Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1998, Page 19

Pro-Israel McCarthyism

In the U.S. Even Staunchly Pro-Israel Jews Dare Not Criticize Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

By Rachelle Marshall

As the peace process deteriorates and Binyamin Netanyahu struggles to preserve his increasingly hard-line coalition, Jews in the U.S. who are among Israel's most loyal supporters are coming increasingly under siege for openly criticizing the Israeli government. The editor of the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle was forced to resign in December after 14 years on the paper because in an editorial he had called Netanyahu the "most incompetent" prime minister in Israel's history and urged him to step down.

Readers responded with praise as well as anger but a week later the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, which owns the Chronicle, published a full-page statement disavowing the editorial. "Federations are dependent on their contributors," one official explained, "and when you work for the Federation in any capacity you are vulnerable."

In December the president of the San Francisco Jewish Federation, Alan Rothenberg, sent a letter to top contributors saying that the Federation "does not fund the Israeli government" but directly aids the people of Israel. The letter was meant to appease the concerns of donors who were displeased with the Netanyahu administration, but instead it aroused a storm of protest.

Angry letters appeared in the Northern California Jewish Bulletin, and a group of Holocaust survivors, their relatives, and friends took out a full-page ad in the Bulletin attacking Federation officials for being "cavalier in their support of Israel." Rothenberg and other Federation officials immediately apologized for what they claimed was "miscommunication" and "confusion." In a letter to the 120 people who signed the ad Rothenberg reiterated the Federation's "rock solid support for Israel," referring to the Jewish state as "our homeland."

The venerable Smithsonian Institution recently found itself embroiled in controversy when it asked the New Israel Fund to co-sponsor a lecture series next May commemorating Israel's 50th anniversary. The series was to include respected New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, several Israeli professors, an Orthodox rabbi, two conservative Likud members, and an Arab member of the Knesset.

After the list was announced a small but well-financed group called Americans for a Safe Israel charged that it was biased against Israel and likened the speakers to Louis Farrakhan and David Duke. Publisher Rupert Murdoch and Republican New York Congressman Michael Forbes joined in the outcry, declaring that the lecture series was aimed at "the propagation of blatantly anti-lsrael falsehoods." Since Forbes is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which controls funding for the Smithsonian, its director Ira Heyman quickly backed down, canceling the proposed series and ending the institution's partnership with the New Israel Fund.

Far from being anti-lsrael, members of that organization tend to be ardent and involved supporters of the Jewish state, if not of the present government. As Anthony Lewis pointed out in his New York Times column of Jan. 11, the New Israel Fund, like a majority of American Jews, supports religious pluralism, civil liberties, and the rights of women in Israel. It also helps to promote Jewish-Arab co-existence. Lewis described the attack on the proposed lecture series as "Jewish McCarthyism." With the Smithsonian's abject surrender, he wrote, "the voices of hate prevailed, suppressing the clash of ideas that is the life of America—and of Israel."

In Israel a small group of Israelis known as Gush Shalom, or "peace bloc," is showing far more courage in the face of opposition. Last October they launched a campaign to boycott products manufactured in Israeli settlements in order to express their opposition to the location of settlements on land that Gush Shalom envisions as the site of a future Palestinian state, and to remind Israelis that the settlements are in occupied territory and are not part of Israel.

According to Uri Avneri, a long-time peace activist, the campaign is also aimed at alleviating the frustration many pro-peace Israelis feel over the stalled peace process. "The boycott conveys the general message that they are not helpless, they can act," Avneri told an interviewer for Palestine Report in January. Gush Shalom published an ad signed by 68 prominent Israelis in the Dec. 26 issue of Ha'aretz urging citizens to support the boycott, and Avneri has also given a list of products made in the settlements to Palestinian officials for distribution in the West Bank and Gaza. Not surprisingly, settlers have reacted with an outpouring of hate letters and calls directed at Gush Shalom. "We get Internet hate mail from all over the world," Avneri says. "All this is most encouraging."