After I read something Peter Beinart published at the New York Review of Books back at the end of January, I initiated corrspondence with the NYRB by first submitting a short letter-to-the-editor:
From: Yisrael Medad
Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2021 9:02 AM
To: Editor
Subject: Letter for PublicationPeter Beinart asserts that "Those Palestinians who can [vote in Israeli national elections] —the 'Arab Israelis' who hold Israeli citizenship—mostly vote for Arab parties that are, by custom, barred from Israel’s coalition governments" (What the Lincoln Project Gets WrongAbout Israel-Palestine, NYRB, Jan. 27). That assertion needs to be corrected.
Arabs have been enfranchised to cast their ballots in Israel's elections since 1949. In fact, the parties that traditionally received the most votes usually were Communist. That Israel, even until today, tolerates Communist parties supported mainly by the Arab minority, as well as pan-Arab nationalist factions, is a testament to its vibrant democracy. Moreover, these parties are not so much "barred" as not invited to join due to their principled ideological position which is anti-Zionist. It is not a racist policy as Arabs, as well as Druze, have served in government as ministers and deputy-ministers when members of other parties. Members of these anti-Zionist parties have been member of the Knesset Presidium.
The reply within two days:
February 2
Dear Yisrael
Thanks for this communication, but we do not believe there is any need to correct Beinart’s assertion. Further, I am afraid you are misinformed.
First, one of two leading parties in the Arab Joint List is Hadash, which supports a two-state solution and is thus, by definition, not anti-Zionist. Second, many governing coalitions in Israel in the past have included non-Zionist ultra-orthodox parties representing, in some cases, Jews who do not recognize the state of Israel. In short, it is a canard that Arab parties are not admitted to coalition governments of Israel because they do not pass some ideological test of Zionism. The salient political fact is simply this: that no Israeli Jewish politician is willing to govern in coalition with the elected representatives of Arab citizens of Israel.
In other words, Beinart's assertion was completely correct, and the counter-assertion is incorrect.
Best wishes,
Matt Seaton
Editor, nybooks.com
February 2
Dear Matt,
I think you have been misinformed.
Hadash is Communist and thus, by definition, anti-Zionist. It may recognize Israel as a state but that is not the same.
The Joint List comprises, as you surely know, four parties. "Leading" or not is an irrelevancy. But just as an aside, if the Ra'am Party pulls out, according to tonight's news, it will drop from 15 to 9 so how can one even judge what "leading" means?
As for the ultra-Orthodox parties, they define themselves as Zionist but claim their Zionism is Torah-based, whatever that means. Most actually do get to serve in the IDF in one form or another, something Arabs, the vast majority anyway, are loath to do. They even refuse in the main (I am sorry but exact figures are not at my fingertips) to do national service.
Moreover, to assert that "no Israeli Jewish politician is willing to govern in coalition with the elected representatives of Arab citizens of Israel" is a "salient political fact" is wrong as I pointed out that Arabs, elected in Arab lists as well as Jewish lists have served in coalitions.
I am sorry for disputing this so strongly but my suspicion is that you were provided that information and the person that did it either is ignorant or is purposely beclouding the issue.
As I have had letters previously published in the NYRB, I find it odd not to take a chance on me by publishing my letter, it isn't that long at all, and have Peter Beinart respond, you know, an element of open debate in his own name.
I trust your sense of 'fair play' would actually work in my favor.
Thank you for your reconsideration.
Yisrael
On February 11, I checked the latest issue and then wrote the following:
I see the new issue has appeared. My letter is not visible.
Can I assume my letter will not ever be published? Or is Peter still composing a response?
Yisrael
And the conclusion is:
Hi Yisrael
I'm afraid we don't publish letters in response to online-only pieces, unless the matter at dispute rises to the level of meriting a full Exchange between a correspondent and the author, and this didn't.Best wishes, Matt
So, I made a pitch:
From: Yisrael Medad
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2021 2:41 PM
To: Matt Seaton Subject: Re: Fw: Letter for PublicationThanks.Would submitting a piece to the online edition be a possibility for me then?
Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 9:44 PM Matt Seaton wrote:Of course, you may submit. But I would advise you against offering a right-to-reply type response piece to the Beinart; it's not something we do, and we simply would have to turn that down flat.
We are now in an era, 45 years on since the UN General
Assembly Resolution 3379 was adopted determining “that Zionism is a form of
racism and racial discrimination" and 30 years since it was rescinded,
when presumed intellectual conversation can call for the
dismantling of the Zionist project, openly suggest in one of
America’s leading newspapers there is no
need that a Jewish ‘home’ be a Jewish state in that it be replaced by an entity
called “Israel-Palestine”, a senior level church
officer can echo
a New Testament blood curse, applying it to Israel and a Congresswoman can retweet
a meme that Israel be eliminated by applying to it borders that
delineate another state if afterwards in was deleted. As the conversation gets
less intellectual and progressively ideological, even theological, the demands
made in relation to Israel worsen in tone, become malefic and eventually,
generate a sense of freedom for acts of illegality and eventually terror. This
is not marginalization but cancellation.
