MuzzleWatch

American Muslims for Palestine launched an ad campaign this week on San Francisco buses condemning Israeli apartheid. (See below.) Predictably, local branches of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council, immediately issued a statement in effect calling the ad hate speech for using the word ‘apartheid’. They have called on “all civic, ethnic and religious leaders who oppose bigoted lies and demonization to exercise their constitutional rights by condemning these inflammatory advertisements.”

Below is a line by line reading of their media statement.

First, it’s hard to know if the people who wrote this press release actually believe what they wrote. The points they make against the ad are so off the mark, and often offensive, it’s hard to believe anyone could write them sincerely. (I’m deleting the names on the release because I don’t think it’s fair to blame them. I think people at the top should be held accountable for such nonsense.)

The release header:

Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it true. The Bay Area JCRC, and local offices of the ADL and the AJC, are not synonymous with the “Bay Area Jewish Community.” In fact, while the Jewish Community Relations Council claims to represent Bay Area Jews, they won’t release the number or names of groups they represent. That certainly makes one wonder if the number is embarrassingly small. And it’s likely shrinking. There is no shortage of Jews around here, from a wide political spectrum, who would be appalled to be associated with an attack on a Muslim group for using a word that Israeli officials use regularly. (More on that later.)

First we see the predictable talking point about initiatives that seek to pressure Israel to abide by international law seeking to “divide the community.” The irony of course, is that actually the community is pretty united, certainly increasingly so. On campuses, for example, over and over again you have a veritable rainbow of organizations backing these initiatives –including Christian, Jewish, Muslim, secular, Southeast Asian, Latino, African American and so forth, all united-increasingly opposed to “coalitions” of a handful of similar and non-diverse groups. (Kind of like those UN votes for Palestinian rights where nearly every country in the world stands on one side, and Israel, the US, Palau and Micronesia stand on the other.)

This is the gist—the JCRC and ADL claim the ad is essentially a hate crime designed to delegitimze Israel’s existence. This is the de facto talking point these days; it is intimidating language, used for lack of a good argument. It goes like this:

It doesn’t really matter what you say or do, the answer always is, “you REALLY want to destroy Israel” (or delegitimize it, which is supposed to be a roundabout way to destroy Israel). Dig a little deeper, and according to the 6 million dollar Israel Action Network, which openly spies on groups like Jewish Voice for Peace* and provides talking points and strategy to defenders of Israeli government policy, the aim of delegitimization is to “isolate Israel as a pariah state and reject the notion of a two-state solution.” If that were at all true, you’d think they’d go after the original two-state solution killers– the settlers, the Israeli government and Bibi Netanyahu whose party openly opposes a two-state solution. But nary a peep. Their harsh condemnations are reserved only for those trying to end Israel’s ongoing violations of international law.

The ad’s false claims diminish the suffering of the millions of people who were truly subjected to apartheid. The term “apartheid” describes the systematic oppression of the racial majority population by South Africa’s minority through comprehensive racial discrimination.  In sharp contrast to Apartheid South Africa, Israel is a diverse democratic country that affords equal political and civil rights to all its citizens.

Israeli human rights groups have much to say about the very unequal apportioning of rights to Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, but why bother to argue the obvious? Instead, let’s just take one of the organizations behind this press release that defines apartheid for South Africans (because really, how dare Archbishop Tutu do so). Michelle Goldberg wrote in The Daily Beast about the ADL’s moral standing on defining South Africa, describing the NYT’s Sasha Polakow Suransky’s (no relation) writing on the issue:

In the 1980s, at a time when Israel maintained close ties with South Africa, the ADL went on the attack against Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. As Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported in his recent book The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, ADL National Director Nathan Perlmutter co-authored an article implying that the ANC was “totalitarian, anti-humane, anti-democratic, anti-Israel and anti-American.” The ADL sent spies into the American anti-apartheid movement, as well as other movements critical of right-wing American foreign policy. Eventually, the organization was surveilling much of the American left. In 1993, a California police raid on the offices of the ADL and one of its investigators yielded files on Greenpeace, the NAACP, Act Up, New Jewish Agenda, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and several Democratic politicians, among hundreds of others. The ADL eventually settled a class-action lawsuit brought by several of its targets.

The ADL apparently had no problem with Apartheid South Africa when it existed, but now they claim authority to dispute the many South Africans, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who decry the many similarities between that regime and Israel’s occupation.

The release, again:

Finally, and here’s the heart of the matter: if calling AMP’s use of the term “apartheid” is, as the release describes it, “misleading, inflammatory, divisive, offensive and bigoted,” where is the AJC’s, ADL’s and JCRC’s outrage about these Israelis who have used the same term to describe the decades-long and ever-expanding Israeli occupation? Surely they didn’t miss these statements, as attuned as they are to the “A” word. But once again—it’s perfectly alright for high ranking Israelis to regularly use the word apartheid, but it’s not OK for Muslims to do so? What kind of message about bigotry does that send?

