically has gotten no attention: Hillel societies at American universities have helped sponsor the tour of the Israeli army veterans' group, Breaking the Silence. I find this association as startling as that other great development of 2006: when the LRB published Walt and Mearsheimer on the Israel lobby.

What am I talking about? What is Breaking the Silence?

I met Yehuda Shaul last summer in Hebron. Raised Orthodox in Jerusalem, Shaul was a sergeant in the IDF serving in the Occupied Territories when he woke up one morning a couple of years ago and realized he did not recognize the person in the mirror. Everything he had been told was right and wrong as a boy had gotten blended into nothing. He had done hideous things that would make his parents and friends vomit if they knew about them, and he had curtained off these actions and been numbed to it all. He began talking to other soldiers and formed an organization, Breaking the Silence, to describe what Israeli society was forcing its youth to do for the occupation. He read history and came to the awareness that all military occupations become corrupt in exactly the ways that Israel's is: humiliating the occupied, depriving them of human rights, let alone civil and democratic freedoms.

Shaul is this week wrapping up a five-week tour of the U.S. notable for the unbelievable photos he shows, taken by IDF soldiers, that document abuses. For instance, pictures taken by Israeli soldiers of other soldiers treating handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees as mannequins to do monkeyshines with.

The amazing development is that some of Shaul's college events have been sponsored by Hillel chapters, the on-campus Jewish organization. (This according to Tammy Shapiro, who heads the Union of Progressive Zionists, which also sponsored portions of Shaul's tour.) At some universities, the Hillel chapter declined to sponsor Shaul; and he was sponsored there by Palestinian groups. But (Shapiro notes,) at the U. of Wisconsin, the Hillel staff and leaders had a special meeting with Shaul, to hear what he had to say. At Columbia, a largely-Jewish group called Pro-Israel Progressives, which is related to the College Democrats, sponsored Shaul.

I find this amazing because it shows the discourse really is changing. And who is changing it? Youth. Shaul hasn't met with any congressmen; Lantos and Pelosi already know what to think of the occupation—no problem—so they won't meet with him. But these American campus organizations are tired of their role as cheerleaders for Israel. They understand that there is truth in the progressive understanding that occupation is crushing Israel's soul. Can American Jewish youth break the logjam on the Israel lobby? Well they can help.

Israeli progressives will lead us, as they feel greater freedom to discuss these matters. Here I would point to the comments of two other members of Breaking the Silence who visited the U.S. a year ago. "My commanding officer told me that public opinion in the U.S. is the most powerful weapon that Israel has," said Noam Chayut. "Public opinion here enables us to do many things that in my opinion are bringing us to our social destruction." To which his friend Avichai Sharon chimed in: "It's about time you know what you are enabling."

Their insight recalls a statement by the black South African poet Dennis Brutus. When he was in prison under apartheid, a jailer said to him, "The African National Congress will never win, you know why—because the U.S. is on our side." (Thanks to James North, author of Freedom Rising, for that.) The Israelis have placed a similar wager on our endless support for their injustices. They have been enabled so far by a stiffnecked, fearful and obedient Jewish leadership here. What a beautiful thing if it is idealistic Jewish youth that at last brings down this moral house of cards.

The delayed, and most welcome, production of My Name Is Rachel Corrie, now at the Minetta Lane Theat  read more »

The videotape of a Palestinian girl running helplessly around a Gaza beach after the rest of her family was annihilated in an unclaimed explosion got the world's attention three weeks ago. Horror like this is rarely captured so freshly (even in Iraq!), and the blast has resulted in an international forensic/PR battle, a politicized whodunnit with advocates for Israelis and Palestinians pointing fingers at the other side.

The Israeli army had been shelling targets near the beach that afternoon, and at the start even Israel's advocates accepted the possibility that Israelis had killed the family. Neocon David Frum wrote in Canadian papers, "It may well prove in the end that it was a stray Israeli shell that killed the Ghalia family. If so, the killing was an unhappy accident, for which Israel has expressed regret."

But the Israeli army maintained that it had stopped shelling some minutes before the family was killed, and the Israeli Prime Minister suggested that a Palestinian shell may have killed the family. The Guardian investigated the incident with some care and disputed the Israeli government, citing hospital records in Gaza to show that it was likely the family was killed during the shelling interval.

A few days passed, then the Israeli army released a fuller report that it said proved on the basis of shrapnel evidence that a missile had not caused the deaths; indeed, The Jerusalem Post put the odds at 1 in a billion that an Israeli shell was responsible. This report fueled the counter-theory that a Hamas mine on the beach, intended to kill Israelis, had killed the family. Now Frum did an about face and said the "most likely" cause of the deaths was a Hamas mine, and added on his blog that the initial coverage of the case was a "miserable story of Palestinian duplicity and Western media credulity." Ah, those duplicitous Arabs.

