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Man, I am just a posting-on-other-sites-but-not-my-own MACHINE today!  Here’s my Jewschool post on Glenn Beck’s equation of social justice with Nazism.

I just can’t seem to stop writing about Israeli Apartheid Week.  Here’s another one.

I’ve got a new post at Jewschool, in which I examine an article Alan Dershowitz wrote about Israel Apartheid Week.

Jessica Arons has written a fabulous piece for The Nation, explaining just how moronic the thinking behind the Stupak amendment is (and thus reminding me of how glad I am it won’t be part of the final reform bill):

No transaction in our modern society is completely free of government involvement. The food we eat costs less because of farm subsidies. Students attend private universities with the help of Pell Grants and Stafford loans. Our churches and temples can afford to operate in part because they are tax-exempt. And employers who offer health insurance do so because of tax incentives. Stupak’s reasoning, taken to its logical extreme, would mean that virtually every activity in which we engage is government funded, regardless of whether it is condoned or condemned.

As I see it, the extension of her argument is that in supporting, for example, transportation subsidies, a person makes a judgment that the good derived from the availability of public transportation outweighs the harm done by freeing up citizens’ personal money to be used for an abortion.  Thus, opposing insurance premium subsidies is a judgment that the benefits of providing people with health insurance are less important than preventing those people from having abortions.

Simultaneously opposing insurance premium subsidies on abortion grounds while also supporting other federal subsidies shows that you prioritize your own religious or social beliefs over someone else’s health.  While this isn’t a logical inconsistency, I’d say it demonstrates a severe lack of empathy and a healthy dose of self-righteousness.

But then, those are all in a day’s work for congressional opponents of health care reform.

Too often in conflicts we don’t hear stories.  We don’t know what other people have experienced.  This, I believe, is the root of many social problems.

Political realities are ultimately inseparable from the individual experiences that give rise to them.  We can make generalizations about societal states of understanding, political theories, and large social constructs, but these must ultimately be grounded in a deep understanding of the individual, human nature of the issue.

At its heart, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a failure of understanding.  Yes, we can and do identify policies, tactics, and manners of thought that continue it, but we cannot forget their inalienably human attributes.  Applying the analytical tools of anthropology and other social sciences can tell us much about why the conflict has evolved the way it has.  Why, for instance, does the Israeli government continue to lend tacit, if not explicit, support in most cases, to settlers who are actively violating international law and soiling Israel’s credibility?  Why have Palestinian civilians been so easily represented by the few who decide to blow themselves up?

These are questions of understanding.  I have strong disagreements with many people involved in the conflict, but there comes a time when I have to admit that I just don’t understand their point of view.  I haven’t been to Israel or Palestine, I haven’t sat down across the table with these people and tried to understand what makes them tick.

I don’t think this makes me less capable of making strong and accurate judgments on the issue, but it does impart on me a responsibility to seek out such stories and incorporate them into my thought.  In fact, I would argue that no one is exempt from this responsibility.  Divorced as I am from the on-the-ground realities of the conflict, it’s easy for me to say that my priority is understanding.  For an Israeli in Sderot who’s lived through rocket attacks and seen their children traumatized and suffering from PTSD, or for a Palestinian in Gaza who’s lived through massive Israeli air raids, destruction of vital infrastructure, and a continuing blockade, it must be incredibly hard to understand the other.

But there are those who do.  There are those who put aside their own experiences, and, given the opportunity to do so without sacrificing basic needs, seek out the other’s perspective.  And the fact that those people exist means that we should not just expect others to do the same, but we should strive for circumstances where they can.

Both in his attempts to understand and his attempts to empower others to do the same, Avi Schaefer was one of those people dedicated to understanding.  After graduating high school in Santa Barbara, he joined the IDF and spent several years as a counterterrorism instructor.  To a naive American Jewish boy like me who’s never held a gun, it’s hard to comprehend his motivations.  But it was crystal clear to me from the moment I met him up until the last conversation I had with him that he wanted me to, and he wanted to comprehend mine.  Avi was in many ways extremely oxymoronic; but then, he existed almost for the purpose of defying those same oxymorons.  Before I met him, I would never have guessed that an American Jew who became an Israeli citizen in order to join the IDF would be more dedicated to peace than arguably any other person I have ever met.  But what Avi has taught me was that that doesn’t have to be a contradiction.  That the only thing standing between us and a deeper personal understanding of the other is our assumptions.  If we come to a discussion with an open mind and no assumptions, we inevitably walk away stronger and smarter.

Avi Schaefer was killed in the early morning of February 12th by a drunk driver on the streets of Providence.  Who Avi was doesn’t make his death more tragic than if it had been someone else, but the people he touched, the good he did in his short time with us, and the taste that is left on our tongues, will linger.  In Avi, a man of incredible virtue and dignity walked among us.

“An enemy is someone whose story we have not yet heard.”  Avi attributed this quote to his father, Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer.

Avi Schaefer, 1988-2010.  Z”L.  May his memory be for a blessing.

Here’s my Jewschool post about it.  Links to informational and opinion sources are included.

I wrote a new post for Jewschool!  Predictably, it is about political debate, or lack thereof.  Check it out.

I promise I’ll write a blog post here soon.  In the meantime, check out my newest post at Jewschool.  It was just too good a topic to miss.

On Thursday night, I attended Brown Student’s for Palestine BDS event.  The BDS movement is a global call to remove financial backing from Israeli companies that profit from the occupation.  This was my first encounter with the movement, and I went without really knowing what to expect.  Certainly, I was looking forward to the opportunity to engage in dialogue about how to promote peace, and I looked forward to meeting people outside of the Jewish community involved in that process, as most of my involvement thus far has been through J Street, J Street U, and Brown Hillel.

