NYT reports furor over American Jewish Committee’s attack on “liberal” Jews
Posted on January 31 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under American Jewish Committee , Educational Institutions.I guess one person’s liberal is another person’s self-hating, anti-Zionist, anti-Semite. Guess which definition is most favored by the American Jewish Committee to describe groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, and people like (JVP advisory board members) Tony Kushner and Adrienne Rich? In Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor, Times writer Patricia Cohen writes about a new AJC report, Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism by Alvin Rosenfeld, with preface by AJC’s David Harris.
Over the telephone, the dinner table and the Internet, people who follow Jewish issues have been buzzing over Mr. Rosenfeld’s article. Alan Wolfe, a political scientist and the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, said, “I’m almost in a state of shock” at the verbal assaults directed at liberal Jews.
On H-Antisemitism (h-net.org), an Internet forum for scholarly discussions of the subject, Michael Posluns, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, wrote, “Sad and misbegotten missives of the sort below make me wonder if it is not the purpose of mainstream Jewish organizations to foster anti-Jewishness by calling down all who take from their Jewish experience and Jewish thought a different ethos and different ways of being as feeding anti-Semitism.”
Others have praised Mr. Rosenfeld’s indictment and joined the fray. Shulamit Reinharz, a sociologist who is also the wife of Jehuda Reinharz, the president of Brandeis University, wrote in a column for The Jewish Advocate in Boston: “Most would say that they are simply anti-Zionists, not anti-Semites. But I disagree, because in a world where there is only one Jewish state, to oppose it vehemently is to endanger Jews.”
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February 1st, 2007 at 4:18 pm
That was such a lazy story, which was driven by Rosenfeld’s pov. Terrible. Cohen should have noted the shoddines of the AJC report — how it doesn’t once refute any claims made by any of the people it slanders. And WHAT furor? Just a couple bloggers — until Cohen gave it tons of publicity in the NYT. Funny that the book, Wrestling with Zion, attacked by Rosenfeld, is already three years old and Cohen didn’t ask why the AJC is getting apoplectic only now — nor why the TImes neglected to review that book or mention it until there was an occasion to attack it.
February 1st, 2007 at 4:57 pm
accusing people of anti-semitism is fun! let’s play.
- israel is anti-semitic. by claiming to be a jewish state and committing unspeakable crimes, it slanders jews by association.
- zionism is anti-semitic, because it supports the association between jews and israel.
- right-wing jews are anti-semitic. their vicious and foolish public pronouncements promote negative stereotypes about jews.
- israel is anti-semitic, for another reason: its occupation of palestine and parts of syria and lebanon, its attacks on its neighbors and its constant saber-rattling promotes the development of violent fundamentalist groups in the arab and muslim worlds, endangering jews worldwide.
- the united states is anti-semitic, because it gives israel the support it needs to do the above.
see? fun!
February 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 am
Fear is a debilitating disease. In a world in which the President of Iran calls for the extinction of the Jewish people and denies the Holocaust it is clear that for organized American Jewry differences of opinion within the American Jewish community appear incendiary. Dr. Rosenfeld identifies a strain of anti-Zionism that delegitimates not only the occupation and the settlements but the rationale for the formation of the Jewish State itself. There are real problems that demand answers like the extraordinary poverty in Gaza, the system of checkpoints, closures, house demolitions and the wall in the West Bank that act as a prison depriving Palestinians of employment and education and even the ability to harvest the fruits of their fields.
Muzzle Watch is one antidote to the extraordinary difficulty for Jews to challenge the legitimacy of any actions by the government of Israel. It is difficult beyond words to search for meaningful common ground for positive dialogue and education when we are all trapped in a fishbowl looking at images of each other that are frightening because they are out of focus. The world is getting far too small for Jews not to be able to talk to Jews and for Jews not to be willing to listen. There are many more voices in Israel speaking to the public each day. Maybe we here in America can learn something from our sisters and brothers and cousins in the Holy Land.
February 3rd, 2007 at 5:50 am
Yes, Rosenfeld identifies a strain of anti-Zionism that deligitimates not only the occupation, but also Israel’s very right to exist (whatever that means — do we talk about any other nation’s “right to exist”? The fact that they exist is enough.) But he CONFLATES the two, accusing those who deligitmate the occupation (Tony Kushner, Adrienne Rich, and others he names or tars by implication through their participation in anthologies or activist groups) with deligitimating Israel, which they do not do (though it should not be out of the bounds of discourse for anyone to do so.) Rosenfeld claims he is making a distinction, but he then collapses on into the other. This is dishonest work.