Letter from a DOT-CONNer

by

David A. Harris

Executive Director, American Jewish Committee

April 1, 2002

            No, it’s not a typo. I’m not talking about the DOT-COMMers, but the DOT-CONNers. I’m referring to “Dot-Connecters,” that is, people who are capable of connecting the dots.

            As I watch the nightmarish events unfold day after day from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, from Haifa to Netanya, I cry out in anguish.

            Israel is under attack from vicious enemies who celebrate the culture of death and find joy not only in the path to so-called martyrdom but in killing innocent men, women, and children along the way. Everything and everyone is fair game: the sacred space of a Passover Seder or a bar mitzvah celebration; the targeting of the elderly and children; a restaurant that attracts both Arabs and Jews. The object is to slay as many people as possible.

There are allegedly heavenly rewards awaiting these Palestinian kamikazes. And there are earthly rewards as well, at least for their families. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein gleefully dispatches checks to the surviving relatives.

Under the circumstances, it would be nice to believe that the world is able to connect the dots and get what’s going on, but, with only a few notable exceptions, that would be asking too much, it seems.

Thank goodness for the United States.

President Bush, I believe, has connected the dots and gets what’s going on. Rather than choose the path of least resistance (which in this case would be craven appeasement of the Arab world), he has had the courage on several occasions to say what needs to be said.

He understands the fundamental point that Israel is a democratic nation fighting against an enemy that is linked to the global terror network and can no longer be trusted to do anything it promises. Using the essential guidepost, “Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are,” he has concluded that Arafat’s incontrovertible links with Iran, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and perhaps Al Qaeda as well, reveal all too clearly on which side of the fence Arafat sits.

President Bush grasps the bottom-line point that there can be no moral equivalence between a nation trying by all means necessary to defend itself against suicide bombers bent on killing civilians and those who recruit, train, brainwash, and dispatch those killers.

And there are a handful of other world leaders who also see the situation for what it is, though only a few have had the guts to speak out publicly.

At the same time, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for the United Nations to convene an emergency session to explicitly condemn the killing of Israelis. That’s never happened, nor is it likely to start tomorrow. The UN is a political body, and the deck is overwhelmingly stacked against Israel.

Nor would I expect, however much I might still hope, that the European Union would at long last issue a clear-cut, unambiguous statement criticizing Chairman Arafat for his encouragement of terrorism, his violation of one cease-fire after another, and his abject failure to lead the Palestinian people down the promising path of peace offered to them by President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak. After all, when was the last time that anyone can remember the EU doing any better than the carefully crafted utterances that regularly issue forth from Brussels, almost always tilted toward the Palestinians, regardless of events on the ground?

No, the member nations of the EU – usually with two notable exceptions, Britain and Germany – seem so blinded by their antipathy for Ariel Sharon, so reluctant to admit that their confidence in Arafat over the years might have been misplaced, so hesitant to incur the wrath of the Arab world and local Muslim populations, and so tied to a policy of evenhandedness, come what may, that they refuse to connect the dots.

Actually, the EU may be suffering from a form of cognitive dissonance, which is a psychological affliction reflecting the inability or unwillingness to reconcile conflicting or contradictory beliefs and attitudes.

After all, the EU knows down deep that Israel is a fellow democracy – the only one in the Middle East; that it tried in vain to achieve peace with the Palestinians on remarkably forthcoming terms, only to be met with the claim that there has never been a historical link between the Jewish people and Jerusalem and the demand for 3-4 million Palestinians to be given the so-called right of return to Israel; and that it now faces the deadly scourge of terrorism encouraged, if not directed, from the top. As the old proverb goes, “The fish stinks from the head.”

Yet the EU is unwilling to draw the obvious conclusions, instead lamely demanding still more proof of a PA-Iranian link, calling repeatedly for Israeli restraint notwithstanding the nature of the provocation, holding back on declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and offering Arafat, as “the only game in town,” just one more chance to prove his bona fides…and just one more chance…and just one more chance.

The only known cure for cognitive dissonance is a reality check, but that requires a willingness to admit that previously held beliefs may have been either mistaken or overtaken by events.

Nor can I expect all that much from the media. To be sure, there are certainly those with a firm grasp of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an ironclad commitment to fair, balanced reporting, but too often what gets aired or published is a whole lot less.

In some cases, there are reporters who’ve been assigned to the beat only yesterday because editors seek broader coverage of an ascending news story, but these reporters simply don’t have a clue about what’s going on, and it shows in their naive questions and uninformed comments.

