Review of Oren Kessler’s Palestine 1936: The Palestinian-Zionist Conflict as a Zero-Sum Game

By Claudia Moscovici

In his new book, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, New York, 2023), Oren Kessler traces the roots of the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis back to the Arab revolts of 1936-1939 against the influx of Jewish immigration as well as against colonial rule by Great Britain: in other words, to the crucial decade before the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 (and what the Palestinians view as “Nakba”, or the “catastrophe” of losing their autonomy and homeland). Kessler offers readers a deeper understanding of the conflict that pervades news about the Middle East to this day by recounting the story “of two nationalisms, and of the first major explosion between them. The rebellion was Arab, the the Zionist counter-rebellion—the Jews’ military, economic, and psychological transformation—is a vital, overlooked element in the chronicle of how Palestine became Israel” (Palestine 1936, 2). Unlike other notable books about this longstanding conflict, such as Micah Goodman’s Catch-67, Noa Tishby’s Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, or, for a perspective more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, Mehran Kamrava’s The Impossibility of Palestine, Kessler’s Palestine 1936 presents the historical origins of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict in as impartial, nonjudgmental and noneditorializing a manner as possible, without attempting to cast blame, exculpate, justify or even propose viable solutions.

What emerges from Kessler’s study of this controversial and much-debated subject is a richer and fuller picture of how and why the Palestinian-Zionist conflict became something very close to a zero-sum game well before the establishment of the state of Israel. Consequently, Palestine 1936 also helps explain why this conflict goes on so heatedly to this very day and why even good-faith efforts to end it largely fail. In game theory, a zero-sum game describes any situation where gaining advantage by one side entails an equivalent loss by the other side. Zero-sum games are the exception not the rule in politics. When countries go to war, their conflict is often described by their rulers or leading ideologues as a zero-sum game in order to simplify complex socio-political circumstances and rile people up emotionally into demonizing the other side, so that they are more likely to blindly fight “the enemy”. Yet, in actuality, most wars or political tensions are not a zero-sum game and, as successful international diplomacy and negotiations amply illustrate, often both sides stand to gain from peace, economic relations and stability.

Unfortunately, the Palestinian-Zionist conflict—I call it that because, as indicated, it preexisted the establishment of the state of Israel—is not one where negotiations have been very successful. The best way to illustrate a zero-sum game between two peoples making claim to the same strip of land is not by showing the worst elements of both peoples (such as terrorists or bigots), but rather the way Oren Kessler does it in Palestine 1936: by focusing on historical leaders from both sides who represent the best of both societies and who make genuine, good-faith attempts to find peaceful solutions for their people. Although Palestine 1936  covers many of the leaders for both the Palestinians and the Zionists, in my estimation the most notable figures, which I’ll focus on in this review, are the Palestinian intellectual and Assistant Attorney-General of Palestine under the British Mandate, Musa Alami, and his Jewish Zionist counterpart and future first prime minister of the State of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, with whom Alami had several friendly, earnest discussions about how to best accommodate both Palestinians and Jews in Palestine. Before we delve into the nature of their (largely failed) attempts to offer a mutually satisfactory solution, I’d like to first briefly summarize for the general reader the situation in Palestine during the period of time depicted by Kessler in this book.

Between 1936-1939, Palestinians led a series of popular uprisings and worker strikes that is referred to as “the Great Revolt” against the British colonial administration, pushing for political autonomy and an end to the open-ended and growing Jewish immigration as well as against Jews buying Palestinian land in order to establish a larger Jewish presence (and, later, their own state) in Palestine. Before the Jewish mass immigration, which increased with a great sense of urgency with the rise of European Fascism, Palestinians and Jews got along pretty well. Jews were a small minority in Palestine. A significant spark of the conflict between them was the Balfour Declaration of 1917, issued by the British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in a letter to the prominent Jewish leader and banker Lord Rothschild, in which the latter announced British support for a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine”. In part with this British support—which, incidentally, was not unwavering or without its own contradictions–over the course of the next two decades, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased to the point where Jews comprised 1/3 of the total population of Palestine by the mid 1930’s. That posed a serious problem for the Palestinians. The 1936 revolt was sparked by a dramatic increase in Jewish immigration in 1935, from 57,000 to 320,000 Jews. There were two phases in the Great Revolt, which had different focal points and leaders. The first phase, which began in April 1936, was largely organized by the urban leaders and the Palestinian elite and manifested itself primarily in strikes and politial protests. By October 1936, the British administration defeated this uprising using both the carrot and the stick: they offered some political concessions (talks of a slowing down of Jewish immigration and greater native autonomy) and as well as issuing threats of imposing tougher repressive measures, such as martial law. As things didn’t change much following the first revolt, a peasant revolt followed in late 1937, which was suppressed by the British administration.

Kessler’s book reveals that the most influential leaders in Palestine at the time tended to be mediating figures between the West and Palestine: Western-educated Palestinian leaders, such as Musa Alami, who often acquired positions of power within the British colonial administration in Palestine yet at the same time had a deep understanding of and loyalty to their people. Despite their distrust of Zionism, these Palestinian leaders were usually not anti-Semites. In a telling anecdote, Kessler recounts that Faidi al-Alami, the Mayor of Jerusalem and Musa Alami’s father, said to a Jewish Zionist acquaintance visiting him from Berlin: “It’s not true that we opppose the Jews moving here… On the contrary, the Jews are wanted—they’re a stimulating, fermenting, progressive force. The question is one of numbers. They are like salt in bread—a small amount is vital, but a large amount is even worse than none at all” (Palestine 1936, 9). It was the mass immigration of Zionists, he argued, not the fertile intermingling of Arab and Jewish cultures, that caused major concern for Palestinians. According to Kessler, his visitor confirmed his fears by retorting that Jews didn’t want to be the salt, but the bread itself in Palestine. For Zionists, Jews, increasingly discriminated against and mistreated in Germany and throughout the world, were in urgent need of their own homeland in Palestine. Their survival depended on it. This small snippet of a conversation already sketches the outlines of something close to a zero-sum game between Jews and Palestinians in Palestine.

Musa Alami attempted to find solutions to this problem. Cultured, multilingual, almost universally respected and liked by Palestinians, Jews and the British, he was educated at the American Colony as well as at the French language Ecole des Freres. He subsequently studied law at the University of Cambridge, which enabled him to become the private secretary of the High Commissioner of Palestine, Arthur Grenfell Wauchope. The latter trusted him to the point that whenever anyone gave him a report that contradicted Alami’s, he famously retorted, “Musa tells me otherwise” (Palestine 1936, 35). Alami met several times with his Jewish counterpart, David Ben-Gurion, and even discussed with him the possibility of something resembling a two-state solution in Palestine, with Jews inhabiting a part of (what would become) Tel Aviv in a Muslim majority Palestine.  He was quite firm, however, that Palestine belonged primarily to the Palestinians, making it clear to Ben-Gurion that he did not approve of Arabs selling Palestinian land to Jews. Ben-Gurion recounted that Alami told him that he would have preferred to leave Palestine undevelloped for another hundred years until the Arabs could develop it themselves rather than sell it even at advantageous, high prices to Jews. That was the pivotal moment when Ben-Gurion, who understood and sympathized with Alami’s perspective, realized that they had reached an impasse not only in their discussions, but also, more importantly, between their people.