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By Donna Nevel

An event is taking place in New York City on April 4^th to discuss the following questions: Is Israel—or can it be—a democracy? Is there—or can there be—equality in Israel? Can a Jewish state be democratic? The current realities in Palestine/Israel, and deep concerns about justice and equality, make this conversation urgent. Two high-profile rabbis in New York City played key, and starkly contrasting, roles as the planning for this event unfolded.

One rabbi did not want the conversation to happen at all—at least not in any space over which he had control. The very mention of BDS in the flyer announcing the event—that this panel had grown out of questions asked at an earlier panel on BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions]—made the conversation, in his words, “beyond the pale;” it was not going to take place in his “home.” And so he had his assistant cancel the contract the synagogue had signed to rent out its space for the event. (Only when we held him to account with his contractual liability did he grudgingly back down, telling us he wished we would go elsewhere and demanding that we not use the name of the synagogue even as part of the address in our promotional materials lest the synagogue suffer “reputational harm” for which we would be held responsible.)

But there is another rabbi in this story—the one who opened her arms and her synagogue and said: “I am disturbed by the trend in the Jewish community to censor discussions about Israel and Palestine. I feel like it’s my moral responsibility to make sure this burning issue that’s facing us as a Jewish people gets a complete debate and discussion.”

What is the message we want to convey to our children during this Passover season, a holiday that embodies a commitment to asking questions and pursuing freedom and justice? Do we want them to learn that being Jewish means shutting down conversations that might challenge us to act more ethically? That some questions about what we do and how we treat others are “beyond the pale” and so we must not address them together as a community? Or do we want them to experience being Jewish as encouraging honest and genuine and open discussion about hard issues that might help us discover how we can support what is just and what is right? Which rabbi’s words would we like to resonate with our children?

As the Israeli occupation becomes more and more entrenched, as basic civil liberties and human rights are increasingly being eroded, and as the Israeli government continues its expansionist policies in the name of the Jewish people, aren’t questions like the ones above screaming for our attention? As the Palestinian people continue to struggle for liberation, we can and should demand no less from our rabbis and from our institutions than a full commitment to asking these tough and urgent questions and challenging ourselves about the ways we can most meaningfully participate in pursuing justice. And what better time to insist upon this than during Passover?
__________________________________________

Donna Nevel, a community psychologist and educator, is a long-time organizer for Palestinian/Israeli peace and justice. She is one of 15 cosponsors of a program on April 4th being held at 7 PM at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City.

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[Editor’s note: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s video report (above) on Israel-defense training for students made me think that now would be a good time to re-publish Lessons from the UC Berkeley Divestment Effort. My colleague Sydney Levy and I wrote it this summer in response to the UC Berkeley divestment struggle and Israeli Consul General Akiva Tor’s rather strange response to the effort.

In watching the JTA video in which the national head of Hillel is trying to make a subtle point but revealingly ends up comparing Muslims to vampires, I’d add that it has never been so clear to me how older Jews have failed this younger generation. Students are smart enough to handle an open conversation about complexity and Israel. But many in the older generation in power don’t want that to happen. The fundamental irony, of course, is that when it comes to both delegitimizing and existentially threatening Israel, no critic can hold a candle to Israel itself and its ever-expanding settlement project (and human rights abuses etc…) There is no faster way for Israel to continue down the path of self-destruction than to continue the status quo, unhindered. In that very important sense, the BDS movement may be Israel’s last chance. Especially now that we know that Congress and the Obama administration is no more willing to hold Netanyahu accountable than previous administrations.]

Lessons from the UC Berkeley Divestment Effort

By Cecilie Surasky and Sydney Levy, Jewish Voice for Peace

(June 1, 2010) Israel right-or-wrong apologists have reason to be worried after three lengthy UC Berkeley student senate hearings concluded each with a solid majority of votes (60% or more) in favor of divestment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation. Though in the end, the vote fell 1 short of the needed supermajority required to overturn a veto, neither our opponents nor we forget that a clear majority consistently supported the bill.

Now, a few weeks after the hearings are over, it is a good time to examine how familiar tactics were deployed to stop the divestment effort and are now being used to prevent future similar ones. These tactics do not advance the cause of peace and have the unintended potential to cause harm to Jews in the US. Silencing debate, confusing the facts, taking over student senates, making indiscriminate charges of anti-Semitism, criminalizing anti-occupation activism, implicitly or explicitly condoning widespread hostility against Muslims, Palestinians, and anti-occupation Jews – these are the tactics with which we’ve unfortunately become too familiar. We’ll review them below.

1) Silencing debate

The first tactic, which predates UC Berkeley’s divestment initiative, is the effort to shut down debate within the Jewish community. The story is an old one, but given the growing level of desperation among the Israel right-or-wrong crowd, the measures being deployed are increasingly bold and destructive.