In some cases, there are reporters who’ve succumbed to the romanticized notion that the basic narrative line is oppressor vs. oppressed, and, come hell or high water, that’s the departure point for the stories they file.

In some cases, reporters work for government-controlled media outlets, such as Agence France-Presse (AFP), and understand that there’s a certain line they’re expected to follow.

And in some cases, there are reporters who follow the unwritten rules of the game: If you want access to Palestinian leaders, you have to play along, or else you will be left talking to yourself, or, worse, face intimidation. After all, unlike Israelis who migrate to microphones like bees to honey, Palestinian spokesmen are deliberately few in number and can play hard to get, which allows them to control their message much more effectively than Israelis.

Much as American friends of Israel on occasion find fault with reporting here, and rightly so, the situation in Europe continues to be much more problematic. Sympathetic editorial writers and columnists are all but impossible to find, the traditional separation of news and opinion is frequently blurred, and the ingratiating, sometimes sycophantic reporting of the Palestinian side of the conflict is simply impossible to ignore.

Perhaps most disturbing of all is the appropriation of Holocaust imagery.

While La Repubblica (March 16), one of Italy’s two leading dailies, referred to the American camp for Al Qaeda detainees in Guantanamo as a “concentration camp,” El Periódico, a prominent Spanish daily, carried a profoundly offensive cartoon on March 15. The first panel, entitled “Warsaw 1940,” showed Nazi troops pointing their guns at Jewish children. The second panel, entitled “Ramallah 2002” and intended as a mirror image, showed Israeli troops pointing their guns at Palestinian children, with one Israeli soldier saying: “Our case is different. We are the chosen people.”

Meanwhile, El Pais, Spain’s most influential daily, has carried two long op-eds in the last two months by an unaffiliated American Jew who compared Israel’s actions in the West Bank to those of Yugoslavia under Slobodan Milosevic and who, in previous writings, suggested that Israel was behaving like the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. The first piece was entitled “Letter from an American Jew.” I submitted a reply suggesting that there were other American Jews who felt rather differently, but was told by the paper’s editors that, as they don’t believe in “polemics,” there was no room to publish it.

Incidentally, the first of the two pieces written by this harsh critic of Israel was also carried in Der Spiegel, Germany’s most prominent weekly news magazine. At least, the magazine published a protesting letter, even if the four other published letters were supportive of the author’s line.

While this is not the time or place to go into what’s happening in Germany these days, it’s a subject to which I’ll return in future letters. Suffice it to say that there seems to be a gradual but perceptible change taking place in Germany about Israel and the nature of the special German-Israeli relationship, certainly among younger people, but not only, and this does not augur well.

The one group that could be expected to understand and identify with Israel’s plight is fellow American Jews. That would seem a no-brainer. After all, aren’t we Israel’s international lifeline? Aren’t we the ones who to this day rue the fact that we could do so little during the Shoah to rescue fellow Jews and say “Never again” ad nauseam? Aren’t we the ones who in our fundraising campaigns speak of “one people?”

Needless to say, there are any number of American Jews who have expressed their support for Israel in tangible ways in recent months. These Jews understand that this is no time for silence. To the contrary, this is a moment to set aside business as usual. The moment will not wait for them. The time to act is now.

They have traveled to Israel despite the obvious danger, kept in touch with Israeli relatives and friends by phone or e-mail, contacted elected officials about Israel, written letters to the editor, called in to talk-radio shows, protested when the media has dealt unfairly with Israel, arranged pro-Israel programs and rallies, donated funds to pro-Israel organizations, bought Israeli products, discussed Israel with their non-Jewish neighbors and colleagues, and given their children a crash course in what’s going on and how to stand up for Israel in schools and colleges.

But, truth be told, there are too many others who have not.

Among them are many who care deeply about Israel, instinctively support the democratically elected government of the day, and worry profoundly about the threat to Israel. The problem is that they haven’t been sufficiently mobilized yet. Other than following the news and anguishing over it, they’re not sure what else to do or where to turn. It is time to reach these individuals and offer them concrete ways to demonstrate their support for Israel. It can be done, but it will require the sustained efforts of national and local leadership.

Regrettably, there are others who couldn’t care less. They live in a self-contained, self-satisfied world. Israel is simply not a part of their lives, and they do not connect what’s going on there – or even the virulent expressions of anti-Semitism in the Arab world or, for that matter, the anti-Semitic incidents in such European countries as France and Belgium – with their own lives in the United States. Some in this group are identified Jews who find fulfillment of their identity needs within the framework of the American Jewish community and seek nothing more; others are detached or even alienated from the community for one reason or another.