Ben-Gurion himself was a man of immense talents and a visionary. He was born in Russian-ruled Poland and immigrated to Palestine in 1906. He rose to prominence rather quickly and, from 1935 to 1948, became the de facto leader of the Jewish community and, once the state of Israel was established, its first prime minister. Well educated and a polyglot, Ben-Gurion had a deep loyalty to the Jewish people and commitment to establishing their own state in Palestine. What distinguished him most from many other Zionists, however, was his ability to empathize with the Palestinians and describe things to his own community from their perspective.  Kessler recounts how in meetings with other Jewish leaders, Ben-Gurion would say “‘I want you to see things for a moment with Arab eyes…. They—the Arabs—see things differently, exactly the opposite of what we see’” (159). He would try to get his peers to understand the other side’s position without demonizing, caricaturizing or in any way reducing the humanity of the Palestinians: “‘There are two peoples’ in Palestine, he declared, drawing out the words for emphasis. ‘The Arabs are not to blame if they do not want this country to stop being Arab… our enterprise is aimed at turning this land into a Jewish one’” (160). The impasse reached by Alami and Ben-Gurion in their attempts to find viable solutions for their people is very telling. If even well intentioned leaders and diplomats continue to grapple to this day with the problems identified by these early, visionary Palestinian and Jewish leaders, which are described so thoroughly and dispassionately by Oren Kessler in Palestine 1936, it’s because Palestinians and Jews continue to struggle with the same (close to) a zero-sum game between two peoples that both have good reasons to claim rights to the same tiny strip of land.

Kreisky and Wiesenthal: Review of Kreisky, Israel and Jewish Identity

By Claudia Moscovici

Although Bruno Kreisky and Simon Wiesenthal were political rivals, I deliberately chose the title “Kreisky and Wiesenthal” for this article to highlight two very different ways of being Jewish in Austria right before and after WWII. As is well known, there couldn’t be two people of more different political and personal dispositions than Bruno Kreisky, the Socialist Chancellor of Austria from 1970 to 1983, and Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter. Daniel Aschheim’s new book Kreisky, Israel and Jewish Identity (University of New Orleans Press, 2022) draws upon a wealth of primary documents as well as his own interviews with those who knew or worked with these famous men to shed new light upon their infamous feuds as well as upon Bruno Kreisky’s politics in general. This subject is right up Aschheim’s alley, who has been Deputy Consul General of Israel to the Midwest since 2020 and holds a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a B.A. in Government, Diplomacy and Strategy from Reichman University (IDC Herzliya). His book examines Kreisky’s luminary yet at times controversial political career as well as his well-publicized feud with Wiesenthal in order to probe deeper questions about the nature of Jewish identity (or identities), the role of post-war Zionism in the survival of the Jewish people, and the best way to preserve and honor the memory of the Holocaust. While sympathetic to Kreisky’s many achievements, Aschheim’s fair and even-handed analysis reveals that there’s not one normative way to be Jewish. As Kreisky’s and Wiesenthal’s own divergent responses to the post-war era indicate, Jewishness, particularly for Diaspora Jews, is deeply rooted in one’s unique personal and cultural experiences. In so far as one takes a given Jewish identity (and, by extension, course of action) as normative, one is bound to have the kind of tension and disagreements that Kreisky and Wiesenthal (in)famously had.

In many respects, Bruno Kreisky represents the epitome of the “acculturated” Jew. He was born in 1911 in Vienna in a family of middle-class non-observant Jews. At the young age of 15, Kreisky joined the Socialist Party of Austria.  When the Socialist and Communist parties were banned by Engelbert Dollfuss, the right-wing Chancellor of Austria from 1932 to 1933 and its Dictator from 1933 to 1934, Kreisky continued participating in the Socialist underground until he was arrested in January 1935 (to be subsequently released in 1936). He served time in jail along with Nazi party members who were also political prisoners and, strangely enough, forged an unlikely camaraderie with some of them. Although numerous members of Kreisky’s own family perished during the Holocaust, he managed to escape by immigrating to Sweden, where he remained until the end of WWII. When he returned to Austria in 1946, he reintegrated smoothly into politics and rose in popularity. A decade later, in 1956, he was elected to the Austrian Parliament as a representative of the Socialist Party and became its chairman in 1967. In 1970, Kreisky became the first Socialist as well as the first Jewish chancellor of Austria: two remarkable achievements, particularly coming on the heels of the Holocaust in a country where anti-Semitism was still quite prevalent and many former Nazi leaders and sympathizers reintegrated into the Austrian bureaucracy and political scene.

As Aschheim’s book reveals, Kreisky was able to thrive for a record 13-year chancellorship—eponymously known as the “Kreisky era”—by being true to his cosmopolitan background and forging sometimes controversial political alliances with conservatives to retain power. As is well known, for Socialists class issues are far more important than religious or ethnic allegiances. Kreisky considered being “Jewish” largely a religious identity. Of course, given that he was agnostic since adolescence and still regarded himself as Jewish throughout his life, his definition of Jewish identity was in actuality broader and more fluid than he often professed. His loyalty to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel was similarly complex and in some respects even contradictory.  While at times supportive of Israel, he had rather tense diplomatic relations with Golda Meir, the country’s Prime Minister, over Zionism in general as well as his decision in 1973 to negotiate with Palestinian terrorists in exchange for liberating hostages and changing the location of the Austrian transit camp for Jewish immigration to Israel from the Schoenau castle to another location. For him, the fate of Israel was not a priority and the existence of a Jewish state was not a necessity. Regarding himself as a Socialist Austrian first and foremost, Kreisky focused primarily on enacting a series of much-needed post-war progressive economic and social reforms in his country: including the expansion of employee benefits; cutting the work week to 40 hours; instituting a four-week vacation; and issuing legislation in support of women’s rights and equality. These measures were extremely popular and have a lot to do with the longevity of the Kreisky era.

While winning the approval of most Austrians, Kreisky’s views, as the Chancellor’s long-lasting feud with Simon Wiesenthal would reveal, proved to have some limitations not only when it came to foreign policy towards the state of Israel, but also when it came to remembering and honoring the Holocaust. Born in 1908 in Buczacz, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire that subsequently became part of Poland, Simon Wiesenthal belongs to the same generation as Bruno Kreisky. But his trying life experiences shaped a radically different worldview and, above all, a much stronger sense of Jewish identity. When the Nazis invaded Poland in September 1939, Wiesenthal was living with his family in Lvov.  Along with other Jewish men, he was sent to forced labor. As historian Tom Segev elaborates in his monumental biography Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends (New York: Doubleday, 2010), Wiesenthal and his wife Cyla were subsequently transferred to the Janowska concentration camp and assigned forced labor at the Eastern Railway Repair Works.  Simon Wiesenthal used this role to secretly collaborate with the Polish Underground, Armia Krajowa, and share information about the German railway transports with them. In a roundup in the Lvov Ghetto, Wiesenthal’s mother was selected, transported to and killed at the Belzec concentration camp. By the end of the war, Simon Wiesenthal and his wife counted 89 of their family members who had perished in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal himself miraculously survived several concentration and labor camps, including Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald and Mauthausen, sometimes literally crawling on all fours from the pile of corpses back to the realm of the living. By the time American soldiers liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945, Wiesenthal was barely alive, weighing only 90 pounds and surviving on 200 calories a day. He would be haunted the rest of his life by his nightmarish memories of the Holocaust, describing in interviews gruesome scenes he had witnessed, such as Nazi soldiers throwing emaciated Jews off the cliff quarry at Mauthausen. Upon liberation, weak and emaciated as he was, he offered to help the American Counterintelligence Corps by compiling a list of Nazi war criminals as well as attempting to reunite what remained of the families of Jewish victims. Thus began his extraordinary career as the most famous Nazi hunter, whose information, persistence and constant presence in the media played a big role in the eventual captures of notable war criminals such as Adolf Eichmann (the organizer of the death transportation and deportation of millions of Jews), Franz Stangl (the Commander of Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps), and Hermine Braunsteiner (the sadistic guard at Majdanek and Ravensbruck, dubbed the “Stomping Mare”, who trampled to death women and children in the camps).

