Letter from a Professional Worrier

by

David A. Harris

Executive Director, American Jewish Committee

March 12, 2002

            You know the classic Jewish telegram – “Start worrying. Letter follows.” Please consider this a telegram and letter rolled into one.

            When summarizing my job description, I often refer to myself as a professional worrier. My line of work is also somewhat akin to political oncology, in that my colleagues and I deal all too often with the societal consequences of such gruesome pathologies as war, terrorism, intolerance, and bigotry.

            The Italians have a wonderfully apt term – deformazione professionale – which in English means “professional bias,” even if it doesn’t sound quite as good in translation.

            So, in the interests of truth in advertising, I put my cards on the table. I am a professional worrier, whose views may well be colored by the dark issues I deal with daily and whose judgment, therefore, could well be clouded by a professional bias.

            That said, as an American Jew, I am deeply concerned today, perhaps more so than at any time in a communal career that began in 1975.

Mind you, there have been many other tough moments for the Jewish world along the way: the adoption of the infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution by the UN General Assembly in 1975; the dramatic slowdown in the rate of Soviet Jewish emigration after the high point in 1979; the indescribable plight of Soviet Jewish prisoners of conscience and refuseniks; the enormous hurdles in rescuing Ethiopian Jews; the repeated acts of terror against Israel and Israeli targets abroad; the first Palestinian intifada, which began in 1987; the 39 Scud missiles that Iraq launched against Israel in the Gulf War; the bombing of the Argentine Jewish community’s central building in 1994; the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a fellow Israeli in 1995; the arrest of 13 Iranian Jews on trumped-up charges; and the incessant preoccupation of the United Nations with Israel’s every alleged misdeed.

At the same time, the period from 1975 onward had a bright side, so much so that it may well be viewed as a golden age in modern Jewish history.

After all, at the end of the day, not only did the Soviet gates open wide and 1.5 million Jews walk through to new lives in the West, but the Soviet Union imploded and its empire collapsed, which, among many other consequences, had a dramatically positive impact on both Jewish life and Israel’s strategic picture.

Although several thousand Ethiopian Jews tragically died en route to neighboring countries in the hope of eventually reaching Israel, many more successfully made the full journey and established a significant presence in the land that had been at the center of their prayers and dreams.

It took 16 years, but the UN General Assembly finally voided the “Zionism is racism” canard, only the second time the UN reversed a resolution it had previously adopted.

Israel grew, especially with the influx of one million Soviet Jews, and prospered, as it reached historic peace agreements with Egypt and, later, Jordan, signed what many thought to be the promising Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, and established links with a number of North African and Persian Gulf countries.

And American Jews reached new heights of access and influence, as we mobilized in one campaign after another to assist Israel and Jewish communities in need, all the while witnessing a sharp decline in the remaining barriers to full Jewish participation in the entire spectrum of American life. The culmination, of course, came with the nomination of Senator Joe Lieberman to the Democratic ticket in 2000. One surely didn’t have to be a Democrat to appreciate this remarkable moment in the nearly 350-year history of Jews on America’s soil.

(When Lieberman was named, I couldn’t help but think of the different generational reactions.

Had my grandparents been alive, my guess is that, though loyal Democrats, they would have voted against Gore and Lieberman, driven by the fear that if elected and things then went sour, the Jews – who else? – would surely be blamed.

On the other hand, members of my generation went around saying: “We never thought we’d live to see the day when a Jew, much less an observant Jew, would be nominated to the top ticket by either of the two major parties. Isn’t this a wonderful moment for America and for the Jewish community?”

And my kids, raised in an open, accepting society, shrugged it off, saying: “What’s the big deal?”)

I am an inveterate long-term optimist. The trajectory of history since the end of the Second World War, while most certainly not linear, has essentially been in a positive direction for the things that matter the most – the leadership of the United States as a bastion and defender of freedom, the well-being of Israel and the Jewish people, the health of democracy worldwide, and respect for human rights and promotion of mutual understanding.

But who among us can be optimistic in the short term? The sky is darkening and claps of thunder can be heard with increasing frequency.

