Jewish peace group criticizes Kerry:
Draft Statement on John Kerry's Campaign
(This is only a draft, and neither its substance nor its style has been agreed upon. It will be discussed first by the National Advisory Board of the Tikkun Community which meets on Sunday, and then by the Tikkun Clergy Advisory Board, and by the representatives of local Tikkun chapters who are attending the Tikkun Conference. And by the hundreds of people registered to attend the annual Tikkun Conference starting Sunday (details at www.tikkun.org-- at this point, it's still possible to come if you just show up at the Sheraton Crystal City in Alexandria, VA. across the Potomic from DC on the subway line the stop before National Reagan Airport). We are sending it to other Members of the Tikkun Community for your feedback. We want to emphasize that although we are talking here in a language that might be speaking to the interests of the Kerry campaign, the Tikkun Community itself never endorses candidates for office and is prohibited from doing so. We might find a similar way to make points to the Bush and Nader and Camejo/GreenParty campaigns from the standpoint of their electoral interests--but again without intending to suggest endorsement or participation in their campaigns. Our goal is to push for peace-oriented perspectives, and that is our sole concern, not getting anyone in particular elected to any public office.)
Many of us hope to see a new national leadership emerge from the campaign of 2004. So we are reluctant to criticize the campaign of John Kerry, because we suspect that a new Kerry Administration would be environmentally friendly, supportive of women's rights, respectful of civil liberties, and likely to have budgetary priorities that do not sacrifice the interests of the poor and the middle class in order to benefit the already rich.
So it is deeply disturbing to us to see Senator Kerry taking stands on Iraq and on Israel/Palestine that we believe are likely to lessen his popular support in 2004. On Iraq, Kerry positions himself as having only minor tactical disagreements with President Bush. He calls for more reliance on our allies, more commitment of forces, perhaps a shift to emphasize the military war in Afganistan or to extend it to Pakistan to fight Al Queda. On Israel/Palestine, Kerry recently said he was 100% behind President Bush's recent accord with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, an accord which overturns previous U.S. policies that had called for a return of Israel to the pre-67 borders and which had described Israel's West Bank settlements as "obstacles to peace." Bush, with Kerry's support, now supports Ariel Sharon's expansion of Israel in recognition of "demographic realities" (that is, the creation and expansion of West Bank settlements, a policy developed by Ariel Sharon in the 1980s precisely to "create facts on the grounds that would become irreversible"). Most troubling, Kerry has no criticism for the fact that this decision determining the fate of Palestinians was made without including them in the discussion.
There are two grounds to challenge this direction in Senator Kerry's campaign. First, there is the strategy point. There are some inside the Democratic Party who believe that there is enough negative feeling toward George Bush to win an election for Kerry, and therefore the way for Kerry to win is to make sure he doesn't take any controversial stands that could lose him support, and to just focus on his positives. These people argue that there is too much support in the U.S. for the war and for Israel's policies toward Palestinians to risk any statement that might put Kerry in opposition to majority sentiment. We believe this to be thinking that is stuck in the past, and actually has not worked for the Democrats in the past either. One of the major themes of attack against Kerry is that he is wishy-washy and another liberal who is liberal about his liberalism, and will switch positions depending on the latest polls. By taking a more principled and visionary critique of the reliance on militarism and war, Kerry could belie that "wimpy" and "indecisive" charge. Moreover, although Kerry may raise smart criticisms of this or that strategy employed by Bush in Iraq, Americans have historically shown an unwillingness to change national leadership during a war, so unless Kerry can show that we are not in a legitimate war, and that we ought to take a fundamentally different direction, he risks becoming victim of the "don't switch horses in midstream" mentality.
Second, there is the principled point. Americans are legitimately fearful today of the growing anger we face from people all around the world. Yet we've learned all the wrong lessons from the experience of Israel/Palestine. After 37 years of Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the people of Israel areless secure than they were when the Occupation began. The reality is that domination over the Other is not a path to security and peace. Instead, what is needed, both in the Middle East, and globally, are policy directions which convey a genuine sensitivity to the needs of the people of the world, delivered with an ethos of generosity and respect. If the United States became known as the world's leading force seeking an end to global poverty, hunger and homelessness, for rectifying the environmental damage rather than blocking environmental treaties, and for building a global system of health care, education, and economic plans that benefitted the poor as much as the wealthy, we would have gone a long way to drying up the cesspools of despair from which the terrorists draw their recruits. A global Marshall Plan aiming in this direction, and supplementing, though not replacing, a strong military, could be a far more convincing way to many Americans to build a sustainable program for Homeland Security.
Similarly, the US would make a far more serious contribution to Middle East peace if, instead of giving Ariel Sharon a blank check for Israeli expansion, it would instead actively support the Geneva Accord which provides for a two state solution that is respectful to the fundamental needs of both sides.
The key is for Kerry to articulate a vision of a world in which the ethos of cooperation and generosity have replaced the ethos of domination over the other as the primary way to achieve security. The problem with liberals in the past is that they have backed away from their own more idealistic views when challenged. But a powerful defense of an ethos of generosity as a path to security could be coupled with a withering critique of the failure of the path of militarism. And it is precisely this approach which might allow Americans to consider switching paths in mid stream.
Unless Senator Kerry does make a change of this sort, the appeal of Ralph Nader will grow among those who are no longer willing to accept militarism at the center of American life. Recent polls showed Bush with 48% of the vote, Kerry with 43% and Nader with 6%. That 6% could be the difference between winning and losing for Kerry. For a significant number of people attracted to Nader, the failure of Kerry to articulate and fight for a substantially different approach to foreign policy is decisive. Some recognize that Israel's best interests lie in peace, not conflict, and so are deeply dismayed that Kerry has aligned himself with the most right-wing sections of the Jewish world in the U.S. by signing on to the Bush/Sharon Axis of Occupation. It will be very hard for those who know that the Jewish people have been facing escalating levels of anti-Semitism as a result of feeling the need to defend Israeli policies that are repressive and self-destructive to get enthusiastic over a Kerry candidacy which promises to support the very right-wing forces in the Jewish world that got us into the mess in the first place. Others are concerned that staying the course in Iraq will lead to a return of the draft in the United States and an endless quagmire. If Kerry cannot provide a different path, many of these people will find themselves choosing between not voting at all or voting for a protest candidate.
On both principled and pragmatic grounds, Senator Kerry should chart a visionary approach to foreign policy. We in the Tikkun Community invite him to meet with us to discuss the way that these directions might be articulated in the coming months.
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