From Oligarch to Icon

The plight of Mikhail Khodorkovsky raises questions about the place of Russian Jews today

Peering from behind bars, his hair shorn to prison regulation length, Mikhail Khodorkovsky maintains a quiet dignity. Once the richest man in Russia and head of the giant Yukos oil conglomerate, he has become a cause célèbre as Russia’s most famous political prisoner and an increasingly irritating thorn in the side of the Putin administration. His case highlights Russia’s ingrained authoritarianism, an image Putin has been at pains to challenge, as well as drawing attention to the uncomfortable phenomenon of the Jewish oligarch. More widely it invites consideration of the position of Jews in post-communist Russia and why it is that so many of them left. Read more

Two of a Kind

As The Palestinians Prepare to Declare Independence, the parallels between Israel and Palestine appear more striking

After the first Zionist conference in 1897, Theodor Herzl confided to his diary,“In Basel I created the Jewish state”. By the end of this month, Mahmoud Abbas may also declare — in another Swiss location —“In Geneva I created the Palestinian state”. On that day the PLO will present a call for the United Nations General Assembly in New York to approve Palestinian independence. If the Assembly passes it and the Security Council does not wield a veto, then the PLO observer mission at UN Offices in Geneva will upgrade to full member’s status. The very act of declaring independence and the coincidental Swiss connection brings the Palestinians curiously into line with the founders of the State of Israel, whose own declaration of independence was a pragmatic acceptance of the available over the greater ideal. Once aligned, multiple parallels between Israel and Palestine become visible across their social and political structures, some of which date from the Mandate. Through a historical and cultural consideration of the Palestinian’s proposed bid, it is possible to assess these parallels and see better how a future two-state solution might find an optimum modus operandi.

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A New Voice for Israel

by Jeremy Ben-Ami

Palgrave Macmillan. 2011

Jeremy Ben-Ami is a first rate political operator. In four short years he has made J Street a $5 million organisation and successfully built a Washington power base in opposition to the AIPAC juggernaut and the rest of the so called ‘pro-Israel’ lobby. With its mantra of ‘Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace’, J Street funds electoral battles, lobbies Congress and attempts to reframe the terms of debate. It has also spawned international imitators such as the predominantly French JCall and the recent UK start-up Yachad. Unfortunately Ben Ami’s skills as a theorist do not match his organisational success. A New Voice for Israel (subtitled ‘Fighting for the Survival of the Jewish Nation’) proves insufficient to jump-start a renewed peacemaking effort; his preference for platitudes over difficult questions leaves the book an exercise in nostalgia rather than an effective call to arms.
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Walking the Wire

HBO’s hit drama bypasses individualism to expose the systems that fail urban America

The American Dream is one of upward mobility, but also sideways movement. The aspiration to greatness comes with a rhetoric of self-sufficiency that causes people to move along and start again, rather than navigating existing structures. Not only was the founding event of the United States a secession, but the most traumatic moment in American history — the Civil War — was also a failed attempt at the same thing. From Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Splendid Isolation’ to the libertarian Tea Party movement, the United States has tended to view government involvement as an intrusion and to laud those who start afresh over those who try to improve what already exists.

The frontier myth romanticises the West as the place where American ideals of equality, democracy and innovation are forged. Despite 82% of the population already living in cities by 2008, the metaphors of individual freedom are still predominantly rural. The most iconic of these is the cowboy — beholden to no law but that of natural justice — who can ride off into the plains carrying nothing but his six-shooter. If you don’t like the current system, just “get out of Dodge” (a phrase made popular by Gunsmoke, the legendary television show about the settlement of the West) and start again.
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Dreams of Utopia

On the inter-war Jewish choice between Zionism and Communism

Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin, two great Jewish intellectuals of the early twentieth century and lifelong friends, took opposing sides on one of the great Jewish debates of modernity: was it possible to create a perfect community in an imperfect world, or did the world have to be changed first?

Scholem believed in the utopian collective—a partial redemption in the here and now—while Benjamin saw any solution other than global revolution as usurping the prerogative of the Messiah. In 1923, Scholem emigrated to Palestine to help build a utopian community. A series of letters between the two men, covering religion, politics, Marx and Kafka, illustrate the passion of the debate between Communism and Zionism, the two philosophical positions warring for the heart of the interwar, vulnerably assimilated, European Jew.

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What is Our Security?

