By Peter Beinart
(Haaretz) The news that Sheldon Adelson will this weekend host a
secret conference for Jewish groups aimed at countering the boycott,
divestment and sanctions movement is yet more evidence that “pro-Israel”
activism in the United States is entering a new phase. The Iran era is
ending. We are entering the age of BDS.
The Iran era
started in the mid-1990s. During the cold war, American Jewish groups
had defended Israel primarily against Arab regimes and the PLO. The most
famous episode in AIPAC’s history had been its 1981 struggle against
the Reagan administration’s bid to sell AWACS surveillance planes to
Saudi Arabia.
But in 1993, the
PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist and began negotiating with it as
part of the Oslo peace process. The following year, Jordan made peace
too. With most Arab regimes at least tacitly supporting Oslo, Yitzhak
Rabin argued that Iran—which supported rejectionist groups like
Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad—constituted the new threat. In 1994,
according to Argentine prosecutors, Iran and Hezbollah blew up a Jewish
community center in Buenos Aires, thus further linking the Islamic
Republic to anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish terrorism. The prospect of
Tehran developing a nuclear weapon made it all the more sinister.
American Jewish
groups, suddenly deprived of their traditional Arab and PLO enemies,
gladly followed Rabin’s suggestion that they focus on Iran instead. In
his indispensable book about Iranian-Israeli relations, “Treacherous
Alliance,” Trita Parsi quotes Shai Feldman, an Israeli foreign policy
expert now at Brandeis University, as explaining that “AIPAC made Iran a
major issue since they didn’t have any other issue to champion. The
U.S. was in favor of the peace process, so what would they push for?”
The Iran era
reached its apex during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose
Holocaust denial and rhetorical aggression helped American Jewish groups
portray Iran as a regime plotting genocide against Israel. But since
2013, Ahmadinejad’s successor, Hassan Rohani, has made Iran appear less
menacing. And in Barack Obama, he has found a partner eager to end the
long-standing U.S.-Iranian cold war. That effort could still fail.
But given the
two leaders’ determination, it is more likely that they will strike a
deal, which Benjamin Netanyahu and the Republican Congress will prove
unable to torpedo. Already, Israeli security experts are talking about
using Israel’s acquiescence to a nuclear agreement to win new military guarantees
from the United States. And if Israel does eventually acquiesce, even
tacitly and sullenly, the two-decade era in which Iran dominated
“pro-Israel” activism in the United States will end.
Enter BDS. If
American Jewish groups began focusing on the Iranian threat once the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process was born, BDS is growing in large
measure because the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has died. For six
years, Netanyahu has publicly rejected the idea of a Palestinian state
along the 1967 lines, with land swaps. Most Palestinians have lost any
faith that negotiations with Israel can bring them a state anytime soon.
And Mahmoud Abbas’ failure to end the occupation, or stand for
election, has wrecked his legitimacy among Palestinian activists.
Already, BDS is
changing the landscape of organized American Jewish life. First, it is
making Washington less important, which may make AIPAC less important.
AIPAC’s power rests on the relations between its members and members of
Congress. But the BDS movement bypasses Congress in favor of
universities, liberal Christian groups and trade unions, where it can
gain a more sympathetic ear. The response has been a gold rush among
American Jewish groups seeking to lead the anti-BDS charge. In 2010, the
Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council on Public
Affairs created the Israel Action Network to combat Israel’s
“delegitimization.” As the Forward notes, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation
League and the American Jewish Committee have all recently “set up
operations geared at students” largely to do the same thing. In
Washington, AIPAC still dominates. But in these new arenas where the BDS
struggle will be fought, AIPAC is just one Jewish group among many.
The second consequence of the rise of BDS will be to increase the prominence of Jewish Voices for Peace. Right now, many establishment-minded American Jews don’t know what JVP is. In their mind, J Street still represents American Jewry’s left flank. But as the only significant American Jewish group to support BDS, Jewish Voices for Peace will grow in prominence as the movement itself does. Already, non-Jewish BDS activists cite JVP as evidence that American Jews do not monolithically oppose their cause. The more that mainstream American Jews hear this, the more enraged at JVP they will become. How exactly that rage will express itself, I don’t know. But as JVP grows, its battles with the American Jewish establishment will make those of J Street look tame.
Finally, BDS
will spark a growing debate among American Jews about Zionism itself.
American Jews are used to thinking of Palestinians as residents of the
West Bank and Gaza Strip. (By using the phrase “Arab Israelis,” American
Jews even delude themselves that the Arabs living inside the 1967 lines
are not really Palestinian.) But many of the Palestinians active in BDS
live in the West or hail from Israel proper or both. That means that
for them personally, the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel and
the rights of Palestinian refugees are at least as important as the
rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Ending Israel’s
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza doesn’t threaten its character as a
Jewish state. To the contrary, it may help preserve it, which is why
many centrist American Jews support the two-state solution. But as the
BDS movement grows more prominent, it will spark more debate about
Palestinian citizens and Palestinians refugees, both subjects that
expose the tension between Israel’s democratic character and its
policies — in immigration and public life — that privilege Jews.
Inside the
American Jewish establishment, the first response to the BDS movement’s
challenge to Zionism has been to cry anti-Semitism. But that response
conceals a dirty little secret: that many “pro-Israel” activists haven’t
thought much about the tension between Jewish statehood and liberal
democracy, and thus don’t really know how to justify Zionism to an
audience of skeptical, progressive non-Jews.
Justifying
Zionism to liberals is not an impossible task. But neither is it
intellectually or morally simple. And it will require
establishment-minded American Jews to defend principles they have long
taken for granted. Of all the BDS movement’s consequences for American
Jews, that may prove the most significant of all.
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