First, the hourly news from Israel is beyond devastating. And bad as it is, many fear it will get worse before it gets better. There simply is no obvious way out, much as we may yearn for an atmosphere conducive to serious peace talks. No one has convincing answers for how to bring the daily carnage of Israelis by Palestinian groups– ranging from Hamas and Islamic Jihad to Arafat’s own forces – to an end. The Pentagon has an acronym it uses for moments like this – AOS (“all options stink”).

If Israel chooses to withdraw unilaterally from certain areas, such as Gaza, it could send the unintended signal of a weakening resolve, and thus embolden the Palestinians to intensify their terrorist campaign.

            If Israel goes the other way and seeks to reoccupy the West Bank and Gaza, Israel could come under unrelenting international pressure and face enormous military – and moral – challenges.

            In essence, Israel is at war, but forced to fight with one hand tied behind its back. As a democracy, there are certain things Israel cannot or will not do. Ironically, the Palestinians, for all their condemnation of Israeli military actions, still understand this better than anyone.

            Consider how other countries in the region have dealt with real or perceived threats.

            When Arafat yet again backed the wrong horse during the Gulf War,  Saddam Hussein, Kuwait summarily expelled all 300,000 Palestinians overnight, fearing that their continued presence in the country represented a potential fifth column.

            When Yemen also sided with Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia ousted 600,000 Yemenis from the country.

            When the Muslim Brotherhood began posing a threat to the Syrian president Hafez Assad, he sent an unmistakable message by leveling Hama, a center of their activity, killing as many as 15,000 residents.

            When Egyptian President Mubarak faced the danger of growing Islamic radicalism in his own country, he imprisoned, under the radar, thousands of suspects, throwing due process to the wind. How many of these suspects have been killed by Egyptian authorities? And how many continue to languish in prison?

            And it’s not worth wasting time talking about how Saddam Hussein has chosen to deal with insurgent Kurds and Shiites, or the methods employed by the Algerians or the Sudanese in protracted and grisly civil wars.

            No, Israel is totally different, and thank goodness for that, but the fact is that Israel’s adversaries see its democracy as a strategic advantage for them. After all, they reason, if four Israeli mothers could lead a successful campaign to withdraw Israeli forces from southern Lebanon, just think what 300 army reservists who refuse to serve in the territories might bring about.

            How long can Israel continue to cope with massive daily casualties across the length and breadth of this tiny nation? Or with the massive economic impact of recession and a drying up of tourism revenue that coincides with mounting military costs? Or with the growing international political pressure from nations whose motto might as well be, “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts”? Or from those in the international media who obsessively examine every Israeli action and, often ignoring balance, context, or objectivity, portray Israel in the worst possible light?

            Speaking of the media, it’s fascinating to see what goes on. I fully appreciate the challenges any major media outlet has in presenting a story as complex and multifaceted as the Middle East, and I also recognize that, as a friend of Israel, I may not always be the most objective observer. But sometimes I can’t believe what I read in print or hear on the news.

When the New York Times last week announced in banner headlines on page one, above the fold, that Syria had accepted the so-called Saudi peace initiative, only to report in the story’s third paragraph that the acceptance was conditioned on, among other things, “the right of return for Palestinian refugees” – which, of course, is a formula for Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state – what are we to think? And it was the same paper, the week before, I might add, which delicately described the Syrians as exercising “effective authority” over Lebanon, when, in reality, Syria is an occupier, pure and simple.

            Meanwhile, an MSNBC interviewer was asking former Prime Minister Ehud Barak when Israel would “return” the territories to the Palestinians, suggesting that Israel had seized land that once belonged to the Palestinians, rather than to Egypt and Jordan, which were the territories’ governing authorities at the start of the Six-Day War.

            My favorite came from a CNN reporter who interviewed – or rather lobbed softballs to – Hanan Ashrawi shortly after the September 11 terror attacks, including this whopper: “Ms. Ashrawi, it is very possible that more American lives have been lost in this terrorist attack – in this tragedy – than even the countless Arab [i.e., Palestinian] lives in the last five years….” Remember that at the time the death toll from September 11 was variously estimated at 5-15,000.

Israel’s national will is being tested as never before in this wave of terror that Arafat initially launched in the fall of 2000. While I am confident that Israelis will once again withstand this test and, at the same time, continue to protect their democratic institutions, they are paying an extraordinarily high price, more than those of us living outside Israel’s borders can imagine.