While their life experiences led these two notable Austrian Jews to divergent paths that didn’t necessarily have to lead to conflict, a feud between Wiesenthal and Kreisky was sparked in 1970. Wiesenthal claimed that four members of Kreisky’s cabinet had been former members of the Nazi party. Kreisky countered that Wiesenthal’s Documentation Center of the Association of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime was little more than a private, Mafia-like spy ring accusing people of being Nazis without offering sufficient compelling evidence. More egregiously, Kreisky accused Wiesenthal, who as mentioned had suffered and almost perished in several concentration camps, of being an agent for the Gestapo. For this, Wiesenthal sued him for defamation, a lawsuit that he eventually won in 1989, nine months after Kreisky’s death. The victory was mostly in principle, however, since the former Chancellor’s heirs refused to pay the fine. The viciousness of the heated disagreements between Kreisky and Wiesenthal, the most famous Austrian Jews at the time, as well as the rancor behind their mutual recriminations, shows what can happen when one becomes intolerant and normative about what constitutes the right “Jewish identity.” There shouldn’t be—and there can’t in fact be–one correct way of being Jewish. Kreisky couldn’t have achieved what he did—essentially rebuilding and regenerating Austria after the war—without his Austrian-focused Socialist program. He wouldn’t have even been elected had he not presented himself as an Austrian Jew rather than, like Wiesenthal, as a Jewish Austrian. And without Wiesenthal’s promise to himself—and, more importantly, to the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust—never to forget their suffering and to bring their murderers to justice, many more Nazi perpetrators would have gotten away with mass murder. Worse yet, the Holocaust might have been absorbed into “acts of war” or “war crimes” rather than remembered as the Jewish catastrophe that we continue to commemorate today. Daniel Aschheim’s thorough, thought-provoking and well-researched book highlights the complexities and multiplicity of post-war Jewish identities in Austria as well as the contradictions of Bruno Kreisky’s own controversial yet very successful political leadership.

A ray of hope in the middle of despair: Review of The Hope Raisers by Nihar Suthar

The Talmud states: “Whoever destroys a soul, it is as if he destroyed the whole world. And whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved the whole world” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9, Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a). A few enterprising and resilient teenagers born in Korogocho, one of Kenya’s poorest slums near the capital Nairobi, saved more than a life: they offered a ray of hope to an entire generation of young people living in poverty and despair.  Nihar Suthar’s new book, The Hope Raisers: How a Group of Young Kenyans Fought to Transform their Slum and Inspire a Community (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing, 2022) describes how two young men (Daniel Onyango and Mutura Kuria) and a young woman (Lucy Achieng) created artistic and athletic opportunities for kids and teenagers in one of Kenya’s poorest and most downtrodden areas: the Korogocho slum. This was no small feat, given that most inhabitants survived by picking through the enormous trash dumpster located in their community. Worse still, living in the slum offered young people grim prospects for the future. Many teenage girls were condemned to a life of prostitution and many boys to a life of gang crime and violence.

The Republic of Kenya has come a long way since it gained its independence from British rule in 1963 and transitioned to a multiparty democracy in 1991. While still struggling with poverty, autocratic tendencies in their leaders and corruption, in 2010 Kenya made a leap forward. The country passed a new constitution that limited presidential powers and became a presidential representative democratic republic with independent judiciary and legislative (Parliament) branches of government. During the past fifteen years, the Kenyan government has invested heavily in improving the country’s infrastructure and information technology as well as addressed climate change by encouraging low carbon emissions (Vision 2030).

While the country has seen a lot of progress, Kenya still struggles with widespread poverty as well as a high rate of child labor and prostitution, particularly in its poorest areas. Child labor is especially common in agricultural regions. Moreover, in a study conducted in 2006, UNICEF estimated that about 30 percent of girls between the ages of 9 and 18 in coastal cities  are subject to prostitution. In poor urban areas, prostitution among girls and membership in gangs among boys offers young people one of the few paths to survival.

It’s precisely these immense hardships and challenges that motivated two teenage boys from Korogocho, Daniel and Mutura, to find better alternatives for youths in the slum. The young men first started a musical group with instruments provided by the local church community center. Through composing songs, they found a creative way to channel both their sense of hopelessness and their hopes. Rather than singing in the popular styles of music they heard on the radio– the hip hop and rap songs that describe mostly the lives of wealthy pop stars–they created more realistic music and lyrics that addressed some of the problems young people in Korogocho faced: poverty, hunger, crime and a sense of hopelessness. Their musical group gained so much popularity in the area that, over the years, the boys expanded their creative activities into other arts.

One day, digging through the enormous trash pile, one of them found a pair of roller blades. This gave the boys another idea: to learn to skate and teach some of the younger kids and teenagers in the neighborhood how to skate. The sport became so popular among young men in Korogocho that Daniel and Mutura had to solicit donations for many more skates to keep up with the growing number of kids that wanted to participate in their roller skating club. While only boys participated initially, one teenage girl, Lucy, joined them. She didn’t want to take the usual path of teenage girls raised in the slum: early marriage and having children young or a life of prostitution. Determined to forge a better future for herself, she was the first girl to participate in the roller skating club started by her friends, Daniel and Mutura. Soon younger girls joined her and she patiently taught them how to skate as well. Lucy practiced hours a day and persevered after every setback. Eventually, she became so good at the sport that she ended up representing Kenya in international skating competitions and winning awards and monetary prizes, which she in turn used to expand and train the girls’ skating team.

The author, Nihar Suthar, initially found out about these exceptional teenagers from an article. Convinced that these personal interest stories deserved more attention, he traveled several times to Kenya to meet with and interview Daniel, Mutura and Lucy. He was so impressed with their resilience, optimism and ingenuity in the face of incredible hardship that he wrote a book about them. And not just any book: The Hope Raisers not only presents one of the most inspirational life stories you will read, but also it’s written in such an engaging, personalized and eloquent manner that it’s bound to attract the wide, international audience that this extraordinary group of young people deserve.

Claudia Moscovici

Literature Salon

The U.S.-Israel Alliance and Friendship: A Conversation about Diplomacy with the Israeli Political Consul to the Midwest, Daniel Aschheim

By Claudia Moscovici

We are already very familiar with the policy of isolationism during the 1940’s, “America First”, whose main spokesman was the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, a rightwing nationalist with Fascist tendencies. But there is less talk about the leftwing version of such a policy, which similarly—and dangerously–undermines the rationale behind America’s closest alliances, including the one with Israel. I believe one of the most sophisticated arguments for such an isolationist stance can be found in John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s co-authored book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2008), which seeks to dismantle the prevalent conception that Israel is the U.S.’s top ally in the Middle East and that this alliance serves America’s national best interest.

This book created quite a controversy when it was first published over a decade ago because it undermined the main justifications for U.S. aid to Israel. It argued that such an alliance is aggressively pushed by rightwing Jewish PACs—most notably AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee)—and that, in fact, this alliance destabilizes America’s position in the Middle East and makes the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorism. I think both of these arguments rest upon some false assumptions, which in turn are made possible by reliance upon highly selective evidence. The first false assumption is related to looking at our allies as useful to our national interests only in a local, case-by-case basis. This stipulates that when it’s not in America’s obvious self-interest to pursue a certain foreign policy, then the U.S. has no obligation to pursue it for the sake of its allies. While it’s reasonable to grant that every country should consider its own national interests first and foremost, long-term loyalties to our allies are very important to our national stability and international ties. These collaborations may not always serve our immediate interests or be convenient. Sometimes, as happened during WWII, we must help our allies in times of need or strengthen their position even at some perceived sacrifice to our own immediate national interests.

But the main point in this book is that American Jews pressure U.S. politicians via special interest Political Action Committees (PACs) to be unquestioningly pro-Israel. This argument falsely assumes that American Jews—and their organizations—are more or less homogeneous and hold similar socio-political views. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. While special interest groups such as AIPAC lobbies for pro-Israel and generally rightwing policies (despite being nominally bipartisan), that is just one out of literally hundreds of Jewish organizations that hold different opinions and support different policies towards Israel. Like the Israelis themselves, American Jews hold a variety of opinions towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; settlements in Gaza and the West Bank; Israel’s economic policies and military actions; human rights; the balance between lay culture and religion; public health policies, and pretty much everything else one can think of. In fact, most American Jews tend to lean leftwing and vote Democrat. So do many of their PACs, such the JStreet PAC and the National Council of Jewish Women, both of which, for example, vocally support a two-state solution. This runs contrary to Mearsheimer and Walt’s argument that Jewish PACs pressure the U.S. to be anti-Palestinian. There is no such thing as an all-inclusive Jewish PAC that pushes America in a particular direction in its foreign policy towards Israel precisely because American Jews, like other Americans, don’t agree on what is best for Israel and the U.S.