It is not that anti-Zionism has never been a
legitimate topic of debate. Of course it has. Indeed, a very small minority of
fanatic obscurantist Jews, inheritors of the Satmar Hungarian rejection of all human
efforts to re-establish a Jewish state, are quite active and find solace in
misrepresented Talmudic sources. There are Jews who support and promote all
forms of national identity, including one termed Arab Palestinian, but deny the
same to those, Jews and non-Jews, who wish to see Israel continue to exist and
flourish. There are anti-nationalist Jews steeped in progressive or communist
or socialist theories who cannot bring themselves to identify with Zionism.
A century ago, some 300 American Reform Rabbis attempted,
in
a letter published in the New York Times, to abort President Woodrow
Wilson’s approval of Palestine becoming reconstituted as the historic Jewish
national home. The American Council for Judaism took up the anti-Zionist baton
following the 1937 Reform Judaism’s decision rejection of the same. The Jewish
Bund prided in its anti-Zionism. The ultra-Orthodox Agudah preferred to see
themselves as the true Zionists, refusing to acknowledge full legitimacy of the
World Zionist Organization even while eventually forming an awkward coalition
with it.
These days, we witness the endeavours
of a plethora of Jewish anti-Zionist groups, including the
backing of a sham Twitter account of a long-dead anti-Zionist Rabbi, but it
need be made clear that anti-Zionism, once a position of theoretical debate, is
an historical fossil. At this time, with Israel's establishment and continued
flourishing, if actively advanced, it is no longer a philosophical matter but
one of eliminationist ideology (as illustrated by a
Congresswoman’s T-shirt) that promotes staticide,
that is the destruction of a state and endangering lives of upwards of 9
million humans as well as millions of Jews who would (not might) need to flee
to it due to an upsurge in anti-Semitism. An op-ed
recently published at the New York Times argues against sanctions that are in
place against Iran, a state sponsoring regional and even global terror that
also views a need to eliminate Zionist Israel, even through an
act of legislature, yet its author supports sanctions on Israel due to Jews
residing in Jerusalem suburbs, Hebron, the burial place of the Jewish people’s
patriarchs and matriarchs or my community village, Shiloh, where scientific
archaeological excavations conducted over a century by Danes, British, Israelis
and Americans, have proven the Biblical narrative.
Moreover, in the immediate sense, persons and institutions
who might also be non-Israeli such as Jewish and non-Jewish students who do
support Israel, find themselves under verbal, psychological and even physical
attack on campuses not only from fellow students or off-campus radicals but
their lecturers as well. Already in 1990, pro-Palestinian promoters were aware
of the need for progressive political support even as the messaging - “they
[Jewish Americans] control Capitol Hill…they have big money and fear on their
side” (at
2:38-43 in the clip) – is blatantly adoptive of anti-Semitic memes. We have now reached the point when
the moderator of an international affairs commission of a Christian fellowship
of 350 churches from more than 110 countries, representing over 500 million
Christians worldwide stated, falsely, that people are killed every day as a
result of the Israel-Palestinian conflict adding “the blood of the people of
Palestine will be sought from” Israel’s supporters thus employing a meme of
classic anti-Semitism.
Bret Stephens, who thinks that hard-core anti-Zionism
is indeed a form of anti-Semitism, penned,
“If anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and racist language is intolerable…might
we someday forbid not only advocacy of anti-Zionist ideas, but even refuse to
allow them to be discussed?” In connection with what can and what cannot be
discussed, I wish to take Stephens question one step further and ask: if the
negation of a people’s national identity and aspirations is legitimate, indeed,
if it is acceptable to even refuse to acknowledge that an ethnic community also
possesses national characteristics – as does anti-Zionism – cannot another
people’s claim to national identity undergo scrutiny, debate and even negation?
As an example, British Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs Ernest Bevin, himself quite unsympathetic to the idea of a Jewish
state, nevertheless had no compunction, in his
words in the House of Commons on 18th February, 1947, to admit
that “the Arabs...are therefore unwilling to contemplate further Jewish
immigration into Palestine. They are equally opposed to the creation of a
Jewish State in any part of Palestine”. Is it possible to express that point of
view today, especially as regards the position of Hamas?
Can one point out that the term “historic Palestine”,
geographically, always encompassed the territory that Jordan occupies? Can one
point out the Jordan was the occupier of the West Bank until 1967? Can one note
that the term “West Bank” was created only in April 1950 when Jordan annexed
that area? Can it be recalled that in the
United Nations Partition proposal of November 29, 1947, when delineating
the borders between the Arab State and the Jewish State, a recommendation that
was dashed when Arab-initiated violence broke out, never employed the
then-unknown term “West Bank” but rather “Judea” and “Samaria”?
Is it possible to recollect that between 1920-1948, a
Jewish population of several thousands who had been, in part, residing in Judea
and Samaria for centuries, in Hebron, Gaza, Nablus and Jerusalem’s Old City and
environs, as well as newer communities in the Etzion Bloc and on the shore of
the Dead Sea, were ethnically cleansed in a terror campaign instigated and led
by the most senior Islamic cleric in the country, a campaign which included
murder, rape, burnings and pillaging?
