Shalom Center

I can't stop talking about the wonderful-horrible AJC report, it's so changed the landscape. Again I say, give credit where credit is due: this was the AJC's reactionary pushback against Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer, and it blew up on the Jewish right/mainstream when the Times actually chose to write about it. Thus the anti-intellectual, vicious, omerta practices of the Jewish leadership were revealed, to its shame.

But I'm going to try to not be self-serving here. The fascinating thing about this Jewish perestroika is that it liberates everyone. Not just my camp, the anti- or non-Zionist camp that wonders if the dream of a Jewish state hasn't slid hopelessly away, but also the We-are-very-upset-about-Israel's-current-policies-but-we-love-her-and-believe-in-her camp. The Zionist left is angered and embarrassed by the AJC report, feel that it's broadbrush and reactionary, and so are standing up with renewed energy, as if the ball is about to be handed to them, at last—the rightwing having shot itself in the foot.

Gershom Gorenberg, who is in that camp, yesterday said the real story is that the left is alive, it's empowered groups like the Union of Progressive Zionists, which is harshly critical of the occupation. Isn't it great they haven't been thrown off the Israel on Campus Coalition, Gorenberg writes, despite the best efforts of the ZOA. And he is right. Tamara Shapiro, the 24-year-old who runs UPZ, is an amazing young woman, idealistic and tough. She brought Breaking the Silence to America last year; she gets it from the right (ZOA) and the left (me). Now the AJC report has given her more room to operate, by blasting open the debate. (Leonard Fein makes the same point in the Forward this week).

Just as the AJC gave leftish John Judis of the New Republic freedom to talk about something he has probably been secretly bitching about for years: the pressure on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, from people like his boss, Marty Peretz (he didn't say that part out loud). When is Mickey Kaus, another not-all-the-way-on-the-reservation Jewish intellectual whose career has been boosted by Peretz, going to speak up about this pressure? Or Mike Kinsley? Time is now, boys. Everyone's letting their hair down in the sweatlodge.

The best analysis I've seen yet of the politics of the Jewish left in America is from Daniel Sieradski—"Mobius," of Jewschool. He explains to me that the two big roadblocks are a, ideological differences, and b, dough.

I question as to whether recent events indicate the presence of a movement so much as what I regard as fractious groups with overlapping areas of interest and little coordination. Some folks are focused on liberal domestic political issues such as labor practices, women's rights, gay rights, etc., others are focused on shifting the priorities of the Jewish funding establishment away from intermarriage and Israel advocacy towards Jewish education and cultural initiatives; while others yet still are focused on finding a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That last group is broken into left-leaning Zionists (of the Meretz/Labor cadre), post-Zionists (who believe either in two states or a binational solution, yet overall, a solution which respects both Jewish and Palestinian rights), and anti-Zionists who are more often than not anti-Israel reactionaries.  read more »

The one thing these three groups can agree on is that things are headed in the wrong direction and that the mainstream Jewish leadership is steering us down a dark road.

However, it is practically impossible for these groups to collaborate because of: