PCUSA Votes to Invest for Peace

A pro-divestment motion before the Presbyterian Church's general assembly narrowly failed tonight, with the assembly electing instead to invest in the Palestinian economy and other projects which bring about peace. For that, two congratulations are in order: first, for rejecting the divestment motion -- a divisive and one-sided approach which in effect, views all Israeli actions taken in the West Bank and Gaza, including those which save innocent lives, as inherently malign -- and second, for voting to invest in the Palestinian economy. People who oppose BDS without any sort of corresponding efforts to actually improve the lives of Palestinians and forge a two-state solution are worth nothing to me. The PCUSA is doing the right thing not (just) because it voted against divesting, but because it voted in favor of taking tangible action aimed at strengthening the emerging Palestine.

We might also congratulate left-ward groups like APN and J Street for taking a stand against divestment here. Given their reputation and given the close nature of the vote, it is very possible that their intervention was decisive. They were there when they were needed. And they provided a sterling demonstration that the liberal, pro-peace wing of the American Jewish community is as opposed to divestment as anyone else. This is not AIPAC and ZOA. This is the near-entirety of the mainstream Jewish community.

Finally, the PCUSA vote represented BDS' high-water mark in the US. Which is to say, their high water mark is getting narrowly defeated, while their median outcome is getting soundly thrashed. The fact is that BDS doesn't have a meaningful, sustainable constituency in this country. Most Americans -- of all faiths and political backgrounds -- view it as a non-starter. They think it singles out Israel, they're unconvinced of its efficacy, they view it as a Trojan Horse for one-stateism and other radically anti-Israel politics. The point is that the BDS movement in the United States appears to be essentially a non-starter. On its best days, it manages to only lose by small margins rather than large ones. Without the support of the sorts of entities who accuse Jews of bombing American churches and find the very existence of a Jewish state abhorrent, it would scarcely register as a political entity at all. It has not and cannot serve as a basis for a political movement that takes seriously the respective national self-determination rights of Jews and Palestinians.

Now, to be sure, there are people who don't care -- either because they don't care about the rights of Palestinians to self-determination and an independent, secure, democratic state, or because they don't care about those rights for Jews. But for what I take to be the majority which does care about these things, alternative processes have to forged. It can no longer be that this is an issue which is left aside until crisis moments like divestment votes. We need to work for this on the ground. Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups needs to join together to figure out how to make stuff happen -- how to get parties back to the negotiation table, how to freeze the settlements, how to harness the consensus in both Israel and Palestine in favor of a two-state solution, how to convince each that the other is a willing partner. This has to be day-to-day work -- it can't wait. The BDS movement has the strength that it does in part, yes, because of a committed core of activists who are simply outraged that there is at Israel, but also because of a middle that just doesn't see other entities which seem to be consistently working (or claiming) to work for actual change.

These groups do exist -- OneVoice is the most obvious candidate. And so my modest proposal is that, for the next two years, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim groups united at the local level and engage in a full-court press in favor of OneVoice -- bolstering its mission, its visibility, and its status as the single best route for peace in Israel and Palestine. It is the best hope for all people in the region, and it needs a cadre of activists here in the USA willing to fight for it.

It's Okay, There's a Jew Involved!

This is a really great post at Ignoblus about a divestment plan being put on the ballot in Seattle. Start with the fact that the organizers are being more than a little underhanded, roping together an anti-Iraq war measure with a divest from Israel measure under the moniker of "Divest from War and Occupation." To my knowledge, it only targets the Iraq war and Israel (with an option for expansion to "any similar unjustified attack" -- presumably by the United States, as a hedge in case we attack Iran).

But the post focuses on something else -- namely, the use of a few Jewish organizers to deflect attention from the fact that the vast majority of Jews find these sorts of proposals to be severely problematic. One sees this all the time with regards to minority politics: Ward Connerly and Shelby Steele get trotted out to take the contrarian point of view on issues of importance to the Black community, and, having done so, it is no longer necessary to account for the fact that one side has the overwhelming support of their community. I'm not saying that Connerly and Steele don't have the right to express their opinions (nor do I deny the right of their Jewish comrades to do likewise), but it has to come with the context that most of their peers find their position to be outright hostile to their own community.

But what happens instead is that

if one can find a single, contrarian Jew, then there is no need to wrestle with the fact that an overwhelming majority of Jews hold any particular opinion.... the collective voice of Jews need never be taken seriously, even when the audience is insignificantly gentile.

I also like how Ignoblus discusses the classic "it's basically a crime to criticize Israel" tripe. That critique is deployed to make any defense of Israel that asks "progressives" to take critical account of their position and the continuing significance of anti-Semitism as (in the immortal words of Jerome McCristal Culp) "a type of shrill craziness". It derails the discussion from the start by making the baseline regarding discussion of Israel the "fact" that Jews are neurotic.

There's a lot of talk about how any critique of Israel is anti-Semitic. What isn't discussed is that our complaints keep coming because there has been virtually no critical engagement by the progressive community about how anti-Semitism does interact with the Israel/Palestine conflict. They'd much rather deploy their Clarence Thomases and Ward Connerlys as a shield to wave away the vast majority of Jews (and our account of our experience and reality) as insignificant insanity.