According to American Jewish Committee surveys, approximately 20-25 percent of American Jewry feel no identification with Israel.

            And then there is an important third group. It’s hard to quantify numbers. These are people who care about Israel but have qualms about what’s going on. They feel that they cannot in good conscience support the current Israeli government policy, they are pained by the plight of the Palestinians and the image of Israel as the aggressor nation, and they believe that peace talks must replace military actions.

Of course, within this group there are those whose views range across a spectrum. Some express their opinions publicly, while others choose not to; some propose what many would consider extreme measures, while others are far more moderate in their views.

            I wouldn’t suggest spending much time trying to convince Adam Shapiro, the Jewish-born Palestinian activist, to come home from Ramallah, or the “more than 600 (Jewish) contributors” who sponsored the quarter-page ad in the New York Times on March 17 calling for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel and a reduction in economic aid, and declaring that “Israel’s security policies harm all the peoples of the Middle East,” to consider the dangerous consequences of their misguided initiative.

On the other hand, I would devote far more attention to those American Jews who are open to discussion, seek answers to difficult questions, and want to do the right thing for Israel.

            All in all, I believe, American Jews could benefit from a wake-up call.

What we witnessed on September 11 was a declaration of war against the United States and Western values. It was also an attack on Jews.

            In the aftermath of September 11, the widespread effort in the Arab and larger Muslim worlds to peddle elaborate conspiracy theories about the alleged role of Israel, the Mossad, and Jews generally – in order to divert world attention from those who were truly responsible for the terrorist attacks – cannot simply be dismissed.

            The brutal kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in Pakistan, and his chilling last words about being a Jew, must not be forgotten.

            The widespread anti-Semitism in the Arab and Muslim media is real. When a medical professor at King Faisal University writes a column in a leading Saudi paper (Al- Riyadh, March 10) that asserts the Jewish need for Christian and Muslim blood to fulfill ritual obligations for Purim and Passover, we ignore at our peril the meaning of this age-old blood libel accusation.

            And incidentally, the current Syrian defense minister has written a widely disseminated book also pinning the blood libel canard on Jews. It’s safe to say that the book hasn’t hurt his standing in the Syrian government.

            The growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in Europe needs to be taken very seriously. When synagogues in Marseilles, Strasbourg, Lyon, Brussels, and other cities are attacked, when Orthodox Jews in France are hesitant to wear a kippah in public, and when Jewish schools are the focus of intense security, does this not touch us? Have we learned so little from history, especially about the slippery slope of anti-Semitism? Do we not feel a sense of kinship and interdependence with fellow Jews in other lands? Didn’t the events of September 11 once and for all puncture the myth of America’s geographic distance from the events emanating from the Middle East?

            Finally, we should be under no illusions. Israel is fighting for its very existence. If those who perpetrate terrorist acts in Israel believe they can succeed in bringing the country to its knees, it will only invite more and more such bombings. Remember that Hamas, which claimed responsibility for the recent attack on the restaurant in Haifa, referred to the port city as “occupied” land.

            Israel cannot be expected to negotiate under the threat of terror. It’s a formula for disaster, and not just for Israel. If the terrorists succeed in Israel, they will apply the lessons to other parts of the world as well; make no mistake about it.

The political solution that we all must continue to pray for, however remote it may appear for the foreseeable future, can only come about once the Palestinians realize that the terror campaign is entirely counterproductive; in point of fact, it is only serving to unify Israelis in a way that we haven’t seen for decades. Once considered the darling of the right wing, Ariel Sharon reflects the center of the Israeli political spectrum today.

            A couple of weeks ago, a number of European newspapers reported the results of a Ma’ariv poll showing that 60 percent of Israelis were unhappy with Sharon’s policies. The papers implied that the Israeli public was moving to the left, but in reality the same poll showed that those dissatisfied Israelis felt Sharon was not tough enough and saw Benjamin Netanyahu in a more favorable light.

            It was only a few years ago that many thought they saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Some Israeli leaders spoke about a new era dawning in the Middle East and a golden age for Jews worldwide. Some American Jews openly questioned the continued need for Jewish defense organizations and began to devote more of their time and resources outside the Jewish community. Now, it seems, we’ve been given yet another jarring reminder that history takes unexpected turns and that we have, as Robert Frost wrote, “miles to go before we sleep.”

            The more we Jews go down that road together, united by common purpose and resolve, the more likely we are to succeed. And a first step might be for all of us to connect the dots.

This is one in a series of occasional letters on current events. For copies of previous letters, please contact Alina Viera at 212-751-4000, ext. 203, or by e-mail at vieraa@ajc.org.