On the self-destructive quest to feel secure

 

‘Security. A word that these days seems simultaneously both to conceal so much and to reveal so much.’ – John Berger

A man is told that he will die from a fall. Such is the terror this generates in him that he decides never to leave his home again. But confining himself to his house doesn’t remove the fear.A sense of security is not so easily gained, for fear has its own authority. He could, after all, fall down the stairs—he lives in a mansion and there are many flights of stairs. So he decides,‘for safety’s sake’, to confine himself to the ground floor. But soon he realises that the floors downstairs are polished: couldn’t he easily slip and break his neck? The dining-room, however, is fully carpeted, so he decides to live only in that room. Ordering his staff to serve his meals there, he never leaves the room. Yet still he feels unsafe: he thinks,‘I could still stumble and fall, hit my head and die’. So he orders an armchair to be placed in the middle of the room, away from all sharp objects and hard surfaces and—in a moment of triumphant certitude —insists that his servants tie him down into the chair. A sense of security descends. No danger now of a fall, he thinks. The loss of his freedoms is nothing compared to the relief that his fear can never come true. But when he hears the rustling above him, and feels grains of plaster on his skin, he looks up and sees the ancient crystal chandelier over his chair unmoor itself from its casing and begin to fall towards him…

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Kill Him First

The people here are not aware of the signifi cance of their acts. They only think they have turned Hebrew into a secular language. That they have released the apocalyptic sting out of it… but God will not remain silent in the language in which he was invoked again and again, thousands of times, to return into our lives.

So wrote Gershom Scholem to his colleague Franz Rosenzweig in his 1926 letter, ‘A Confession about our Language’. Scholem, a young Jewish philosopher from Berlin, had just immigrated to Palestine. He was among the founders of Brit Shalom, an organisation that supported the establishment of a bi-national Jewish-Arab state, and was concerned not only by the dominant political trends of Zionism, but with its very tongue, with the project of reviving, modernising, and secularising Hebrew. Scholem believed that recruiting the sacred biblical language for the modern political Zionist cause would plant a messianic ticking bomb in the hearts and minds of the Jewish people in Palestine.

The echoes of ‘God will not remain silent’ still whisper in the streets of Jerusalem, eighty-four years after these words were written. Although Scholem feared that religious sanctity would either dominate or destroy the people, he did not anticipate the more complex, ambivalent relationship that Zionism would form with religion. He did not assume that the very political struggle that facilitated the return of the Hebrew language actually included asking God, very politely, to remain silent. This attitude enabled the founders of Zionism and the majority of Israelis today to pull out of the sea of Jewish knowledge religious precepts that support their agenda. Like skilful pearl divers, Israeli society has brought up to the surface only those glowing stones which have Zionist purposes, and kept those which do not (including those in which God himself is mentioned) deep at the bottom of the ocean.  Consider some of the more popular Israeli-Jewish ‘moral validations’ of state policy. These validations, drawn exclusively from Jewish tradition and texts, have become part of the political consensus, and secure the place of religion not just in the ‘secular’ political debate but in wider Israeli-Jewish society.

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Not in Our Name: Religious Activism in Sheikh Jarrah

If you happened to walk past the tiny Othman Ibn-Affan street on a Friday evening, you might have been struck by a rather uncommon event: a large group of Palestinians of all ages and left-wing Israeli secular peace-activists gathered around a table on the porch, listening to young religious men and women reciting Kiddush. This anomaly is part of the ongoing activity of religious peace activists who form a small yet dominant part of the Solidarity movement in Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Arab neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. The recent eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah exposes not only the racism inherent in Israeli law but the ugliest side of Jewish religious life. Supported by the police force, and backed by a court ruling, kippah-clad Jewish settlers have entered the evicted houses and transformed the peaceful neighbourhood into a small-scale inferno for its non-Jewish residents. Backed by the Jerusalem police and reinforced by scores of young Shabab (adolescent Charedim, members of an ultra-Orthodox group, who stroll the streets, exempt from military service while officially enrolled in yeshivas), they smash car windows, slash tyres, harass women and children, and provoke fights.
For a growing number of young religious Jews like me, the behaviour of these ultra-Orthodox Jews constitutes a form of blasphemy. For us, attendance at the Friday demonstrations against the house evictions in Sheikh Jarrah has become like going to shul—a mitzvah and testimony to our belief that the Torah must be a source of life and morality, not death, violence and injustice. We stand alongside our secular left-wing friends, integrating traditional methods of protest with our own religious activities in a process that culminates in a uniquely Jewish expression of political and religious belief.

