Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch Beans Beinart

Someone claimed that Peter Beinart was present at the Reform Rabbis CCAR Convention in New Orleans on March 30, 2011 when Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, son of an acquaintance of mine, Rabbi Richard Hirsch of Jerusalem, had this to say to him but actually, I think, it is from June 2010:

...So – what is not-so-good in Peter’s analysis? I will highlight four points:

As I read it, the main assertion of his important article, entitled “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” is that the Jewish Establishment bears central responsibility for pushing Jews – especially young Jews – away from Israel...Come on: You mean to tell me that if we only criticized Israel more our Jews would be less alienated from Israel; that the reason they are becoming alienated is because we are all marching in lockstep with some neo-conservative philosophy that has overtaken American Judaism?

There is alienation occurring; there is a distancing taking place, but it is not because of AIPAC or the American Jewish Committee or the Jewish Establishment. It is because of what we rabbis confront every day.

Anyone who has spent any time with liberal and progressive Jews knows that identification with Israel tends to be in direct proportion to identification with Judaism. Identification with Israel is the consequence of Jewish identity, not its cause – especially for younger Jews. American Jews identify with Israel if they identify with Judaism. If they do not identify with Judaism they tend not to have strong feelings for Israel...

...We ourselves, Reform rabbis and leaders of the URJ, are on the AIPAC board.  You can say a lot of things about us, but you cannot credibly claim that we have been snookered or intimidated by a cabal of neo-conservatives who have silenced our voice, and this is what is causing progressive Jews to become alienated from Israel.

...I believe in pluralism...But I have red lines. If Jews, in the name of Judaism and the Jewish community, advocate boycotting Israel; if they lobby for UN and international sanctions against Israel; if they propose divestments; if they pressure Congress to reduce foreign aid; Then – the organized Jewish community – what Peter calls the Jewish Establishment -must oppose these forces with everything we’ve got...these views are marginal in the Jewish community...[and] these views threaten the very existence of Israel. I draw the line at restricting Israel’s right or capacity to defend itself...[and]...these views are morally outrageous, especially if you express them in the name of the Jewish people. Not in my name.

...It is reflective of the mass confusion of our era when we allow a small democracy fighting for its life in the world’s worst neighborhood to be savaged as if it were an anti-democratic dictatorship; savaged by forces that are themselves anti-democratic dictatorships and who perversely appropriate the very language of human rights that we progressives developed over centuries of hard struggle.

It is not the language of liberal Zionism that has been drained of meaning, as you write, Peter; it is the language of human rights that has been drained of meaning.

...Israel is on the front lines of the free peoples of the world facing down what you, Peter, called Islamist totalitarianism. It threatens Israelis like no other people in the world. It is right across the border, coming ever closer to the heartland, casting a deepening shadow over the Middle East and slowly surrounding the Jewish State. And as long as that threat remains, defeating it must be Jewish liberalism’s north star.

Methods for defeating totalitarian Islam and other threats to Israel are a legitimate topic of internal liberal debate. But the centrality of the effort is not. The recognition that Jewish liberals face an external enemy more grave and more illiberal than Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman should be the litmus test of a decent left.

Read it all.