Is it allowed to point to the uniqueness of UNRWA, the
United Nations agency that provides humanitarian care for Arab refugees from
Mandate Palestine? That all the world’s millions of refugees have one agency
and the relatively few from Palestine have another? That to have been a “refugee”
all one needed was to have lived in Mandate Palestine for but two years
previous to May 1948? That the status of refugee is applied solely to the
descendants of males and also includes adopted children? That the true figure
of actual refugees is less than
200,000 according to a US State Department July
2018 report?
Is it permissible to know what topics are mentionable
and what are to be banished from all mention? And why? Are there any agreed
upon definitions of such? Or is but one narrative the accepted framework while
the other is denounced and deprecated?
Are acts of destruction committed by Arabs at
locations of Jewish legacy sites, such as was found after the 1967 war on the
Mount of Olives and over 30 synagogues in Jerusalem’s Old City discussable?
Hasmonean Palaces outside of Jericho, additional archaeological
sites or at the Temple Mount when a new, underground mosque was carved out
of Solomon’s Stables? Moreover, is the claim of a 10,000 year
old Natufian origin of the contemporary Arabs, made by the late Saeb
Erekat, open for discussion or to do so would be causing major
micro-aggressions?
If one is to hurl a charge of “illegal occupation”, is
it permissible to bring up the 19-year occupation and annexation of Jordan or
does one simply accept the proffered explanation that that occupation was
entirely legal in that the Arabs of Palestine requested to be ruled by Abdullah
I, even if the Mufti Al-Husseini had the monarch assassinated in 1951? When is
a narrative a genuine reflection of history and when is it but a cover-up for
bad politics or even plain revisionist history?
Zionism is, the narrative has it, a settler-colonial
enterprise. But did not the Arabs come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the
first third of the seventh century and, in a wave of conquest, subjugation and
occupation, overrun many lands including, in 638 CE, the Land of Israel, ruled
by the Persians who had conquered it in 614 CE from the Byzantine Empire, the
continuation of the Roman Empire that had conquered Judea in 135 CE and
altering its name to Palestina? What is a narrative, what is propaganda
and what is the historical truth?
Having long abandoned anti-Zionism, Isaac
Deutscher admitted in 1954 that that anti-Zionism “was based on a
confidence in the European labour movement, or, more broadly, a confidence in
European society and civilisation which that society and civilisation have not
justified.” Does there exist among too many contemporary Jewish progressives a
similar presumption of over-confidence? Or does their psychological and
ideological opposition to the concept of Jewish national identity overcome
rational incisiveness to what is actually occurring around them?
The more, it would appear, Israel strengthens its
position including diplomatic successes with Arab Islamic states, significant economic
advances and major contributions to the rest of the world in the fields of
science, health, agriculture, engineering and the like, the more the verbal
abuse increases. Bristol University professor David
Miller raged, “It's not enough to say Zionism is racism, Israel is a
settler colonial society...The aim of this is…to end Zionism as a functioning
ideology of the word.” Jews, who have long suffered from racist ideologies of Aryan
and White supremacism, have now been turned into people who benefit from a ‘white
privilege’ while the majority of Israel’s population is basically brown and
black and Israelis
are out-and-out “white supremacists”. Furthermore, university students
are being told “Zionism isn’t about self-determination, it’s about Jewish
supremacy” and that “white supremacy [equates] with Jewish supremacy.” This is
not solely verbal abuse but incitement to violence. It is the new form of the
oldest hate, now practiced by so-called progressive leftists.
Israel is not a state à condition que. It is a
state, as the 50-member
League of Nations decided in 1922, that once existed and need be
reconstituted, based on the historical connection of the Jewish people with the
territory of their national home. Two fundamental rights were recognized for
the Jews in their Land of Israel: the facilitation of Jewish immigration and
the encouragement of “close settlement by Jews on the land, including State
lands and waste lands”. For sure, the rights and position of other sections of
the population should not be prejudiced but those rights of the existing
non-Jewish communities in Palestine were defined as “civil and religious”, not national
nor political. Simply, Israel is.
No longer can there be suppression of discussion. No
longer improper application of academic terminology. No longer ignoring the
problems with the rival people claiming a more supreme right to the territory
on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. The debate over Zionism and the
activities intended to oppose Israel as the Zionist state, the result of a
3,000-year old national identity legacy of the Jewish people, has evolved into
a violent one, whether on campus or at work places. It does not solely target “Zionists”
but seeks to highlight Jews as Jews, which, incidentally, proves, if
backhandedly, that Zionism is indeed authentic Judaism.
Yisrael Medad is Research Fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, resides in Shiloh and comments on political, cultural and media affairs.
But the response was:
Hi Yisrael
Thanks for a look at this submission. I'm afraid I will have to decline it as we already have a piece assigned and in the pipeline about Hebron and the related political, territorial, and archaeological disputes, and this would clash too much with that. I hope you are able to find the right platform for your piece.Best wishes,Matt
Editorial discretion is a wonderful tool.I look forward to see how much I clash.Yisrael
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