Just a few months ago, the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation issued the most restrictive funding guidelines in the country. These guidelines aim to silence open discussion within the institutional Jewish community on Israeli policies and the merits of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. And they also have led to an old-fashioned blacklist of well-known human rights groups now banned from the Federation’s donor designated fund’s acceptable charities list.

The guidelines’ impact has not gone unnoticed. An open letter in The Forward signed by Jewish professors, rabbis, and other notables from both the left and center describes the San Francisco Federation guidelines in these terms:

Despite the guidelines’ repeatedly stated commitment to the values of free and open discussion and diversity, they will have a chilling effect on the entire spectrum of community institutions, including educational, service, social justice and arts organizations. They will also limit American Jewish exposure to the range of art, literature, scholarship, and political discourse that exists in Israel. The guidelines will encourage self-censorship. Organizations will fear losing their funding; individuals will fear losing their jobs.

Though the ad is written in future tense about the negative effects the guidelines will have, we know for certain that these effects have already taken hold. Fearing loss of jobs or funding, people are staying quiet.

More recently, the guidelines were directly linked by a Haaretz columnist Bradley Burston to Israel’s banning of political linguist Noam Chomsky and other indications of incipient “fascism.”

This effort to stifle debate inside our communities has ironically meant that the only way that Jews have been able to speak face-to-face with other Jews about divestment has been at the UC Berkeley hearings. And what the hearings revealed was striking: an authentic crisis in the Jewish community. By all appearances, the number of Jewish supporters of divestment on campus easily matched the number of opponents. The group that sponsored the divest initiative, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), includes many Israelis and Jews as well as Palestinians and Muslims and many others of various faiths and nationalities, and the co-author of the divest bill himself is an Israeli Jew. Many Jewish professors, including members of the Jewish studies program, came out in support of the divest bill.

The Federation guidelines not only prevent an open conversation on these critically important issues, but they also banish these Jewish studies professors and the Jewish and Israeli students from any public forum on Israel funded by the Federation. The guidelines banish some of our best and most knowledgeable minds from the conversations where we truly need them most. By silencing debate, the Israel right-or-wrong advocates get to act like they’re speaking for the majority of Jews. But we know that they are not. For now, they’ve shut down public debate inside the Jewish institutional world, and their McCarthyite methods cast a long shadow. But the divestment hearing shows that whether or not the Jewish institutional world is ready, these conversations will take place because people, including many Jews, want to have them.

2) Confusing the Facts

The second tactic we saw used, yet again, was a consistent campaign to mislead the public about the nature of specific divestment resolutions. Many in the Jewish world, including the director of Berkeley Hillel ignored the fact that the UC Berkeley divestment resolution addressed only the Israeli occupation and repeatedly suggested instead that it targeted Israel as a whole.

3) Take over student senates

The Forward reported that,

At an AIPAC conference in Washington in late March, AIPAC leadership development director Jonathan Kessler said that his organization would “make sure that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote,” as recorded in a video taken at the conference by the JTA. “This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s Capitol. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses,” he said.

You can watch the chilling but frank video with Mr. Kessler’s statement here, where Mr. Kessler explicitly refers to the Berkeley resolution. This of course did not stop an AIPAC spokesperson from declaring:

“We took no position on the Berkeley student election, since like in any other election, we don’t rate or endorse candidates. Of course we would always, publicly and consistently, encourage pro-Israel students to be active in civic and political life.”

This year alone, about 1,300 students from all 50 states were offered a travel junket to DC to attend an AIPAC conference and learn the finer points of Israeli Hasbara. About a quarter of those in attendance were student government presidents, the kinds of leaders that can veto a divestment bill, just like UC Berkeley student senate president Will Smelko did. What is striking, as documented in the AIPAC video, is that a number of these student leaders had not heard of AIPAC before the offer of the free trip.
(more…)

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It is amazing to me how little the script varies from muzzle attempt to muzzle attempt, but this recent example shows remarkable fealty to muzzling’s rich history.  Josef Olmert, brother of former Prime Minister Ehud, is concerned about the BDS movement’s rise and potential for even greater growth on US college campuses. So how does he express this concern?

I possess a list of thousands of American academics calling for a boycott of Israel. The number of Jews among them is overwhelming.

What’s next, Un-Jewish-American Activities hearings at every Hillel? In a threefer, Olmert manages to reproduce the paranoia of the  Old “I have here in my hand [a list of communists]” McCarthyism as well as its obsession with the number of Jews and State Department employees amongst its enemies.

I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the BDS Movement and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. . . .

Just kidding, that was actually Joe McCarthy, and I switched out the words “Communist Party.”

