Regarding Peter Beinart, J Street and American Jewish leaders

Author Peter Beinart (The Crisis of Zionism) was in the news last week because he completed an extensive interview with an Israeli newspaper. As a self-styled  friend of Israel, he supports a two-state solution and advocates a boycott of Jewish products from Judea-Samaria. He worries that Israel’s democracy might not survive if we reject the two-state solution.

J Street claims on its website that it is a ‘Pro-Israel, Pro-peace advocate for Americans’. It, too, supports ‘two states’. It warns that if you don’t agree with them, you harm Israel.

For these and other American Jews, Israel must make concessions-- now. We must mid-wife a new Muslim state. Otherwise, they argue, Israel may not survive. We must give the Muslim what he wants. Then we will survive.

We have seen such advocacy before. Throughout modern Israel’s history, Jews have promoted anti-Israel ideas as pro-Israel. Virtually all require some form of retreat which, in a neighbourhood of bullies, never works.

Perhaps you’ve noticed: Jews like telling other Jews what to do. It’s a family thing. But families aren’t always warm and cuddly. Sometimes, families are nasty. We know this because Jews wrote the books on dysfunctional families—from Freud to Alfred Adler to Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique). Sometimes, unwise family members recommend behaviour that is not healthy.

Today’s version of the dysfunctional Jewish family is writ large. It’s no longer  about mom-and-pop. Now, it’s national; and because of electronics,  everything gets aired in public. We do this with panache-- a splashy website, an attention-grabbing book, a letter to Israel’s Prime Minister from no less than forty prominent American Jewish leaders: it’s all public-- and critical of Israel.

To respond to this public criticism, some think about these Jewish friends in a startling way: the friend of my enemy, they suggest, becomes my enemy.

Think about it: our enemy is the Arab-Muslim. These Arabs promote, glorify and celebrate the killing of Jews. Their leading religious figure, the Waqf of Jerusalem, says repeatedly (most recently in January, 2012) that killing Jews is an Islamic religious goal. The World Bank and the IMF declare (April 2011) that the survival of a ‘Palestinian’state depends upon cooperation with Israel, but the Palestinian Authority (PA) refuses categorically to cooperate with Jews. Their school textbooks demonize Jews and claim that all of Israel is ‘Palestine’-- not just Judea-Samaria, but Haifa, Tel Aviv and Ashdod as well. Their TV showcases children singing that they cannot wait to martyr themselves by killing Jews. The PA takes UN money for the purpose of educating children to stop smoking and uses that money to create puppet shows that call for their children to put down cigarettes—and pick up guns to kill Jews.

Nice people.

Our enemy calls us apes and pigs who must be slaughtered in a religious Jihad so that his ‘Palestine’ can be cleansed. The Jews, he tells his TV audience, have been ingathered in order to give the Arab the honour of slaughtering them for his god. Our enemy repeats these themes with gusto. Our enemy paints a national dream for his people that feeds on Jew-slaughter in the name of religion. Our enemy lusts to see Jews die—and he is not shy or secretive about it.

Our Jewish-American friends, however, cannot understand how we can reject a ‘marriage’ with these people. These Jews are highly-educated; but they  ignore fact to promote concessions to Nazi-style Jew-hate. Isn’t such behaviour dysfunctional? Clearly, these friends refuse to listen to the Arab reality. They believe that we cannot survive if we remain ‘single’. But we know from that same reality that we will not survive if we ‘marry’ with them.

Why would friends want marriage with unrepentant killers?  Our enemy has killed almost 24,000 Jews in Israel (and elsewhere) since 1948. Every peace effort has enraged him. Talk peace and he awakens-- to kill.

Check the record. Even unilateral efforts fail: Gaza worked out really well, right?

We know what our enemy wants. We see it almost every day. So when our Jewish-American friends ignore those almost-daily calls to kill Jews, we marvel at their dysfunction.

Those who befriend our enemy by advocating their empowerment do not watch Arab TV. Israel does. It’s a harsh world, Arab TV, especially if you’re a Jew. Arab TV is graphic. But it educates. It teaches in detail what our enemy will do once he gets his chance. Arab TV is so graphic it make us think twice about the intentions of our powerful American friends. Mostly though, Arab TV teaches us to be careful: the friend of our enemy could be our enemy.

American Jews should consider which side they empower when they push into the war to eradicate Israel. Do they really want to stand before G-d as the friend of our enemy?