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Through the Looking Glass

A few weeks ago I stood by the tomb of Abraham in Hebron hearing the recitation of the amidah, the rhythm of those familiar words of prayer suddenly accompanied by those of a Jewish poet that came to my mind in that moment. I felt moved and connected in ways I had not foreseen. The last time I was in that part of the world I was in my gap year, an eighteen year old enjoying the life of a secular kibbutznik before heading on to Oxford. This time I had arrived at Hebron after a very different journey, one that took me both deeply in to my Jewish culture and showed it to me from the other side of the mirror, so to speak, challenging many of my previous assumptions. Read more

Bil’in, My Village

It was mid December 2004 when the bulldozers first showed up in my village Bil’in. Without my knowing it, this was the opening salvo for what would become one of the longest and most influential grassroots campaigns against the Wall that Israel is building in the occupied West Bank. Read more

Route 443: The Legal Illusion

On May 28, for the first time in close to a decade, Palestinian traffic was allowed on Route 443, a main highway running through the West Bank. The story behind Route 443 represents not only a watershed moment in the history of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, but also highlights what is legally and morally wrong with it. Read more

Fish and Fowl

I’ve only been served fish and fowl on the same plate twice. Both times were in the USA, the second was at the J Street inaugural conference Gala dinner in Washington DC this October. J Street is a new Washington lobbying group intent on ‘changing the face of pro-Israel advocacy in the US’. It wants an open debate on Israel, on the same plate as the Israel Right or Wrong lobby, epitomised by AIPAC. As Republican Senator Boustany put it, ‘there must be room for a more open and vigorous debate on the Mid-East conflict.’ For fifty years, AIPAC has monopolised the pro-Israel field. Its legendary influence brooks no criticism of Israel.
Jeremy Ben Ami, J Street’s Executive Director never mentions AIPAC publicly. ‘They can welcome us in; this is a language and a dialogue they are not used to. It will ensure the long-term survival of their institutions and it will mean that the community is a broad tent, strong and vibrant. The other choice is they say “you’re not welcome” and then we’ll either create our own home, or a lot of these people are going to walk away. Everybody loses.’
Someone spotted the absence of J Street on the Washington grid map. K Street is where all the lobbyists are. The organisation seeks to create a new, but not exclusively Jewish, Pro-Israel Pro-Peace voice. A table guest told me ‘we aren’t anti anything!’ Post-Cast Lead that’s an interesting interpretation. At a session titled The Maze, veteran Knesset Members admitted that the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee is powerless, prompting the question ‘who are the Government of Israel and the IDF accountable to?’ The panellists smiled wryly and shook their heads.
J Street numbers 160,000, after only eighteen months. Its success is partly explained by‘Netroots’ — the combination of networking and the internet — to disseminate political messages via blogs and internet media. Ben Ami learned the effectiveness of Netroots as Policy Director to Howard Dean’s 2005 Presidential campaign. He says ‘Barack Obama owes his presidency to internet politics.’ The other part — some 50,000 supporters — comes from Brit Tzedek V’Shalom — Alliance For Justice and Peace — a more traditional grass-roots organisation integrated into J Street.
The breadth of American Progressive Jewish Israeli interests was reflected in the twenty organisations participating in the conference, including Ameinu and The New Israel Fund. Numbers for the three day conference exceeded 1500, a wow-factor many speakers commented upon. ‘The voice of the silent American Jewish majority’, Ben Ami declared, ‘is silent no longer.’
Reform Rabbi Andy Bachman from Brooklyn wanted to bring his pre-67 Zionism to a jaded younger generation, ‘above all else we have to be a blessing, a moral people.’ Two days prior to the Conference, J Street had hosted 250 students from 60 campuses.
It was like Limmud, but exclusively devoted to Israel and peace. The multiplicity of sessions made choosing hard. In one morning, concurrently: The American Left and Israel; Where Has Israel Peace Activisim Gone? Israel’s Social and Domestic Challenges; How Jews Christians and Muslims Can Work Together For Peace; Setting The Stage For Peace; Culture As A Tool For Change.
C-Span (a private, non-profit company created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service to provide free access to the political process) broadcast conference sessions.The Washington Post carried a full page of congratulations from Israeli politicians and ex-Generals.
Located in a hotel an easy walk from the White House, it was a seminal moment in American Jewish and Diaspora–Israel relations, consisting of several seminal moments: invariable applause whenever a Palestinian state and an end to the occupation were called for.Bassim Khoury, who’d just quit the Abbas cabinet over Goldstone said, ‘Its not Left-wing versus Right-wing, but Correct-wing versus Wrong-wing.’
General Jim Jones, National Security Adviser, thanked J Street for ‘the honour of addressing the conference in the name of the President of the United States. You can be sure this administration will be represented at all future conferences.’
During the lobbying day on Capitol Hill, seven hundred J Street conference participants met with senatorial aides. We’d been given a clear brief about the pro-Israel pro-Peace message, but it didn’t prepare us for a chief aide’s ‘What about negotiating with Hamas?’ We discussed it and the aide told us, ‘I don’t even get an answer to that when I ask AIPAC.’
And all the time there were Jewish faces, so familiar I kept asking myself ‘Isn’t that…?’ The indefinable American quality about them promoted stimulating discussions. What about beyond America, I ask Ben Ami. ‘These issues apply to the worldwide Jewish community, in Europe as much as in Israel. We’re going to have to tap into that. It will give everybody strength.’
Washington cabbies all seem to be Eritrean. Mine asked me if I was from J Street. I was stunned. ‘It’s all over the radio,’ he explained, ‘but you’re better than the other group.’ ‘Which other group?’ I asked. ‘AIPAC,’ he said.
And for the record, the fish — cod — was fresher and tastier than the fowl — ‘rubber’ chicken.

