Dear Friends,
In today's New York Times, there is an extraordinary Op/
Ed piece by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg. He was one of the
earliest and strongest American Zionists, an intellectual
and political bulwark of the American Jewish
community's support for the Jewish state.
I am sending you the entire article. It is extraordinary for
two paragraphs, as follows:
<<The most effective way to force a reduction of the
violence on both sides is to take punitive economic
measures. The United States finances about $4 billion a
year, on average, of Israel's national budget. The
continuing effort to defend, support and increase
settlements in the West Bank and Gaza costs at least $1
billion a year. The money spent annually in directly
subsidizing the existing settlements was estimated in
2001 at $400 million.
<< An American government that was resolved to stop
expansion of the settlements would not need to keep
sending the secretary of state to Jerusalem to repeat that
we really mean what we say. We could prove it by
deducting the total cost of the settlements each year from
the United States' annual allocation to Israel. To show
that we were not being unfeelingly mean, the United
States should add that we would hold $1 billion a year in
escrow to help those settlers who would peacefully move
back into Israel's pre-1967 borders.>>
In the official "mainstream" Jewish world, there has not
been a single organization that has had the clarity,
compassion, and courage to say this.
Rabbi Hertzberg also supports stronger financial
sanctions against Hamas -- a position that is much
more easily taken by most American Jews. His call for
reducing or suspending military aid to israel till it at
minimum halts expansion of the settlements is what is
unexpected.
Many of us have watched the same President who did not
mind lying to our citizenry, alienating our allies, sending
our youth to their deaths, and violating international law
to shatter a country that was too weak to endanger us --
watched the same President back away like a pipsqueak
before the frowns of Arik Sharon.
Some of us believe that the power of the US, used with
care and compassion for both the Israeli and Palestinian
peoples, could halt the worst violence between them.
(I do not agree with one comment of Rabbi Hertzberg's --
that outside peacekeeping forces cannot physically intervene to protect both
Israelis and Palestinians from each other. I think a multilateral peacekeeping
force might be able to do that.)
Rabbi Hertzberg cannot be dismissed as anti-Israel or
anti-Semitic. His article offers a moment when each of us
could go to our rabbis, our JCRC and Federation leaders,
our Members of Congress, our newspapers to urge
them to emulate his clarity, his compassion, and his
courage.
Rosh Hashanah demands that we transform our
lives. Its Torah readings demand that we save the lives of both Isaac and
Ishmael, Abraham's two sons -- the traditional forebears of the Jews and Arabs.
If not now, when?
The full article follows, below.
Shalom, Arthur
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director
The Shalom Center <www.shalomctr.org>
*****************************************************
NYTimes, August 27, 2003
The Price of Not Keeping the Peace
By ARTHUR HERTZBERG
The cycle of violence that is once again gripping the
Middle East presents the United States with another
setback in its role as regional peace broker. Never has it
become more clear that diplomacy alone cannot secure
a workable truce between the Israelis and Palestinians.
No resolution of the conflict is possible unless the United
States pressures the two parties to make concessions
that they have refused for decades to make. But what
tools can Washington use? What if angry combatants on
both sides decide that it is in their interests to continue to
fight?
The United States does have the means to impose its
will, but we must put limits on what we should and
should not do. Our government should not put troops on
the ground to hound those who send suicide bombers
into Israel, or to dismantle Jewish settlements in the
West Bank. We would be playing the unsuccessful role of
the British in the 1930's and 1940's as the conflict
between the Jews and the Palestinians became ever
bloodier. Yet, peace plans, of which President Bush's
road map is the latest example, can only work if the
power of the United States is behind them; otherwise
they are merely part of the ongoing theater of the peace
process.
The most effective way to force a reduction of the violence
on both sides is to take punitive economic measures.
The United States finances about $4 billion a year, on
average, of Israel's national budget. The continuing effort
to defend, support and increase settlements in the West
Bank and Gaza costs at least $1 billion a year. The
money spent annually in directly subsidizing the existing
settlements was estimated in 2001 at $400 million.
An American government that was resolved to stop
expansion of the settlements would not need to keep
sending the secretary of state to Jerusalem to repeat that
we really mean what we say. We could prove it by
deducting the total cost of the settlements each year from
the United States' annual allocation to Israel. To show
that we were not being unfeelingly mean, the United
States should add that we would hold $1 billion a year in
escrow to help those settlers who would peacefully move
back into Israel's pre-1967 borders.
No doubt there would be an outcry among some
supporters of Israel, especially the ultranationalists,
whose goal is to realize their vision of the "undivided land
of Israel." But an American government that had the
courage to force the end of settlement activity would find
far greater support among Jews both in Israel and in the
United States than many people in Washington imagine.
Much of this support is because of the pressing matter of
demographics in the "undivided land of Israel." Between
the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, the total
population is now more than 40 percent Arab. Since the
Arab birthrate is far higher than the Jewish (by a ratio of
more than two to one), there will be an Arab majority in at
most 20 years. At that point, Israel will effectively be a
binational state. It will have to make a fateful choice
between being a democracy that will empower the Arab
majority to dominate its government or to subject the
Palestinian Arabs to a rule resembling apartheid in South
Africa.
The hard-liners in Israel and their supporters abroad
avoid this prospect by talking about the "transfer" of
population or of making life so difficult that the
Palestinians would choose to leave. This is nonsense.
Life has been difficult for the Palestinians for several
decades, but they have not gone away in large numbers.
The mainstream in Israel and in the Jewish Diaspora will
be grateful to America for saving Israel from itself. The
United States government must act with comparable
tough love toward the Palestinians. No Israeli
government, whichever party might constitute it, can put
up with the defiance of the Palestinian militants who keep
reiterating that their ultimate aim is to push the Jews into
the sea.
Yet the United States cannot replace Israel in the day-to-
day battle with the enemies of peace. We cannot police
the territories, for that task might become endless. What
American influence can achieve is to dry up the financial
and military support of the Palestinian war-makers.
A good first step came on Friday, when President Bush
ordered the Treasury Department to block the assets of
the leaders of the militant Palestinian group Hamas and
the charities that officials say help finance it. The group
had claimed responsibility for a bus bomb a few days
before that killed 21 people in Jerusalem.
But the United States can do more. It is within our power
to insist that other countries - both our allies and
enemies - freeze the financial accounts of militant
groups and to demand that they also cease supplying the
most violent Palestinian factions with weapons.
If this does not work, there is no choice but to cut off all
but the most basic humanitarian help that the United
States, along with many other nations, is giving to the
Palestinians. It will surely be an unpopular move, as we
are certain to hear statements of compassion from those
speaking out in the cause of human rights. But Israelis,
too, have the right to ride in a bus or go to a cafe without
endangering their lives.
In the end, the anger at these tough measures will fade.
The Palestinians will be left with their real problem: how
to find work and living wages in a region that is
economically depressed. And the two sides will have a
common cause, to find ways of helping each other wage
peace.
The United States must act now to disarm each side of
the nasty things that they can do to each other. We must
end the threat of the settlements to a Palestinian state of
the future. The Palestinian militants must be forced to
stop threatening the lives of Israelis, wherever they may
be. A grand settlement is not in sight, but the United
States can lead both parties to a more livable, untidy
accommodation. |