Furthermore, the U.S. Israel alliance is quite complex and dependent upon deep-rooted and sophisticated long-term diplomatic ties rather than unilateral political pressure by any Jewish Political Action Committee or special interest group. To find out more about how such ties are nurtured, I recently interviewed Daniel Aschheim, the Consul of Public Diplomacy for the Midwest region in the U.S. Previously, Daniel served as Deputy Chief of Mission for the Israeli Embassy, which covered five West African countries, including Senegal and Cabo Verde, a country that has been home for centuries to many Moroccan Jews.

After completing his Ph.D. in European Studies and defending his dissertation on Bruno Kreisky (the Jewish Chancellor of Austria), Daniel arrived in Chicago with his young family: his wife Elisa and his adorable six-month old daughter Ella. Barely settled in, he has already undertaken several projects to support worthwhile international causes while also strengthening the rapport between Israel and the Midwest. He appears to be eminently qualified for this role, not only because, like every Israeli diplomat, he completed a rigorous Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Cadet Course, but also because he is personable, warm and–despite his notable achievements at such a young age—winsomely modest.

“Diplomacy,” Daniel indicated in our Zoom interview, “takes pragmatic, in the field, very hard work in order to foster economic, political and cultural ties between Israel and the U.S.” He offered a few examples of such initiatives. In the short period of time he’s been in Chicago, he has helped facilitate, together with the Consulate team and the Consul General Aviv Ezra, collaboration on environmental measures that improve technologies for clean water in Michigan; reached out to local businesses in the Midwest for various economic collaborations; promoted a virtual chess competition; hosted a musical concert with the famous Israeli Conductor Tom Cohen that includes “Arabic sounds and rhythms from North Africa and the Middle East, with the vibrant Israeli music and traditional classical Western music,” and participated in an international forum on combatting violence against women. All this—and more–in just a few weeks’ work. Clearly, diplomatic ties between Israel the United States—Israel’s strongest friend and ally—are complexly nurtured by a variety of political perspectives, cultural, military and economic exchanges and collaborations, and consideration of both national and international interests which far transcend the actions and pressure from any particular lobby group.

Fighting for women’s (and human) rights: Brenda Feigen’s Not One of the Boys

by Claudia Moscovici

 

If young women today harbor any doubts about whether or not the feminist movements in the sixties, seventies and eighties were necessary, I would urge them to read Brenda Feigen’s memoir, Not One of the Boys originally published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2000, which appeared in a new edition in July 2020. This book, as well as the entire history of the feminist movement, starting with the National Organization for Women (NOW) feminist movement, organized in 1966 by Betty Friedan, and the National Women’s Political Caucus, founded in 1971 by Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Jill Ruckelshaus and Brenda Feigen herself, has once again become very topical not only because of the resurgence of political conservatism that endangers many of the values–and gains—feminists had fought so hard to obtain for women, but also because of the new interest generated in this subject by a popular series, Mrs. America. This show, which premiered in April, 2020 on Hulu and FX, finds inspiration in the efforts of second wave feminists (particularly the National Organization for Women) to get Congress to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and the conservative countermovement against the ratification of the ERA bill, led by Phyllis Schlafly (who is magnificently portrayed by actress Cate Blanchett), to counter those efforts.

The ERA bill itself is not a product of the feminist movement of the 60’s and 70’s. It was born of the suffragist movement that started in 1848 and continued to the 1920’s and it encountered resistance not only from men but also from some women as well, even among feminists. The leading feminist of the times, Alice Paul (leader of the National Woman’s Party) declared women should be regarded as equal to men in all regards, and no sex discrimination should be legal. But another feminist current led by Doris Stevens, the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, argued that women should have special protections—such as in labor laws–because of their physical differences and different social responsibilities from men. Arguing in this vein, during the 1920’s, Mary Anderson and the Women’s Bureau maintained that regarding women as equal and identical to men was most detrimental to working class women. They claimed that women needed special legislation that mandated safety regulations, restricted working hours and gave them maternity leave, since they were primarily responsible for childcare. Ironically, because the Democratic party was very attuned to working class issues, it was the Republican party that was the main supporter of the ERA bill from the 1950’s until the late 1970’s, when Phyllis Schlafly’s intervention turned conservatives against the bill. This was quite a feat. By the early 1970’s, both Republicans and Democrats were on board with the ERA bill. Thanks in large part to Betty Friedan’s bestselling feminist book, The Feminine Mystique (W.W. Norton & Company, 1963) and the powerful women’s movement that NOW inspired, the ERA bill was gaining momentum, passing both in the House and in the Senate, and was expected to be ratified by the end of the 1970’s in 38 states. In fact, it almost was. By 1977, the ERA had received 35 out of the 38 needed ratifications. Phyllis Schlafly and her conservative women’s group, originally underestimated by the NOW movement, was able to turn this momentum around and even get some states (Idaho, Kentucky, Nebraska, Tennessee, and South Dakota) to revoke their ratifications. The language of the ERA bill is so simple and minimalist that it is difficult to see what one can object to in it: unless, of course, one believes that sex discrimination is desirable and should be legal. It has three basic parts: “Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article. Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.” (Wikipedia)

Feigen played an integral part in the NOW movement and in supporting the ERA, as the National Legislative Vice President of the National Organization for Women. It was a propitious time to militate against sex discrimination. By the 1970’s feminists were no longer split on the ERA bill, as they had been during the 1920’s. In fact, most men and women in general, of both political parties, tended to support a constitutional amendment against sex discrimination. But some women, particularly “housewives”, were nervous about how the ERA bill could be interpreted and applied. Once women were treated as equal to men, would they lose their right to alimony or to primary custody of their children in case of divorce? Would widows lose their Social Security payments? Many of these women had no work experience outside the home and feared that they would not be able to find jobs. Moreover, if the ERA were to be ratified, would women be subject to the draft just like men? Phyllis Schlafly played upon these fears—the fears of mostly middle class widows and divorcees–even though the language of the ERA bill didn’t stipulate that men and women would be treated identically or that women would lose all of their gender-based privileges (such as privacy in single-sex bathrooms and prisons) Schlafly managed to convince a significant portion of conservatives—both women and men—that the ERA bill would be detrimental to their values and to the interests of middle-class women who didn’t work outside the home and had no independent source of income. While this may have been just fear mongering, the feminist movement, focused as it was on women gaining ground in the workforce on a par with men and eliminating sex discrimination, couldn’t allay these growing fears. Facing criticism from conservatives and from a significant segment of women themselves, the ERA lost support.

And yet, as Brenda Feigen herself was to discover in her own life, such an anti-discrimination bill was not only timely, but also absolutely necessary in American society during the 1960’s and 70’s. In fact, Brenda probably did not view herself as a feminist in college, when she majored at Vassar College with a degree in mathematics, which few women majored in at the time. But once she chose to turn down a full scholarship for a joint J.D./M.B.A. at Columbia University in order to attend Harvard Law School, she started to see the need for feminist activism. In the mid 1960’s, women comprised about 6 percent of students at Harvard Law School. They were explicitly discriminated against and made to feel unwelcome in class from the very first day. Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold greeted the incoming class by stating that the few women in the group were “taking up valuable spots needed by men who, unlike their female counterparts, would have to support families” (Not One of the Boys, 4). This presupposed, falsely, that women weren’t breadwinners or didn’t have families—and, most importantly, their own selves–to support financially. Adding insult to injury, many chauvinistic professors—reflecting the dominant patriarchal values of the times–treated female students like second-class citizens. Feigen recounts that her property law professor, James Casner, designated only one day a week—dubbed “Ladies’ Day”—when female students would be asked questions or encouraged to offer comments during discussions. If women tried to participate on any other day, Casner essentially ignored them and called on male students. Even in that demeaning context of “Ladies’ Day”, Casner took steps to discriminate further against women and make them feel unwelcomed and inferior by narrowing the discussion to so-called feminine topics. As Feigen recounts, “Ladies’ Day in property-law class was spent on two issues: the dower rights to which a widow would be entitled in her deceased husband’s property and who actually owns the engagement ring when an engagement is called off” (Not One of the Boys, 5).