Reform or Die by Hagai Segal

‘The essence of the problem of legislating for electoral reform [in Israel] is that the surgeon is also the patient’
Vernon Bogdanor’s comment written in the early 1990s is as accurate today as it was then. Another Israeli election has passed and another deeply unsatisfactory political picture has emerged. The Israeli public has spoken: the party that won most seats is not in government, it has taken two months for the government to be formed, and that government is a tense marriage between Right, Far-Right and Centre-Left. For anyone aquainted with Israel’s political history will not be surprised.
The current electoral system was introduced during the pre-state Yishuv — the government-in-waiting of the future state of Israel — and it was designed to be as simple and representative as possible, allowing for formal representation to the many diverse groups that made up Mandate Palestine’s Zionist community in order to ensure unity in the movement. It was never intended to be Israel’s permanent electoral system. Read more

Debating the Debate

‘Anglo-Jewry finds its voice’, trumpeted the front page of the Jewish Chronicle during the harrowing days of the Gaza bombardment.

What voice exactly was this? What was it saying? More importantly, for whom was it speaking?

If the tangible feelings of dismay, paralysis and incredulity around me were anything to go by, whole swathes of Anglo-Jewry were left unspoken for.

Urgently, it seemed, a platform was needed for those unheard voices. The following is a transcript of the first conversation organised by the JQ to establish what these voices might be saying. What are the issues? How might they be broached? How, as a community, might we manage these differences?

The conversation was chaired by Jonathan Boyd (acting director of Jewish Policy Research). The participants were Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg (Rabbi of New North London Syngogue), Douglas Krikler (Chief Executive of the UJIA), Paul Usiskin (Co-chair of Peace Now UK), Geoffrey Alderman, (Columnist, Professor of Politics & Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham) Kevin Sefton, (Limmud Trustee) Joseph Finlay (Musician, involved with Jewdas and the Moishe House), Keith Kahn-Harris (Sociologist, convenor of New Jewish Thought www.newjewishthought.org) and Daniella Peled (journalist and analyst who specialises on the Middle East).

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Teaching Arabic in Israel : A Linguistic Challenge in Majority–Minority Relations

Throughout Israel’s history, Jewish and Arab children have, with few exceptions, attended separate schools, each conducted in the native language of its pupils. The Arab school system teaches children Arabic, English and Hebrew as mandatory subjects from elementary school through to matriculation, along with other Jewish national and cultural elements. The study of Arabic in the Jewish educational system is, however, minimal or non-existent. Despite the fact that Arabic is an official language in Israel and the native language of over one million of the state’s citizens, laws mandating its study are not enforced and the proportion of Jewish students who can actually speak it after graduating school is tiny. Read more