A New Voice for Israel by Jeremy Ben-Ami

Author:Jeremy Ben-Ami [Ben-Ami, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2011-07-19T00:00:00+00:00

THE CAMPAIGN TO SILENCE DISSENT

How has it happened that an otherwise rational community has created a situation where one can’t question or criticize Israeli policy or actions without being branded an outcast? The extraordinarily effective campaign against dissent has operated on several levels: intimidating personal attacks on individuals; threats to funding; and a modern-day McCarthyism that charges “guilt by association” for connecting with people who become communal persona non grata for simply expressing their opinions when it comes to Israel.

I know from my own experience how painful and difficult the attacks on those who dissent can be. Far too often, those who disagree with dissenters in the Jewish community label us “Israel haters” and “self-hating Jews” or intimate that somehow we would have assisted the Nazis in World War II. Of course, the attacks achieve their purpose on some level, because some who would dissent are scared into silence.

Such vitriol should simply be out of bounds in the Jewish community. Having lost family in the Shoah, having nearly been killed in a suicide attack and having descended from a family whose blood, sweat and tears have soaked the land of Israel for over a century, I do what I do precisely because I care so deeply about the Jewish people, Israel and their future. Our community should not be accepting—and I do not accept—name-calling, lies and smears as a legitimate substitute for rational discussion about the difficult issues we confront.

To sample the vitriol, simply read the comments at the end of any story about Israel on the Web, or scan the letters to the editor of the Jewish community papers. Here’s just one example from a letter to the editor that the Massachusetts Jewish Journal actually allowed to print in November 2010:

Jew-hater George Soros, who funds J-Street, seeks Israel’s annihilation. Soros’ ally, President Obama, relentlessly drumbeats that Israel is a liability in support of whom Americans are dying needlessly. According to J-Street Director Jeremy Ben-Ami, the role of J-Street is to be President Obama’s “blocking back” with the Jewish community. As during the Holocaust, J-Street is [sic] to convince Jews to dig their own mass graves.5

What kind of signal does it send to those at the fringes of the debate when such language is fully acceptable under the banner of leading media outlets and advocacy organizations? Writing for the Washington Post’s blog, Jennifer Rubin constantly labels J Street “Israel-bashing” and makes regular allusions to the notion that J Street is anti-Semitic.6 And what does it say when a prominent public face of the American Jewish community, former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block, says of working with J Street that “when you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. You can kill the fleas, but the treatment is unpleasant and it’s not cost free”?7

The challenge for the organized Jewish community is not simply to launch, as it has, a high-profile initiative to urge civility in the communal dialogue around difficult issues, but to call to task those who take the argument beyond the acceptable boundaries of civil discourse.

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