Made acutely aware of sex discrimination at Harvard, in her personal life Feigen made feminist choices. She chose to date a fellow law school student, Marc Fasteau, who shared her values: namely, that women were equal to men and should not be discriminated against or made to feel like second-class citizens. In fact, when they married in 1968, the couple went against the patriarchal tradition of the woman erasing her last name (and, along with it, a big part of her past and identity) upon marriage. They chose an innovative and egalitarian naming option: each of them kept their own last names and adopted each other’s last names. She became Brenda Feigen Fasteau and he became Marc Feigen Fasteau. Together they took on Harvard Law School’s notorious sexism when Feigen noticed a “NO LADIES ALLOWED” sign at the entrance to the library of the Harvard Club of New York. Initially the couple lost the battle, as the board voted to reject their proposal. The newlyweds didn’t give up, however. They took the case a step further, initiating a class action lawsuit against the Harvard Club of New York, suing them for sex discrimination. Five years later a judge ordered the Club to take another vote. This time, in January 1973, the social climate had changed and male students had different views from the board. The Club members voted 2,097 to 695 to admit female students. While this wasn’t a legal victory—since the case never got adjudicated in court—it was a significant social victory for Harvard University alumnae, who now had the same access to the Harvard Club of New York City as their male colleagues.

One of the most interesting aspects of Feigen’s book covers her collaboration with the incomparable Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) (Ginsburg insisted that Feigen be called Director as well instead of Co-director). In a recent interview with the ACLU, as well as in her memoir, Feigen describes Ginsburg as “a soft-spoken, thoughtful woman, with large, intelligent eyes” who was extremely mission driven in advancing women’s equal rights. She wasn’t into small talk, delving right into discussions of the most interesting legal cases: “Ruth, as far as I could tell, talked, thought, and probably even dreamed about the law any time she wasn’t spending with her husband or children” (ACLU interview, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Me”, Brenda Feigen, May 27, 2020). Interestingly, perhaps due to their awareness of the implicit biases of male judges when considering cases involving sex discrimination against women, they introduced the issue of gender-based discrimination via a case about discrimination against a man: Frontiero v. Richardson. As Feigen recounts in her ACLU article, “Sharron Frontiero, a married Air Force officer, was denied the same housing and medical allowance for her husband that her male cohorts in the Air Force automatically received for their wives. The federal statue providing such allowances for spouses of military personnel stated that while all wives were automatically entitled to such funds, husbands had to prove that they were more than half dependent on their wives for support. Sharron and her husband thought this was unfair.” Ginsburg was allotted ten minutes by the Frontiero lawyer team to argue in favor of equal rights. She not only made a strong case for treating Frontiero’s husband equally as a spouse, but also showed “how men have traditionally viewed women and their role in society by quoting Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Blackstone, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Henrik Ibsen, Gunnar Myrdal, and Grover Cleveland, among others.” Feigen, along with the Justices, it seemed to her, were spellbound by the eloquence, force and depth of her arguments. The Frontieros won the case, which would eventually pave the way for many other cases combatting systematic gender discrimination in society and the workplace.

In the conclusion of her book, Feigen considers the important legacy of feminism, which enabled new generations of women to study, work and live as (more) equal to men. There’s still much work left to be done in achieving gender parity (meaning equal power not just equal rights), an issue that has been exposed as very complex. Third wave and, now, fourth wave feminists reminded us that women are never just women: ethnicity, race, class, sexual orientation all play a major role in women’s identities. Keeping this in mind, at times, third wave feminists have argued for cultural relativism, accepting practices in other countries and cultures that would be considered demeaning to women in our society. Feigen, however, rightfully reminds new generations of feminists in the U.S. not to neglect the focus on women in our own country: “Feminism, to me, is about helping ourselves, women, first. It’s not about us women using our power to save others before we save ourselves. Why is it that most women will fight to save anyone with less power than they have—which is very little? Why is it that many feminists today spend time worrying about the plight of women in other countries, from very different cultures and traditions, but they do not also worry that the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, is still totally dominated by men? (285). As the Me Too movement has shown, there’s still so much sex discrimination and harassment in the U.S., even in areas of society and culture—such as the entertainment and news industries—that, for the most part, proclaim liberal egalitarian values. But let us never forget (or take for granted) previous feminist achievements: without the groundbreaking work of second wave feminists like Brenda Feigen, Gloria Steinem, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, women would probably still be second class citizens in America today. It is upon their legacy—and thanks to their struggles and gains–that we continue to build a more equal society for women and men.

Governor Whitmer please open movie theaters

Governor Whitmer please open movie theaters

by Claudia Moscovici

 

Many of us miss going to the cinema with family and friends. Watching movies at home is not the same experience. There’s something to be said about the big screen, the movie popcorn and snacks, the large and comfortable seats and, not least of all, the ability to do something outside the house, since most of us have cabin fever since Covid-19. However, I would like to preface my argument in favor of opening movie theaters in Michigan by saying that I feel fortunate to live in a state run by a competent Governor, particularly during the crisis of the Covid-19 epidemic, which initially hit the state of Michigan hard. Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s plan of flattening the curve by closing down nonessential businesses, and then gradually reopening them in various areas of the state, based on the number of Covid-19 cases each zone has, was a sound policy that has yielded good results. Michigan has flattened the curve and significantly decreased the rate of Covid-19. Furthermore, unlike many other governors, Whitmer has taken into account that wearing masks in public places is the easiest, most economical and best way to protect people from Covid-19 and, therefore, to also open up the economy. She has issued a statewide mask mandate on July 10, 2020, which requires people to wear face coverings in indoor public spaces and outdoor crowded spaces. Although initially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offered the American public mixed messages about the effectiveness of wearing masks, data indicates that they are extremely effective. As the Mayo Clinic staff explains:

“Can face masks help slow the spread of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) that causes COVID-19? Yes, face masks combined with other preventive measures, such as frequent hand-washing and social distancing, help slow the spread of the virus. So why weren’t face masks recommended at the start of the pandemic? At that time, experts didn’t know the extent to which people with COVID-19 could spread the virus before symptoms appeared. Nor was it known that some people have COVID-19but don’t have any symptoms. Both groups can unknowingly spread the virus to others. These discoveries led public health groups to do an about-face on face masks. The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now include face masks in their recommendations for slowing the spread of the virus.” (https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-mask/art-20485449)

In my estimation, wearing masks in public indoor places should be a national bipartisan health mandate because they are a measure that protects others from airborne particles. We may have the freedom of choice in endangering our own lives, but we have no right to endanger the lives of others. Each of us wears a mask not so much to protect ourselves from incoming particles but to protect others from our own airborne particles. When everyone wears a mask, the chances of getting Covid-19 are significantly reduced. When fewer people contract the virus, we can open up all facets of our economy, which is to everyone’s benefit. Right now, because science and mask wearing has become a politicized and divisive issue, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: one of the highest rates of Covid-19 in the developed world and a severely affected economy from prolonged shutdowns. A national mask mandate issued and enforced early on throughout the country would have saved many lives and livelihoods.

