PhillyIMC: Jews Uniting to End the War & Heal America Responds to Attack in "Forward"

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Jews Uniting to End the War & Heal America Responds to Attack in "Forward"

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Shalom Center

First, who is the attacker? Ralph Seliger, who thinks of himself as a progressive, editor of the magazine of Meretz USA, an American support group for an Israeli peace-committed political party. What were his objections? (For his full comment, click here)

(1) A mailing we did said "Stop the War" on the envelope. Too bold, too strong, too little nuance, said Mr. Seliger. [No doubt it should have said, all on the envelope, "Amber light. Gradually, slowly, bit by bit, slow down the war."]

(2) We invited Leslie Cagan, exec of United for Peace and Justice, the largest general national antiwar coalition, and Amy Goodman, director of the radio and TV news show "Democracy Now!" to speak. What's wrong with those two? Seliger thinks they spend too much time criticizing Israeli actions, too little time criticizing Palestinian actions. (Though some.)

Mr. Seliger did not mention that the recent past president of his own organization, Meretz USA, is speaking at the gathering, along with a slew of other pro-peace, pro-Israel activists who see security for Israel bound up with independence for Palestine. He didn't mention that the two speakers he doesn't like are two among about 50 experts and activists of a range of views on every issue from torture to global scorching to Big Oil.

The directors of the three organizing groups have responded to the attack, in a letter that the Forward has agreed to publish this week. I am including it below.

But first, there are four things I myself want to say:

(1) There is a long tradition of Jews' arguing, debating, dialoguing ? all the way back to Abraham arguing with God, according to Torah -- and then literally thousands of rabbis 2,000 years ago arguing respectfully with each other, saying "These words and these other words are both the words of the Living God."

For the last hundred years, hundreds of Jewish activists have done the same thing. But there has been a degenerate version of this argument, in which some activists have claimed that anyone else who is one inch to the right or left, one inch ahead toward the future or one inch behind toward the past, is not only mistaken but demonic. Dangerous. As for inviting a range of knowledgeable people to say their piece and expecting those present to come to their own wisdom -- More dangerous! More demonic!

(2) It troubles me greatly that the Forward ran this attack in the next-to-last issue before November 23, without letting "Jews Uniting" know or inviting us to comment at the same time.

Once we discovered the attack, we had to move heaven and earth at the last minute to get our response ready and get them to agree to publish it in the only pre-gathering issue that remained.

(3) On Mr. Seliger's substantive complaints: Every single day that the US military remains in Iraq, some Americans and Iraqis are killed or maimed. Every single hour, millions of dollars are stolen from American schoolchildren, from sick Americans who desperately need an operation, from a family whose house is burning down -- stolen from meeting our domestic needs. In my view, the war should end as fast as it is physically possible to get our soldiers and mercenaries safely home.

As for Israel-Palestine: It is not the focus of our gathering, but it does not seem unreasonable to me to have on our program people who condemn both strafing Gaza and rocketing Sderot, while keeping in mind ? as I do -- that many more children die on one side of that border than on the other.

(4) The best answer to this kind of lashon hara -- ? the evil tongue -- is simply showing up to support the gathering. to learn in the workshops, to enjoy the comraderie, and to decide what to do to keep the grass-roots movement growing.

So ?please do exactly that. Please come. Please click to HERE

Shalom, salaam, peace -- Arthur

Here's our collective answer:

November 17, 2008
Attn: Editor
The Forward
45 East 33rd Street
New York, NY 10016

As organizers of the November 23rd conference, "Jews Uniting to End the War and Heal America," we are greatly angered by Ralph Seliger's opinion piece published in the latest edition of the Forward.

Mr. Seliger focused his political suspicions on two out of fifty activists who are leading workshops or plenary sessions at the "Jews Uniting" event. He ignored the participation of leading progressive Zionists such as Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, MR Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, Rabbis Simkha Weintraub and Rachel Kahn-Troster of Rabbis for Human Rights, and his own khaverte, Lilly Rivlin, the past president of Meretz USA (Mr. Seliger is the editor of Israel Horizons, the publication of Meretz USA).

It saddens us that Mr. Seliger does not trust Jewish liberals and progressives to hear the wide variety of views and experience that will be expressed at the November 23 gathering, and work through their own conclusions about what to do -- as Jews have done since Abraham argued with God in the Torah and the Talmudic rabbis argued with each other two thousand years ago.

Instead, he received a brochure about the event in an envelope stamped "Stop the War!" -- and peculiarly inferred from this that our conference would adopt "an uncompromisingly extreme posture" regarding U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Based on his own negative assessments of two of our speakers' postures towards Israel, he tarred all of the organizers of the event, and all of the participants in the event, as somehow susceptible to Israel-bashing, somehow naive about "the difference between sloganeering and thoughtful foreign policy," and somehow less politically sophisticated than Seliger himself.

The November 23rd event should be applauded for providing a forum for diverse voices and a safe atmosphere for thoughtful discussion within a community that has been mostly silent or reticent about the war in Iraq. Instead, Mr. Seliger has sought to discredit us in advance, in tones of condescension towards The Workmen's Circle, The Shalom Center, Jewish Currents and all of those who will be participating in our dialogue.

We urge Forward readers to contemplate the list of participants -- including key leaders of the Reform and Reconstructionist movements and of the National Council of Jewish Women, as well as Elizabeth Holtzman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Forward editorial director J. J. Goldberg, and scores of other smart, caring, expert Jewish analysts and activists -- and to join us this Sunday at Central Synagogue in NYC by registering at www.circle.org/jewsuniting, rather than persisting in the kind of fear and paralysis about the war that has silenced many Jewish voices for nearly six years.

Sincerely,

Ann Toback, Executive Director, The Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director, The Shalom Center
Lawrence Bush, Editor, Jewish Currents