            Second, anti-Semitism is on the rise again.

            As Andrew Sullivan trenchantly wrote in the Sunday Times of London on December 23:

I’m not talking merely about editorials that seem to deny the right of Jews to emigrate to Israel; or leaders that come close to blaming Israel itself for the mass murder of its own citizens by Hamas terrorists. It is simply routine at this point to see “balanced” news reports from the BBC and the broadsheet British press that morally equate the actions of Israeli self-defense with the deliberate murder of civilian Jews by Palestinian terrorists. While Britain and America are allowed to fight a war against terrorism, Israel is urged to practice self-restraint every time another terrorist massacres another group of civilians in a restaurant or disco. Supporting Israel as a matter of right versus wrong is almost unheard of in polite society.

In normal times, this is lamentable but not disastrous. The Jews know something about survival. They can and will defend themselves. But in abnormal times, when anti-Semitism is spreading across the globe like a brushfire, it is deeply dangerous. Not since the 1930s has such blithe hatred of Jews gained this much acceptability in world opinion. Across the Arab world, in particular, the past decade or so has seen a shift from mere passive resentment of Jews to a paranoid anti-Semitism. That European elites want to ignore it, or – worse – pander to it, suggests we have learnt nothing from history.

The taboo on expressions of anti-Semitism that descended on much of the civilized world after the Shoah is eroding. Durban should have been a wake-up call. A UN conference convened to explore strategies for combating racism instead became a venue for promoting raw, unvarnished anti-Semitism, especially at the parallel nongovernmental forum. Everything was up for grabs; nothing was sacrosanct. The Holocaust, Zionism, and anti-Semitism – you name it and it was in dispute. Jewish delegates were harassed and intimidated, and required police protection.

Meanwhile, Arabic-language editions of the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion were readily available, and booklets with vile anti-Semitic caricatures were distributed by groups accredited to the conference. Three days after the conference ended, terrorists struck at the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and Durban disappeared from public consciousness. But we ignore the lessons of Durban at our collective peril.

In the Muslim world, with a few notable exceptions, anti-Semitism is quite widespread and deeply ingrained, as a forthcoming AJC-commissioned study will show in graphic detail. Yet where is it condemned in the international community?

When was the last time anyone remembers a discussion on the topic under UN auspices? Okay, I’m dreaming, but how about a major global campaign to shine the spotlight of exposure on the teaching of incitement in the Muslim world? After all, anti-Semitism is usually coupled with hatred of all “infidels,” emphatically including Christians.

Isn’t the fabric of religious tolerance for all faiths threatened in a country like the United States when, as the Washington Post reported on February 25, eleventh-graders at the elite Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia “file into their Islamic studies class, where the textbooks tell them the Day of Judgment can’t come until Jesus Christ returns to Earth, breaks the cross and converts everyone to Islam, and until Muslims start attacking Jews”? In Saudi-funded schools around the world the teaching isn’t much different.

For many diplomats and editorial writers, the subject is simply too radioactive, and they don’t want to risk antagonizing the Muslim world. Better, the thinking goes, to live in denial as long as possible or simply to resort as needed to ritualistic and platitudinous language about all religions having their extremist factions that distort the true meaning of faith.

For each of the past three years, the 53-member UN Commission on Human Rights approved a resolution under the innocent-sounding title of “defamation of religion” that cited only Islam, among the world’s many religions, as the victim of defamation. Believe it or not, as I learned during a recent trip to Geneva, the Commission may be presented with a companion resolution at this year’s session. This one would cite the hardships that Muslim minorities around the world – and no other religious minorities – have faced, ignoring the plight of Christians in Sudan, Bahais in Iran, etc.

Anti-Semitism has also been rearing its ugly head in Western Europe. Its sources are threefold: growing Muslim communities, extreme right-wing movements, and the fashionable “salon” anti-Semitism of some elites. 

Reminiscent of the 1970s, much of the anti-Semitism is thinly masked as anti-Israelism, but in truth, it doesn’t criticize specific Israeli policies but questions Israel’s very right to exist.

One illustration was a long op-ed piece last fall in the respected Italian national daily, La Stampa. The author called on Israel and its friends to engage in a collective mea culpa for the “original sin” of Israel’s creation and the damage it inflicted on the Palestinian population. The piece caused a stir in Italy, with a number of prominent left-of-center personalities supporting the author, and others taking her to task.