Unfortunately, even this scientifically (and economically) sound public health measure has been turned into an ideological battleground in the U.S. As Jack Brewster indicates in a recent article in Forbes Magazine, “Republican governors in 18 states have yet to issue a mask mandate: Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Vermont, New Hampshire and Alaska. Wisconsin is the only state led by a Democratic governor, Tony Evers, that has not mandated facial coverings.” (See Jack Brewster, “19 States still don’t mandate masks. 18 Are Run by Republican Governors,” July 17, 2020) Since this article was published, however, a few more of the aforementioned states have issued mask mandates.

Wearing a mask is a way to protect one’s fellow citizens as well as ensure the viability of local businesses. If the rate of Covid-19 significantly increases, governors will once again be obliged to shut down nonessential businesses. This measure, as we’ve seen, has detrimental consequences to our economy and lives. In part because Governor Whitmer has issued sound preventive public health measures, including mask wearing in public spaces, Michigan has been able to reopen most of its economy, including restaurants (which have encouraged, in good weather, outdoor seating and mask wearing inside when not eating), nail salons, spas, massage parlors, flower shops, etc. In fact, almost everything is now open except for movie theaters, an industry that has been on the brink of financial crisis even before Covid-19 shut down cinemas indefinitely. I would like to urge the Governor to reconsider the decision to keep cinemas and small theaters closed throughout most of Michigan (some sparsely populated areas of Michigan, due to having few cases of Covid-19, were allowed to reopen cinemas).

Movie theaters are no different from restaurants or other indoor venues that offer food. Like restaurants, the experience in movie theaters can be modified to enable social distancing by making available only every other seat in every other row. Masks should be required in cinemas, as they are in restaurants, except when eating. Furthermore, like going to a restaurant, going to the movie theater is a strictly voluntary activity that doesn’t affect the welfare of others. Unlike choosing not to wear a mask in public, choosing not to go to the cinema doesn’t hurt the public good. Everyone is free to assess the risks they are willing to take with their own lives and health. Consequently, opening cinemas won’t infringe upon the right of those who don’t want to take the risk of being in an indoor public space to choose not to go there.

I am particularly concerned about the cinema industry not only because, like countless others, I’m a big fan of going to the movies, but also because this industry has been ailing for years and I’m afraid that it won’t be able to survive the closings much longer. As Matthew Ball indicates, “For close to twenty years, per capita admissions have declined an average of 1.6 % per year. This despite numerous improvements to the movie-going experience (e.g. VIP seating, reserved seating, larger seating)… There are also no signs this trend will soon slow let alone halt. To point, the greatest drops in attendance have come from the most consumptive and youngest demographics”. (See https://www.matthewball.vc/all/covidmovies) During the past decade, the rising popularity of streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix, especially with younger viewers, has adversely affected the cinema industry. Furthermore, major studios have reduced the period of time movies premier in a cinema, and some movies are offered directly to streaming services or home video and bypass theaters altogether. If you add months of theater closings to these previous factors, what you may get is the extinction of a large segment of the entertainment industry. The demise of cinemas also carries with it its own financial and health cost: namely, the loss of countless people’s livelihood who worked, and obtained healthcare coverage, from jobs in this industry. I am all for protecting public health, but in this situation I don’t see how allowing each of us the free choice of going to a movie while wearing masks in socially distanced conditions is any different than going to a restaurant under similar circumstances. There’s no public health reason to further endanger an industry that millions of us enjoy and that, if cinemas don’t reopen soon, we may never be able to get back.

Young Zionists Unite: Bryan Leib’s new pro-Israel “Tribe”, HaShevet

 

Young Zionists Unite: Bryan Leib’s new pro-Israel “Tribe”, HaShevet

By Claudia Moscovici

The Jews, though perhaps a “tribe” (HaShevet), have always had significant internal differences. A people found in practically every nation around the world, the ethnic, racial, social, religious and political differences among Jews are vast. What unites this internally diverse tribe perhaps more than anything is not so much a common identity as a shared historical oppression. Before the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, Jews were considered second-class citizens in many countries around the world. This history of global discrimination culminated in the worst catastrophe of the 20^th century, the Holocaust, when the Jewish people were nearly wiped out completely. One would hope that current generations of Jews, no matter what their political affiliation or cultural and ethnic background may be, will not forget the Holocaust nor take for granted the necessity of the Jewish people to have their own nation, the state of Israel. Without it they would be, once again, at the mercy of the rest of the world.

This is one of the main motivations behind the creation of a new Zionist organization, HaShevet (or the Tribe) started by Bryan Leib and a group of fellow American Jewish millennials. According to a June 30, 2020 article in the Jewish News Syndicate, “its board of directors includes Chairman Bryan Leib, former national director of Americans Against Anti-Semitism; vice chairman and president Nachman Mostofsky, executive director Chovevei Zion; secretary Kayla Gubov, a political strategist; treasurer Joel Griffith, Heritage Foundation fellow; Emma Enig, Republican Jewish Coalition national grassroots coordinator; Samantha Rose Mandeles, Legal Insurrection senior researcher and outreach director; Jennifer Taer, a writer and researcher… and conservative activist Sara Carter; Rabbi Yitzchok Tendler, co-founder of Young Jewish Conservatives; and Joseph Tipograph, a pro-Israel lawyer.” (https://www.jns.org/young-professionals-launch-new-watchdog-group-citing-dissatisfaction-with-norms/)

Bryan is a Republican in his political affiliation (in fact, he ran for election in 2018 to the U.S. House to represent Pennsylvania’s 3^rd Congressional District). However, this organization seeks to unite liberals and conservatives in a common support of Israel. In his interview with JNS, Leib stated that HaShevet aims to “represent a diversity of political opinions and professional backgrounds.” The group is united by the dedication of its members “to promote moral clarity within the Jewish advocacy sector, strengthen and mobilize young Jewish professionals to publically oppose all forms of anti-Semitism (including anti-Zionism), and take up the mantle of Jewish community leadership to safeguard the future of the Jewish people.” HaShevet belives that, despite significant ideological differences among Jews, they should be united in Zionism.

Which is not to say that Zionism, or being for the existence of the state of Israel and its right to defend itself, means the same thing to every Jew. Some Jews support the expansion of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank while many Jews do not. As in every country where people are allowed free thought and expression, Jews meaningfully disagree amongst themselves about the policies–and boundaries–of their nation. But, Bryan Leib and his associates rightly maintain that to disagree about Zionism itself—about Israel’s right to exist as a nation—is to take away the Jewish people’s right to exist in relative safety as “a tribe”. As 20^th century history has starkly illustrated, the Jews need the protection of their own state or they risk extinction. To be anti-Zionist thus means to be, on a fundamental level, also anti-Jewish.

Yet some political and social movements, mainly on the left, aim to disassociate Zionism and Jewish identity. They claim that one can be against the existence of the state of Israel and yet not be anti-Semitic. The BDS movement in particular has gained popularity on college campuses, amongst millennials who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. (See www.BDSmovement.net) BDS calls for countries around the world to disengage with trade with Israel by imposing “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” upon Israel. The apparent logic behind this movement is to apply international pressure upon Israel to enter into discussions with the Palestinians and arrive at a more livable solution. The BDS movement found its inspiration in the antiapartheid movement and economic pressures applied on South Africa by the international community during the 1980s and 1990’s. The leaders of this movement claim to similarly use nonviolent means to apply pressure upon Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, and ultimately withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Many of the BDS supporters go a step further, arguing that Israel has no right to exist.

Like another young professional organization started a few years ago, the Maccabee Task Force, HaShevet maintains that the distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is spurious, based on bad faith. As the tragic history of the Jews during the first half of the 20^th century has shown, the Jewish people need the protection of their own state. This is why young Zionist organizations like the Maccabee Task Force and HaShevet are extremely important. They unite people on both the right and the left of the political spectrum—particularly young people who have no memories of the Holocaust–to support the existence of Israel while allowing for legitimate debates about Israel’s national and international policies.

