Telling Friend From Foe

One of the most difficult things in life is to draw the line between friend and foe. Take the Palestinian terror groups.

Last week in Mecca, the Fatah terror group, which mixes the murder of Israelis with negotiations with Israelis, officially joined forces with the Hamas terror group, which murders Israelis while refusing to negotiate with us.

Although the agreement makes it clear that both are at war with Israel, on Sunday the Olmert government decided to reserve judgment on the terror unity deal. And Monday morning Vice Premier Shimon Peres warned that saying bad things about the Mecca deal would only weaken Fatah terror boss Mahmoud Abbas, whom we should strengthen because he likes to negotiate while killing.

Given how hard it is for Israel to identify its Arab foes, it is little wonder that identifying Jewish foes is a near-Herculean task.

Last month the American Jewish Committee took an important first step in this direction by publishing a paper by Prof. Alvin Rosenfeld from the University of Indiana entitled, "'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism." Explaining the difference between criticism of Israel and demonization of the Jewish state, Rosenfeld wrote, "To call Israel a Nazi state… as is commonly done today, or to accuse it of fostering South African-style apartheid or engaging in ethnic cleansing or wholesale genocide goes well beyond legitimate criticism." Rosenfeld noted that these descriptors of Israel, which aim to single out Israel "as a political entity unworthy of secure and sovereign existence" are today "part of a standard discourse among 'progressive' American Jews, who seem to take for granted that the historical record shows Israel to be an aggressor state guilty of sins comparable to Hendrik Verwoerd's South Africa and Hitler's Germany."

HAVING described the phenomenon, Rosenfeld proceeded to identify prominent American Jews, including New York University Prof. Tony Judt, playwright Tony Kushner, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, Noam Chomsky, and Adrienne Rich as leading Jewish lights in the leftist assault on the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our homeland.

Rosenfeld's paper evoked strong reactions in the American Jewish community. A New York Times write-up of the controversy entitled, "Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor," described how the same "progressive" Jews and their supporters are up in arms over being painted as anti-Semites. Judt opined that the point of the article was to silence them.

This of course, is pure nonsense. All the Jews in America couldn't silence Judt and his colleagues even if they wished to. As anti-Israel Jews, they will never lack prestigious forums from which to propagate their hatred for Israel.

Far from seeking to silence these hostile Jewish voices, Rosenfeld's essay simply serves to draw lines between friend and foe where such lines are important. The views of Kushner, Judt and Cohen are no less anti-Jewish than similar statements by non-Jews.

Rosenfeld's efforts, while important, are insufficient. The likes of Judt and Kushner use their professed Jewishness as a tool to advance the cause of Israel's denunciation. Others hide behind protestations of Zionism to undermine Israel's right to defend itself against enemies actively working toward its destruction.

CASE IN point is the Union of Progressive Zionists. The UPZ is the US campus representative of the Labor and Meretz parties as well as of Hashomer Hatzair and Habonim Dror. In its mission statement, the UPZ claims to be "a network of student activists organizing on campuses across North America for social justice and peace in Israel/Palestine. The UPZ was created to provide guidance, education and resources to students who seek to impart a progressive voice into the campus debate on Israel."

There is also UPZ's "progressiveness" to consider. Given that for four generations, American Jews tied their fortunes almost solely to the Left, expelling leftist groups from Jewish umbrella groups involves openly recognizing the painful fact that today the Left makes little place for the pro-Israel community in its ranks.

As Rosenfeld put it, "Because... the ideological package that informs progressive politics today links anti-Zionism to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-globalization, anti-racism, etc., one is expected as a matter of course to be against Zionism." Or as he quotes political scientist Andrei Markovits, "If one is not at least a serious doubter of the legitimacy of the State of Israel… one runs the risk of being excluded from the entity called 'the left.'"

THE LEFT'S abandonment of Israel is compounded by the fact that the Palestinian jihad, which is rooted in a Palestinian rejection of the notion of coexisting with Israel, has rendered irrelevant the "progressive Zionist" goal of forcing Israel to withdraw its forces and citizens from Judea and Samaria in order to establish a Palestinian state in the areas, as well as in Gaza and eastern Jerusalem. Instead of accepting this paradigm-shattering truth, "progressive Zionists" have chosen the path of radicalization. Rather than calling on the Arabs to abandon jihad and accept Israel, they have turned to criminalizing Israel for defending itself from the jihadist forces bent on the wholesale slaughter of its citizens.

Like Israel, if American Jews are to have any chance of properly defending themselves, they must first openly identify the trends. As political loyalties and alliances shift, a small people like the Jews must be willing to distinguish friend from foe. This is true whether the friend or foe in question is an Arab or a Jew; a self-proclaimed progressive or a self-proclaimed conservative.

Jerusalem Poast