Human Rights Watch demurred. Having looked into the incident, it questioned some of the Israeli government's conclusions and called for just what Rachel Corrie's family has sought since the skimpy Israeli report on her killing in Gaza in 2003: an independent international investigation. Here is a portion of HRW's latest report:

[T]he IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] agreed with Human Rights Watch that it is possible that unexploded ordnance from a 155mm artillery shell fired earlier in the day could have caused the fatal injuries. The IDF fired more than 80 155mm shells in the area of the beach on the morning of the incident. Sand would increase the possibility of a fuse malfunction leading to a dud shell that may have sat in the sand waiting to be set off. The shelling between 4:31 p.m. and 4:50 p.m. could have triggered a dud shell, as could the human traffic on the beach that afternoon.

The IDF has fired more than 7,700 shells at northern Gaza since the Israeli withdrawal in September 2005, creating a problem of unexploded ordnance in heavily populated areas.

As Richard Silverstein commented on The Jerusalem Post website:

[T]o say that the IDF shell had lain unexploded on the beach & then exploded killing them...is a whole lot less grotesque than an IDF shell being fired upon them and killing them. But it nevertheless leaves the IDF culpable for their deaths. I'd like to hear the IDF say explicitly that one of their shells killed the Gazans. That would be an improvement over previous statements.

Myself, I'm too far away to take a position on whose ordnance killed the family. What is obvious to me is that that the Palestinians are shelling the Israelis, the Israelis are shelling the Palestinians. As Henry Siegman has pointed out, a lot of innocent people get hurt as a consequence of both sides' policies. Anyone who thinks the two sides are making progress is ignoring the bloody evidence of 60 years. Two brutalized sides, in a cycle of violence. The idea that Americans should be supporting one over the other, privileging one side's security claims over the other, is nuts.

Yesterday when I asked Brandeis troublemaker Lior Halperin whether she was Jewish, she said, "Yes. I'm what people call a self-hating Jew." I said, "I love you, Lior. Me too."

I'm not a good Jew. I'm probably a bad Jew. I don't go to shul, don't believe in the Old Testament God, married a Christian, (would have) raised my (nonexistent) kids Buddhist/nothing, and have tons of impure thoughts. Didn't serve in the Israeli Army like Lior. But it's my politics in particular that make me fishy. And truthfully, various good intelligent estimable highminded Jews say I'm a self-hating Jew; and maybe they know, and therefore maybe I am, and maybe I shouldn't fight it. So, O.K., like, let's move on, and in between crawling out from under my rock, and back to it, can I express my opinion?

This to me is one of the revelations of the Mearsheimer-Walt paper on the Israel lobby. These two profs in their 50s knew they'd get called anti-semites if they said what they believed, but they decided to go ahead and say it anyway. They didn't care. They accepted the label, as the price of saying something important. Dershowitz says they destroyed their professional reputations by saying that, and Grant Smith (of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy) says Dershowitz is right, they did destroy their reputations, in certain quarters. But not in others.

The secession meme is back, courtesy, we suspect, of the president they're inaugurating today down in Washington D.C.

The idea takes various forms: that New York City secede from the state, or from the nation. Pro-slavery types pushed it in 1861; the Mailer-Breslin campaign embraced it in 1969. City Councilman Peter Vallone has been talking about it for a while, and is at it again. This summer, New York Magazine played around with it last summer (Defense? Mitchell Moss suggests we rent the Israeli Army.) and the doubly alternative New York Press has recently turned it into a deranged crusade.

But why dance around the point? We've already seceded.

How much attention are you paying to the inaugural festivities? Two New Yorkers, Rudy and George, are down in Washington with their aides. But we've begun to suspect that they're mostly practicing their accents, hoping to fit in.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of, say, an exiled monarchy, we've set up our own West Wing on the Hudson. Two Democrats of unequaled national stature, Spitzer and Hillary Clinton, occupy statewide office, and Mrs. Clinton is married to a third. Race for Attorney General looking a bit messy? Toss in a Kennedy. Meanwhile, our parochial little mayor's race -- which does not include a serious and genuine Republican candidate -- is absorbing local attention.

Some take the logic of turning inward one step further. New York has little to lose from a seriously conservative presidency, goes an argument we've heard more than once. Liberals can sip their wine and complain about the tax cuts while they count their money, as a Times op-ed suggests today. In the meantime, the consequences of sustained conservative control of Washington are much more likely to be felt in Mississippi than in New York. That's where most of the soldiers come from. That's where they send the taxes they've been cutting. And that's where they might outlaw abortion if Roe were overturned.  read more »

So we won't be down in Washington today. We were asked "Why go?" by our editor and couldn't think of a good reason.