The coming storm: Obama and American Jewry

Jun 15, 2009 - The coming storm: Obama and American Jewry

By SHMULEY BOTEACH

There's a storm coming. It will pit a well-organized community of
substantial resources but also substantial insecurity - particularly when it
comes to charges of dual loyalty - against a popular president of
considerable eloquence but misguided policies that identify Israeli
settlements as the main obstacle to Middle East peace. The inevitable clash
will separate sunshine Jewish patriots who back Israel when convenient
against those who stand with Israel even when it means losing their
invitation to the White House Hanukka party.
The bogus issue of settlements is already being swallowed whole by many
well-meaning Jews. Last week Dan Fleshler, a leader of Americans for Peace
Now, wrote in the New Jersey Jewish Standard that Obama has no choice but to
pressure Israel because "it is fruitless for a well-armed, occupying power
to negotiate the terms of a viable settlement with an almost defenseless
occupied people unless a third party mediates and presses both sides."

In reading Fleshler one wonders whether he has been himself occupied with
building a settlement on the moon with no knowledge of events on Earth. Is
he seriously suggesting that the thousands of Katyusha rockets and nonstop
suicide bombers that have killed more than a thousand Israelis (the
equivalent of 30,000 dead Americans) have come from a "defenseless" foe?
Would Fleshler likewise argue that the US ought to have pressure from, say,
Russia or China to make peace with the terrorists in Afghanistan, seeing
that America now represents a "well-armed, occupying power" against the
comparatively defenseless Taliban? Or is it only Israel that is forbidden
from defending itself.

Sorry Mr. Fleshler, but Jewish values do not dictate that the only moral Jew
is a dead one who refuses to fight in the face of a 60-year terror
onslaught.
Any return to the 1967 borders, which is what Obama's attack on the
settlements represents, is simply suicide for Israel. The borders are
utterly indefensible. The Arabs know it, which is why they press for it.
Had Israel not dismantled its settlements in Gush Katif, Gaza would not have
become a terrorist state ruled by Hamas, an organization that kills even
more Palestinians than it does Israelis.

BUT MISGUIDED Jewish apologists aside, are the rest of us prepared to speak
up against the policies of the administration? By this I do not mean the
drunken racist rants of the American Jewish hooligans who got attention
disgracing themselves on YouTube last week; their bigoted drivel against our
democratically elected president represents an abomination to Judaism. I
have already written several columns lamenting how a small minority of the
large and praiseworthy contingent of Jewish youth who go to Israel from the
US after high school ostensibly to study in yeshivot end up instead hanging
out on Rehov Ben Yehuda making asses of themselves. That they have no
proper supervision and that they are allowed to go through their year in a
drunken stupor is an outrage that must be finally addressed by the
institutions which host them.

Rather, I mean courageous and intelligent criticism that accepts the
president's praiseworthy efforts in making peace but decries his soft
posture on tyranny when he bows to an Arab potentate who oppresses women and
warmly embraces the dictator of Venezuela.
Asher Lopatin was one of the first students I met at Oxford and the
university's first Orthodox Rhodes scholar. Today he is the successful rabbi
of one of Chicago's most youthful congregations. He is also Rahm Emanuel's
rabbi. But that did not stop him from criticizing the White House chief of
staff in Newsweek for his unfair pressure on Israel. Lopatin could easily
have basked in the aura of being rabbi to one of the most influential men in
the world. Instead, he spoke truth to power.
In promoting the new translation of his Hebrew prayer book, British Chief
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks constantly reminds us that he studies Bible with the
prime minister of the United Kingdom. That's nice. But a few years ago Sacks
spoke out publicly against Israel, telling London's Guardian newspaper,
"There are things that happen on a daily basis which make me feel very
uncomfortable as a Jew."
Sacks is a brilliant man but with a long history of pandering to whatever
audience he happens to be addressing. He would do well to remember the
admonishment of Mordechai to Esther on the responsibility of being close to
political power: "If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance
will arise for the Jews from another place."
But while Europe and the UK are significant, the main battle lines will be
here in the US and now is the time for American Jewry to organize. From
schools to universities to synagogues and JCCs, we must make it clear that
when 78 percent of Jews voted for Obama and filled his campaign coffers with
cash it was not in the expectation of biased policies against Israel. We're
upset, disappointed and we won't take it. We'll march in the streets, write
op-eds and blogs, and publish ads making it clear that America should be
standing with the Middle East's only democracy and America's most reliable
ally.
As Charles Krauthammer pointed out, our president undermines his moral
authority when he pledges that henceforth America will "forge partnerships
as opposed to simply dictating solutions," but then only applies that pledge
to Iran, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela, but not to Israel.

Last year, right after Obama captured the democratic nomination, I received
a phone call from his campaign asking if I would serve as one of the
national chairs of "Rabbis for Obama." It was a tempting offer. I was moved
by the candidate's remarkable personal story, his iron discipline, his
soaring oratory and, most of all, the fact that his victory would be the
culmination of my hero Martin Luther King's dream of a man being judged by
the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. In the end I
declined because I feared that Obama would draw a moral equivalence between
Israel and the Palestinians and pressure the former to appease the latter.
But even I never suspected that it would happen so quickly and so
lopsidedly.