The Jewish National Fund: Growing Zionism

The Jewish National Fund: Growing Zionism

by Claudia Moscovici

The Holocaust underscored for the Jewish people the necessity—and, many would argue, the historic right–of having their own nation. Deprived of full citizenship rights in many European countries and entirely stripped of human rights once the Nazis came to power, the Jews became ostracized and persecuted throughout Europe. They were branded as outsiders and eventually stomped out like “vermin” by the Nazis, even in countries they had inhabited for centuries. In a prophetic statement issued in 1898, Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, warned in his groundbreaking book, Der Judenstaat, that the Jews would continue to be persecuted and treated as second class citizens unless they reestablish their own nation:

“The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilized countries—see for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level” (Der Judenstaat, cited by C.D. Smith, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 2001, 4th ed., p. 53).

The author was only referring to the Dreyfus Affair here, a political scandal that erupted in France in 1894, when a Jewish French army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, was falsely accused of being a German spy. Though innocent, Dreyfus was exonerated only in 1906. Even Herzl, attuned as he was to anti-Semitism, could not have foreseen the extent of the human catastrophe of the Holocaust. But he did perceive the necessity of reestablishing a Jewish state for the Jewish people. In fact, Herzl’s book concludes with a hopeful message, that was eventually realized in 1948, but only after the Jews were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth:

“The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes. The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity” (The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Jewish State, by Theodor Herzl. gutenberg.org. 2 May 2008).

Realizing Herzl’s optimistic message, Israel has become a democratic leader in the world and America’s strongest ally in the Middle East. Though a sliver of a country, it is also a leader in innovation, rivaling that of Silicon Valley. Given its achievements, it is easy to forget that Israel has a population of a little over 9 million people, only one million more than New York City, and a large area of desert and semidesert climate (60 % in Southern Negev and Arava), with precipitation only 50 days out of the year. These geographic conditions make agriculture, access to water, and planting vegetation in general extremely challenging in Israel.

Despite these challenges—or rather, perhaps because of them–for well over a hundred years, the Jewish National Fund has combined the twin goals of planting and Zionism. Founded in 1901, the Jewish National Fund has repurchased and developed land for the Jewish people everywhere in the country that would become Israel. Its founder, Isaac Leib of Vilnius, purchased .20 km in 1903, a first parcel of land that became an olive grove. The JNF currently owns about 13 percent of land in Israel. Its mission is to grow green space even in areas, like Negev, which are inhospitable to plants and trees. The JNF has facilitated the planting of about 260 million trees (mostly pine and some olive trees), developed 1000 km of land, and created over 1000 parks in Israel. The organization is also committed to innovation, building 200 water reservoirs around Israel that provide 13% of water availability.

Russell Robinson, the CEO of the Jewish National Fund since 1997, has focused on the mission of developing solutions for Israel’s water crisis and on the sustainable development of the Negev and the Galilee. He has also been a leader in promoting Jewish education and pro-Jewish views around the world. As he stated in a recent interview with Fern Sidman in The Jewish Voice, “Jewish National Fund trains and supports pro-Israel college students from across America to promote Israel as a country striving to make the world a better place through the pro-Israel programing.” (https://thejewishvoice.com/2018/05/not-parents-jnf-anymore-russell-robinson-ceo-jewish-national-fund-tells-part-2/)

The Jewish National Fund also reaches out to non-Jewish students and teachers, running a 12 day trip for 80 students and 60 professors from U.S. campuses a year, who take this opportunity to travel and learn about Israel. Equally importantly, as Robinson signals in the same interview, the organization has undertaken a global mission of “teaching agricultural knowledge and skills to students from developing countries and building reservoirs for recycled water.” This is a mission that even Wonder Woman–the famous Israeli actress Gal Gadot–has gotten behind, as she expressed support for the Jewish National Fund’s way of growing Zionism, both in Israel and abroad.

 

 

Review of Nancy K. Miller’s My Brilliant Friends

Nancy K. Miller’s My Brilliant Friends: An homage to friendship among women and to writing

By Claudia Moscovici

 

It is unspeakably sad to lose one’s best friends. Even more so, perhaps, when the bonds of friendship are interwoven with professional mentorship and mutual support, a deep emotional interdependency, and a time-tested solidarity as women and as feminists in male-dominated institutions. Within the span of a few years, feminist literary critic Nancy K. Miller lost three of her best friends, all of them close professional colleagues and confidantes: Carolyn Heilbrun, Naomi Schor, and Diane Middlebrook. As she states in the April 11, 2019 interview in Book Forum with Liz Kinnamon, she lost “Carolyn Heilbrun in 2003, Naomi Schor in 2001, Diane Middlebrook in 2007—and in a sense, I wrote the book to keep them alive. I’ve written memoirs before, but this one posed a particular literary challenge because I wasn’t sure how to write about friends, rather than parents or lovers. There were few models. It was also the case that these stories were indebted in different ways to second-wave feminism and I wanted to keep that context present”. (See https://www.bookforum.com/interviews/bookforum-talks-with-nancy-k-miller-21500)

All three of her brilliant friends were, like herself, stars in the academia and pioneers in the world of second-wave feminist theory. All of them paved the way for other women scholars in fields and departments that were (then) dominated by men. In My Brilliant Friends (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019) Miller remembers and recreates—for herself and her readers—some of the most poignant moments of these important friendships that shaped her personal life and her career. The retrospective look at the fabric of her life as interwoven with the lives of other women is as much an homage to her friends as it is an elegy to friendship itself.

Though perhaps occupying a less central space in mourning than the loss of close family members, Miller illustrates that the loss of close friends can be, in some respects, even more painful and unsettling. There is less social support for mourning one’s friends. Moreover, friends often occupy the optimal emotional distance from us, which makes sharing and helping one another possible. Sharing day in and day out one’s professional and personal challenges with close family members risks eroding those intimate bonds or, even worse, transforming them into burdensome therapy sessions. Not so with good friends, who are familiar with our lives without being so much part of them as to prevent the most intimate confidences. Which is not to say, as Miller herself observes in her narrative, that female friendships are ideal, or that they should be idealized. They too endure ups and downs, periods of tension, and even, at times, a sense of rivalry. The narrative indicates that they are best appreciated for what they are: fallible human bonds that are, nonetheless, absolutely essential to most women’s existence. Each friendship left its own unique imprint upon Nancy K. Miller’s life.

Carolyn Heilbrun tended to assume a mentor role in other female graduate students and professors’ lives, and Miller was no exception. Heilbrun was one of the first women to receive tenure in the English department at Columbia University. She is well known in the academia for her studies of modern British literature and particularly of the Bloomsbury Group as well as for starting, along with Miller, Columbia University Press’s Gender and Culture Series (in 1983). Heilbrun was also a prolific fiction writer. From the 1960’s until close to her death, she wrote a series of popular mystery novels, which were usually set in the academia, under the pseudonym Amanda Cross. Her critiques of sexism in the academia were thus powerfully voiced in several registers: in her institutional support of women faculty; in her brave critique of her own department’s double standards to women in their hiring and tenure policies during the 1970’s and 80’s; and in her support of feminism. While no doubt a brilliant scholar and writer, Miller recalls, above all, Heilbrun’s loyal friendship and hidden vulnerability. She describes little details like the manner in which Heilbrun’s usually confident voice sounded feminine and childlike when placing an order at one of her favorite restaurants; her underlying melancholia, which she rarely unburdened on others but which may have played a role in her resolute decision to end her own life on October 9, 2003, at the age of seventy-seven. While aware of Heilbrun’s long-standing desire to choose the moment of her death, Miller continues to feel ambivalent towards her friend’s decision and remains haunted by the shock of the loss.

With Naomi Schor, Miller oscillated between an almost sisterly complicity—both about the same age, both “second wave” feminist theorists, both French scholars (Miller studied the 18^th century while Schor studied the 19^th)—and the occasional moments of rivalry provoked by an academic institution that prizes and honors hierarchy. The background to their friendship and to their feminist scholarship is mostly hinted at in this autobiographical friendship narrative: namely, the French feminist “revolution” of May 1968. The Mouvement de libération des femmes, or Women’s Liberation Movement, started in France by Antoinette Fouque, Monique Wittig and Josiane Chanel in the late sixties. They were inspired by the Women’s Lib movement in the U.S. whose most prominent champion was Gloria Steinem, but also propelled by the particular sexism of French institutions at the time.