I didn’t experience a dialogue about peace.  I didn’t experience a discussion of what was in the best interests of Palestinians.  And I didn’t feel welcome.

There are some important distinctions that I think need to be drawn when analyzing a political group or event like this one.  First of all, I wholeheartedly support this group’s right to purse whatever political strategy they’ve chosen for whatever ends they’ve chosen, and, if doing so requires it, to act independently of other organizations and disregard their input.  This is how one runs a political campaign – you decide on what you want to do, you form a strategy, and then you do it.  That’s how you elect people, it’s how you push for change, and it’s how you (hopefully) gain public support.

I missed the first half of the event, which was an info session, and got there right as they were opening it up for questions.  One of the first things I heard them declare during that process was “We know that we want to run a divestment campaign, and we’re here to talk about how.”  This didn’t initially mean much to me – I thought “Okay, good, they know what they’re doing.”  That’s better than endless indecisiveness in the service of some high moral ideal, at least.  But a minute later, it was followed by an entirely different statement: “We want to figure out what’s in the best interest of Palestinians.”

What?  Take a step back for a moment.  If you’ve decided to a pursue a campaign without knowing if it’s in the best interests of the Palestinians, you’re in a sticky situation.  What if, hypothetically, what you were doing would actually cause more harm, immediately and in the long-term, to Palestinians and their ability to self-govern?  What if your resolve on a single reflexive course of action by its very nature, prevented you from effectively analyzing the situation?

As you can probably guess, those aren’t really hypothetical questions.  I believe that the BDS movement is inherently shortsighted.  At Thursday night’s event, the former president of Brown Students for Israel asked the panelists what they saw as the ultimate end of the peace process.  Their answer was extremely revealing – “That’s not our job.  We don’t have a political opinion on the end of the process.  We’re trying to give them the right to self-determination.”

I have no doubt about the purity of these people’s motives.  I don’t claim, as would some others, that they’re selfishly just trying to wash their hands of the responsibility for Israel’s actions that they currently bear by virtue of paying taxes.  I honestly believe that they have every intention of doing what they say they want to, and that they have great value for the lives of Palestinians.  And that they honestly believe that what they’re doing is in Palestinians’ best interests.  And they have every right to believe that, and every right to act upon it.

But by refusing to look at their actions in the context of an end to the conflict, they’re missing something big, namely understanding whether or not their actions will lead to peace.  Do I support the occupation?  Absolutely not, contrary to what I and others were accused of over and over.  Do I support the systems of institutionalized discrimination that are a part of Israel’s domestic policy?  No, although I was also accused of supporting of that too.  Do I believe that Israel has the moral or political right to pursue foreign policy that prevents Palestinian self-governance?  In no way, shape, or form.

But I also believe that economically weakening Israel will not expedite the peace process.  In focusing only on the purported issue of “equal weight in negotiations” (BDS’ intention is to weaken Israel enough that it can’t continue the occupation, thus allowing for a level playing field in negotiations), the BDS movement ignores some glaring realities.  First of all, a boycott will not be immediate.  Israel will not wake up one morning and not have enough money to fuel its airplanes and pay its soldiers.  It won’t wake up to unified international outrage over its actions (if that was going to happen overnight, it would have, or it would have at least materialized in the last 60 years).  And it certainly won’t wake up to find that its guns don’t shoot or its bombs don’t explode or its settlers don’t resist evacuation.

A boycott will take years to have any kind of effect.  And beyond that, it will take even longer for it actually to put any kind of restrictions on Israel’s military power.  And do you know what will happen before the boycott kicks in?  More bombs.  More rockets into Israel.  More death all around.

Even worse, once Israel starts to lose economic backing, it’ll really kick into high gear.  The Israeli defense industry is huge, and there’s an immediate economic benefit to be gained from military campaigns.  Not only that, but history shows that when Israel feels its security is threatened in any way, it responds.  As would any country.  Especially one in such a volatile geopolitical context.

So let’s also consider the consequences of our actions beyond grand ideals of “ending oppression” and “justice for all”.  Yes, these are great things.  But they can’t be bought or induced.  They have to be won.  When you don’t have them, you demand them.  You negotiate for them.  You don’t shut up.

What can we do to hasten the peace process and ensure safety for everyone in the region (Israelis too – remember, BDS, they’re also people – go figure)?  We can lobby Congress.  We can write letters.  We can talk, rather than accuse.  We can listen, rather than spread divisive disinformation.  We can unify, rather than divide, strengthen the players in that region, rather than weaken them and force them to act out of fear and instability, which will not serve the cause of peace.

But because BDS doesn’t propose an end to the solution, they don’t have to deal with any of these things.  Conveniently, their responsibility ends when we have no more money in Israel (which, by the way, will never happen).  What then?  What before then?  However genuinely they support the Palestinian people, their core mission prevents them from acting in those same people’s best interests, or at the very least, having the discussion about what’s in their best interests.

So this first encounter with the radical left has been eye-opening.  It’s forced me to rethink many of the views I hold, and to reexamine my opinions on what the best way forward is.  I’ve certainly been awoken to the fact that there’s a need for direct dialogue and education on how to achieve peace.

I’m ready to meet that need, and I know others are as well.  I will publicly debate anyone on what the best way forward in this process is.  But I will not be called a racist.  I will not be told I’m a militant Zionist.  I will not be told I don’t support human rights, or that I support the occupation.  These are regressive tactics whether they come from the left or the right.

We’ve been bogged down in them too long.  BDS’ continued use of them is a direct obstacle to a useful dialogue on peace.

I’ve written a second post for New Voices.  This one is about the difficulties of providing for all students in a campus Hillel, and what I see as an important step in that direction.  Enjoy!