            France, a country to which I am deeply attached, is an especially telling case in point. While French Jews publicly debate among themselves the extent of anti-Semitism, what is indisputable is that there have been several hundred documented cases of anti-Semitism since October 2000, a frightening rise from previous years.

            What is also beyond question is that poorer and more religious French Jews, who often live cheek by jowl with North African Muslims in the suburbs surrounding France’s principal cities, are most vulnerable.

            When the historic Jewish cemetery in Carpentras, in Provence, was desecrated in 1990, more than 200,000 people, including then-President Mitterand and leaders of all the major political parties, marched in Paris in protest, after 10,000 gathered in Carpentras a day earlier for a solidarity service. A decade later, by contrast, France has become eerily quiet when Jews are targeted.

            President Chirac recently announced that France was not an anti-Semitic country, as if this would instantaneously end all discussion, and Foreign Minister Vedrine cited negative images of Israel seen by French Muslim youths on Arab television as seeming justification for their violent behavior.

In fact, when an American Jewish Committee delegation met with the foreign minister in New York in November 2001, and raised the subject of anti-Semitic incidents, he immediately dismissed it as a problem and added that resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict would end the danger for French Jewry.

Can this be a satisfactory answer, especially coming from a country that has only recently emerged from a 50-year period of denial of responsibility for the crimes of Vichy? Of what long-term value is facing history if its essential lessons are ignored or lost? Can anything serve to justify or excuse anti-Semitic behavior, regardless of what French Muslim youth believe to be happening in the Middle East, or what they think French policy is toward the region?

Might it be that, rather than exercising principled leadership in the face of French Jewish anxieties, the political leaders have deliberately chosen to “play down” – in the words of Roger Cukierman, the president of CRIF, the French Jewish umbrella organization – these concerns for domestic and external reasons? Could this be a harbinger of things to come in other countries with growing Muslim populations and strong ties to the Arab world?

France is now in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election. The outcome is likely to be close. French Jews number 600,000 and are prominent in every facet of the nation’s life. But there are four to six million Muslims in France, mostly from North Africa, and, while some are there illegally, many are not, and will vote on Election Day. Indeed, last summer several French newspapers reported on an internal Socialist Party memorandum recommending that the party take strong pro-Palestinian positions to attract more French Arab voters.

Similarly, neither major French political party wants to upset ties with Arab countries. There is simply too much at stake for the French economy, which relies heavily on exports to North Africa and the Middle East and the jobs they create at home, not to speak of France’s enduring diplomatic ambitions.

Remember that after a decisive downturn in Franco-Israeli relations in 1967, France sought to deny Israel ownership of five gunboats built under contract in Cherbourg, and Israel had to smuggle them out of the French harbor to Israel in 1969.

While Chirac was prime minister in the 1970s, France sold the Osirak nuclear reactor to Iraq. It was subsequently dubbed “Ochirac,” and eventually – and fortunately – destroyed by the Israeli air force in 1981.

There’s no doubt that Paris went soft on Iranian and Palestinian terrorism in an effort to ingratiate itself with Iran and the Arab world. In the same spirit, Paris refused to provide air space to American fighter jets taking off from Britain and targeting Libya in 1986, after Washington linked Colonel Qadhafi with the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque in which an American soldier was killed and dozens were injured. As a result, the jets had to travel around France, more than doubling the length of the trip.

            More recently, when the French ambassador to the Court of St. James referred to Israel as “that shitty little country” at a private dinner, what happened? Given the chance to retract his words, the ambassador instead only grumbled that an off-the-record conversation had been reported to the press. Meanwhile, it appears, the French government has taken no disciplinary action against the envoy.

Imagine that instead of Israel the ambassador had spoken of, say, Saudi Arabia. My guess is that he’d have been recalled to the Quai d’Orsay within minutes and never heard from again.

            And while on the subject of the recrudescence of anti-Semitism, what can one say about the brutal slaying of Daniel Pearl and his reported last words, “I am a Jew, my mother is a Jew”? As Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New Republic Online (February 25): “I cannot recall in recent memory a more unreconstructed example of what we prefer to think of as ‘medieval’ anti-Semitism.”