Until the French feminists fought patriarchy in their own country, French law deemed that the father and husband made all the legal decisions for a family. Women, like children, were considered minors under the law. They were also, de facto, barred from political power. During the Fourth Republic, only four out of the twenty-seven cabinet positions were occupied by women. As the French feminists made headway in championing women’s rights in politics and society, in the academia feminism became influenced by new currents of thought: structuralism, poststructuralism and deconstruction. French feminist scholars such as Monique Wittig, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva adopted and adapted these theoretical methods to study what Cixous called “feminine writing” (écriture féminine) and to undermine, both textually and socially, the binary opposition between “masculine” and “feminine” which had organized the hierarchy between men and women.

Both Naomi Schor and Nancy K. Miller were very influential in disseminating French feminist scholarship in the American academia. Miller, a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, has published several books on women’s writing, biography and trauma. Her narratives interweave a careful textual analysis with personal reflections: a unique style that readers can also find in her book on friendship. Schor, the daughter of Jewish Polish-born artist parents who lived in France until their immigration to the United States after the war, would adopt not only her parents’ Francophilia, but also their underlying melancholia, which was no doubt related to the fact that they lost most of their family in the Holocaust. This sadness would sometimes tip Schor’s friendship with Miller into an asymmetrical relationship, where all too often Nancy had to do most of the listening and consoling. That played a role in their temporary fallout, one that Miller states in her book, and reiterates in her interview with Kinnamon, was unintentional. Sometimes distance—both geographical and emotional—creates a space that isn’t easily bridged. One doesn’t fully grasp the estrangement until it has already crystalized. As Miller explains in her Bookforum interview, “I didn’t try to absorb the moment as a difficulty that we might have moved through; neither of us did, and this remains to some extent a troublingly murky memory.” In early December 2001, at the age of 58, Schor suffered a brain hemorrhage and passed away. Her sudden death left no opportunity for reconciliation, only for grief and a sense of loss.

Fortuitously, life offered Miller another chance at close friendship in her rapport with Diane Middlebrook, a noted American writer and poet, known for her biographies of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Their friendship began later in life (both were in their 60’s) and deepened once Middlebrook was diagnosed with cancer only a year after they had met. Miller notes her friend’s health challenges and frailty as she has been living with cancer and enduring various treatments that took a toll on her body. She also emphasizes her resilience and continued passion for writing. During the last years of her life, Middlebrook was working on a creative biography of the Roman poet Ovid. As the poet left no journal, the biography was drawn by inference, from his poetry. Realizing that, as her cancer metastasized, she would not even get to finish the first part of this book, she asked Miller to help bring this project to fruition after she’s gone. Middlebrook succumbed to cancer in December 2007, at the age of 68. For Miller, the work sessions with her dying friend epitomized the best of both friendship and professional collaboration: a loyalty and dependability that were heightened by the sense that this book would be her friend’s legacy and, more subtly, an elegy to their friendship.

For the past several years Nancy K. Miller has herself been living with lung cancer. She states in her book that her doctor tells her cancer is treatable but not curable. None of us know how long we have left to live, but in the case of cancer survivors, each day entails a negotiation with the illness and a small victory. My Brilliant Friends is, in many ways, a survivor’s story. Her daily survival while living with cancer. Her survival as an intellectual and a writer, through her writing and mentoring other women. And, above all, her survival as a woman, a feminist and a friend, who offers as a gift one of her most important works: her unapologetic, unidealized yet moving homage to her brilliant friends.

Adela Cojab Moadeb: Fighting BDS and anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses

Adela Cojab Moadeb: Fighting BDS and anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses

By Claudia Moscovici

In her article in the New York Post (December 14, 2019) about her fight against anti-Semitism on New York University’s campus, pro-Israel Jewish activist Adela Cojab Moadeb explains the difficulties she encountered due to a strong BDS movement that was gaining momentum on the NYU campus. BDS is a political campaign, popular on many college campuses, in support of the Palestinian cause. (See www.BDSmovement.net) It calls for countries around the world to disengage with trade with Israel by imposing “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” upon Israel. The apparent logic behind this movement is to apply international pressure upon Israel to enter into discussions with the Palestinians and arrive at a more livable solution. The BDS movement found its inspiration in the antiapartheid movement and economic pressures applied on South Africa by the international community during the 1980s and 1990’s. The leaders of this movement claim to similarly use nonviolent means to apply pressure upon Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, and ultimately withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza.

In reality, however, as Adela Cojab Moadeb and the Maccabee Task Force, the organization to which she belongs, point out, the BDS movement unfairly targets Israel rather than being a peace building mission in the Middle East and facilitating a more productive discussion among the Israelis and the Palestinians. (See https://www.maccabeetaskforce.org/) In her 2019 New York Post article and other interviews, Adela describes how uncomfortable she felt as a pro-Israel Jewish student on the NYU campus, due to the BDS protests that targeted Jewish students and groups on campus. Viewing these protests as creating an unwelcoming environment for pro-Israel Jewish students led Adela to sue the university for discrimination, invoking the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin on any program and activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.

Adela, a Syrian-Lebanese Jew born in Mexico City, was raised in the U.S. in Deal, New Jersey. At New York University she studied at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study with a concentration in Diaspora Structures and Social Exclusion. But she didn’t study social exclusion only in her courses. She saw it with her own eyes and experienced it personally when she noticed that, as she puts it in the New York Post article, “diversity and inclusion applied to everyone except my community. After years of overt protests, boycotts and direct aggression toward Jewish students from NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the university honored the organization with the President’s Service Award for ‘outstanding contribution to NYU life.’”

Adela goes on to describe what SJP did to “earn” this honor from the university. They “organized a 53-group boycott against Realize Israel, a non-political student organization, depicting assault rifles on flyers calling for a revolt.” One of their members burned the Israeli flag and another assaulted a Jewish student at the 2018 Rave in the Park event, which celebrated Israel’s Independence Day. These activities created a hostile environment at New York University for Adela and other Jewish students. Instead of accepting this overt bias quietly, Adela decided to fight for the right of Jewish students to go to NYU and other universities without feeling discriminated against and harassed. She first tried to communicate her concerns to the NYU administration, but didn’t get far with that. As she recounts in her article, she “spoke with eight administrators from multiple NYU departments—the Office of Student Affairs; Center for Student Life; Office of Public Safety—about the rising hostility against the Jewish community on campus. My concerns were brushed off, and after the arrests, I was asked not to draw attention to this issue.”

https://www.c-span.org/video/standalone/?c4837853/user-clip-donald-trump-adela-cojab-2019-iac-national-summit

Facing a dismissive attitude from the administration, Adela decided to file the Title VI lawsuit against the university as well as to attract national visibility to her cause. In December 2019 she triumphed. She stood next to President Trump on stage at the 2019 Israeli American Council (IAC) National Summit to call for—and celebrate–the protection of Jews on college campuses. In large part due to her activism, President Trump signed an Executive Order to include religion—and thus include Jewish students—under the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. In reality, Jewish students should have been covered by Title VI already at NYU and other public educational institutions. After all, Jews are not only a religion. They are also an ethnicity, a nation, a culture and even, according to some, a race. But to give President Trump credit where credit is due, this presidential decree made bias and discrimination against Jewish students, faculty and staff at public universities and colleges more difficult. For Adela and other Jewish students, it meant, in her own words, an affirmation of “the rights of Jewish students to a harassment-free environment on college campuses.” Since graduation, Adela has served as the official representative of Jewish Students at the United Nations and is Northeast Campus Coordinator for the Maccabee Task Force, an organization created in 2015 to combat the spread of anti-Semitism in American colleges and universities.