The United States may be easing up its customary pressure on Europe to go along with it in its blanket protection of Israel no matter how far Israel pushes the envelope. Early indications are that Europe just doesn’t need the pressure, they’re not going to pressure Israel anyway, despite the recent arrogant comments by both Bibi Netanyahu and Yvet Lieberman. But in the long term, maybe there’s a little more hope down the European road than the US one. I explore this in this week’s piece at Souciant.
Posts Tagged ‘Peter beinart’
Unfair to Whom?
Posted in Refugees, Zionism, tagged Anti-Zionism, BDS, Daily Beast, human rights, international law, Israel, Jerusalem, Justice, Middle east, One-State Solution, Open Zion, Palestinian Refugees, Peter beinart, pro-Israel, Right of Return, Two-state solution, United Nations, West Bank on April 24, 2012 | 3 Comments »
In response to my piece at the Daily beast today, the noted UK activist and author, Ben White, asked me, on Twitter, what I meant by the following sentence: “Yousef (Munayyer) implied that the only way to recognize Palestinian rights is to allow each refugee and their descendants to choose whether and where, within all of historic Palestine, to return to. That is an unfair standard.”
I respond here because it’s a fair question that deserves more than a 140 character response.
What I mean here is that, while I think it is perfectly legitimate for Palestinians to call for, and for others to support, the full right of return to their original homes, there are also legitimate reasons not to support that call.
In the piece to which my own was a response, Yousef Munayyer claims that Zionism is inherently incapable of recognizing Palestinian rights. His takeoff for this point is Daniel Levy’s statement that he cannot support the Palestinian civil society call for BDS. That call has three clauses, two of which I fully support and I would feel very safe in saying Daniel does as well: self-determination for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and full equality for Arab citizens of Israel. So the issue is with the third, the call for the right of return for refugees.
I think it is not inherently anti-Israel to call for full RoR. I also think it is not inherently anti-Palestinian to say that RoR must be limited, and this is what i describe in my Daily Beast piece. But Yousef seemed to imply that anything less than full support for RoR proves that “liberal Zionists” like Daniel Levy (and non-Zionists like myself, presumably) cannot truly accept that Palestinians have the same rights as everyone else. I disagree, in that I think they do have the same rights as everyone else and, like everyone else, those rights exist within political realities that we all have to deal with. And, as I state in the piece, those universal rights only entitle refugees to return to their home country, not to specific areas within it, necessarily.
Thus, I believe the standard Yousef set for what would be viewed as respecting Palestinian rights is an unfair one.
Daily Beast article
Posted in Refugees, Zionism, tagged Anti-Zionism, BDS, Daily Beast, human rights, international law, Israel, Jerusalem, Justice, Middle east, One-State Solution, Open Zion, Palestinian Refugees, Peter beinart, pro-Israel, Right of Return, Two-state solution, United Nations, West Bank on April 24, 2012 | 1 Comment »
My first piece for Open Zion, Peter Beinart’s blog at The Daily Beast, is live. It addresses the false accusation that one cannot be Zionist and also hold to liberal values, using the question of Palestinian refugees as the way to explore this question. Since i don’t identify as a Zionist, I think this makes it a more powerful argument.
The BDS Phenomenon
Posted in BDS, tagged AIPAC, American Jewish Committee, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Americans for Peace Now, Anti-Defamation League, apartheid, BDS, Brooklyn, Christians United For Israel, COPJ, Daniel Levy, Holocaust, Israel, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, Lara Friedman, New York Times, Occupied Territories, Palestine, Park Slope Food Cooperative, Peter beinart, South Africa, The Atlantic, West Bank, Zionist Organization of American on April 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
In this week’s column at Souciant, I revisit the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in light of recent events in Brooklyn and Peter Beinart’s controversial New York Times op-ed.
J Street Looking Less And Less Like A Potential Game-Changer
Posted in J Street, tagged Daniel Kurtzer, democracy, Ehud Olmert, Israel, Israel Lobby, J Street, Jewish State, Middle east, Netanyahu, Obama, Occupation, Palestinian Authority, Peace Groups, Peter beinart, pro-Israel, Two-state solution, Zehava Galon on March 27, 2012 | 5 Comments »
This article originally appeared on LobeLog.
Four years ago, there was some hope in Washington that J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” Jewish lobbying group, could someday provide a
J Street President, Jeremy Ben-Ami addressing the crowd at J Street's third conference
counterweight to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
No one expected J Street to seriously challenge AIPAC after just four years. But the organization’s track record to date gives some cause for concern with regard to the direction its heading in.
J Street has had some controversial missteps in its time. For example, its waffling on the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2008-09, and its dissembling response when it was revealed that left-wing magnate George Soros had been one of its key initial funders.
This time their investment in Peter Beinart presented a hurdle for them. Beinart published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for what he regrettably termed “Zionist BDS,” which is simply a new name for a policy long advocated by left-wing groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and more center-left groups likeAmericans for Peace Now. It basically advocates for the boycott of settlement products, services and venues.
Just a few days before Beinart appeared as one of the key figures at their conference, J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami gave an interview to Iran/Israel hawk Jeffrey Goldberg where he strongly criticized Beinart’s stance. The result, which became apparent when the issue came up during one of the plenaries, was to split the conference audience over the issue. (more…)
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