            Yet many in the press, writing about Pearl’s murder, inexplicably chose to minimize or completely ignore his last words and their meaning. I was in Europe at the time and noticed this in the papers there. Jonathan Mark, who writes a column entitled Media Watch for New York’s Jewish Week, reported on some striking findings of his own (March 8):

The New York Times story on Pearl’s videotaped death (Feb. 23) buried his Jewish last words in the 18^th paragraph, and then mentioned it just one other time amid numerous other reports and columns on the case. Pearl’s own Wall Street Journal, in a 2,016-word story (Feb. 21), didn’t mention “Jew” at all….Post-mortem editorials in the New York Times, Washington Post, Baltimore Sun…and dozens of other papers didn’t mention the word Jew.

On the other hand, Mark points out that in Pravda, of all places, Pearl’s identity as a Jew was not only noted, but “this very fact is quite enough for the militants.”

                        This brings me to my third and final point. What worries me almost as much as the tragic situation confronting Israel and the reemergence of anti-Semitism in some noteworthy places is the reaction – or lack thereof – of some American Jews. The meaning of these developments hasn’t fully penetrated.

Maybe it’s a vacuum in communal leadership. Maybe the message hasn’t been effectively conveyed by agencies and synagogues beyond their immediate constituencies. Maybe it’s plain and simple uncertainty about what to do at such a moment. Maybe it’s the disconnection between the privileged life we as American Jews lead in this blessed land and what’s going on beyond our borders. Maybe it’s an emotional detachment from Israel. Maybe it’s discomfort with media images of Israeli military action. Maybe it’s disagreement with the current Israeli government. Maybe it’s a lack of personal identification with Jews in other countries.

There are lots of possible maybes.

The bottom line is that some people seem largely untouched or unaffected by what’s going on, or, from my perspective, fail to see the larger issues at stake.

Somehow, Jewish leaders have to make the case for more awareness and activism, more organizational involvement, more political advocacy, and more contact with Jews abroad and especially in Israel.

If I needed reinforcement for my view, the point was driven home to me the other day by an Israeli diplomat stationed in the States. I called to check in and exchange views, as I periodically do.

He began a long discourse on American Jewry. In this hour of need, when Israel’s very existence was being challenged as never before, he was dismayed to discover that American Jewish friends were rather few and far between. Normally mild-mannered and rather upbeat, he was as depressed as I’ve ever heard him. His bitterest complaint was directed at local Jewish leadership in his region of the country. They went on with their lives as before, he asserted, focusing on local Jewish needs and broader civic concerns, seemingly indifferent to Israel’s struggle for survival. Israel was simply one among a number of agenda items, nothing more.

In the meantime, he said, Israel’s adversaries in the United States, smelling blood, were organizing as never before, seeking coalition partners among racial, religious, labor, and human rights groups, finding support on local college campuses, inundating the media with letters, corresponding with elected officials, and organizing demonstrations.

The bottom line, for him, was that now more than ever Israelis need to believe they are not alone in their bitter struggle. Yet increasingly they feel abandoned by fellow Jews who seem unfazed by events far off in the Middle East. Bad as that is psychologically, it could have long-term political consequences as well.

Do something, he pleaded.

In 1863, Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a prominent Russian writer and political activist, wrote a classic novel entitled Shto Dyelat?, or What Is to Be Done? The title is apt for us today, if not the contents.

I don’t think there’s any mystery about the kinds of things that need to be done. We need to educate ourselves and those around us, raise public consciousness, approach potential coalition partners, talk with elected officials, attend rallies, reach out to Israeli and Diaspora communities, participate in missions to Israel, and strengthen advocacy organizations like the American Jewish Committee. Most of all, we need to move from a business-as-usual attitude to a heightened state of activism.

Institutions and individuals are ultimately defined by how they act at moments they do not control. Those moments come, linger, and depart. But in those brief periods, we are challenged to show who we really are and what we truly stand for.

Years from now, what will be said of our response to the crisis at hand? Will we – Jews in the most successful Diaspora community in the history of our people – be able to assert that we did everything within our power to meet the challenges before us?

One of the victims of September 11, a recent graduate of Columbia University, lived by a simple philosophy given to him by his Greek grandmother: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift from God.”

May we use that gift wisely.