Here’s Joe Olmert,

Among students, anti-Israel sentiment is its strongest in Middle Eastern studies departments and research centers, decades ago hijacked by anti-Israel teachers. Frighteningly, present students and researchers are the future staffers of the U.S. State Department and the intelligence community. Clearly, the anti-Israel sentiment on campus is dangerous, Israel and her supporters cannot afford to lose this battle.

All we need now if for him to say something homophobic and the history lesson will be complete. So how can we fight this BDS menace?

To combat these forces, supporters on campus must do a better job at presenting Israel’s case with clear, straight, and concise facts.

Rather like a teacher trainer lecturing about the importance of avoiding lecture, Olmert’s piece does not seem too heavy on facts. But I guess that sounds better than “hysterical innuendo, paranoid hyperbole, and guilt by association.” All this for a transparent movement whose members sign public petitions and have all night open debates on the issue!

Olmert closes with the following battle call,

On the eve of a new academic year, I make an urgent call to the pro-Israel community. Time is running out. Israel can win this war currently raging on the American campus, but for that to happen, Israel’s supporters must act quickly and decisively. My only question is: Who’s coming with me?

My guess is, probably people unconcerned with civil liberties, human rights,  or academic freedom. I look forward to following this BDS-baiting further.

–Jesse Bacon

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Sue Fisckoff writes in the JTA about the off season preparations of Team Israel, aka Hillel, the Jewish student organization. The article highlights the very real panic the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement has caused and its automatic equation with anti-Semitism in the minds of some.

Amanda Boris is nervous about what she’ll face when classes resume at the University of Wisconsin later this month. “There’s an uncomfortable amount of anti-Semitism on my campus,” said the incoming senior.

We begin with some descriptions of actual anti-Semitism, namely an ad denying the Holocaust and anonymous internet posts, which sound bad if not exactly a groundswell of hatred. But within a sentence, we move to an unnamed professor charged with “making openly false statements about Israel.” No examples are given, but the professor whoever she or he is, is now in league with neo-Nazis and people who believe Jews had it coming. Whatever the real threats this student faces are now conflated with political views that differ from hers, and it sounds like Hillel’s trainings on Israel advocacy are doing nothing to sharpen that distinction. The article does not give any other examples of the titular “anti-Israel” sentiment “on the lesson plan,” implying in the classroom.

Rather, the focus is on the BDS movement, which is predicted to be “better organized, more prevalent and more vitriolic” this school year. The first two seem quite likely, but no evidence of the latter is given. Instead, anti Divestment students are warned that their foes have…better technology!

Whereas past years might have involved handfuls of anti-Israel students passing out photocopied flyers, last year saw a high-tech traveling exhibit of Israel’s separation barrier, complete with an embedded plasma TV showing anti-Israeli images.

Now we come to the heart of the matter, divestment resolutions on campus.

Only one of those proposed resolutions passed, in a non-binding student body vote at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. But every time such a bill is put forward, activists say, the charged atmosphere leaves lasting wounds.

Actually, Berkeley passed one too, and it was vetoed by a campus President. And what are those lasting wounds? Seeing Jews who disagree with you.

When the student government at the University of California, San Diego voted on a divestment bill in April, Hillel campus director Keri Copans noted some Jewish students standing across the room with the pro-divestment crowd, even as most Jewish students stood with her in opposing the bill.

The article does not actually interview any of these strange creatures, these Jews for BDS, But their very existence is painful,and Copans feels bad for them.

‘Divestment bills come and go, but these are Jewish students,’ she said. ‘I want them to have positive Jewish experiences, and that’s not what they get by being glared at across the room.’

However much pain is being felt, it seems clear that Hillel has NOT drawn the lesson that truly representing all Jewish students means allowing for a range of positions on Israel. Instead, students with differing views or who just don’t want to engage in this debate are compared to a piece of defective furniture.

‘For the average student, Israel is a problem — and they don’t want more problems,’ said Michael Faber, longtime Hillel executive director at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y. ‘It makes that leg of their Jewish identity wobbly.’

Wayne Firestone, the Hillel executive, said: ‘We want the students to be prepared, not paralyzed with fear.

We are in the identity-building business, and the Israel issue is one we are standing up for.’

Free advice, Michael and Wayne: lay off the carpentry metaphors, stick to the actual anti-Semitsim your students face, and stand up for them and their values, not the “Israel issue.”

PS The article also interviews StandWithUs as a “pro-Israel” organization, last seen on Muzzlewatch making Jewish Voice for Peace members feel highly unsafe with slurs and threats on their family members.

–Jesse Bacon

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Here’s a lesson in democracy. In preparation for the upcoming November elections a group of local activists sent a questionnaire to the 85 candidates from their county running for seats in the state legislature. They hoped the information they’d receive would encourage debate and allow voters to make better decisions at the ballot box.

What did they get instead? They got slammed. Their survey was called “abhorrent and repulsive,” and the newspaper that brought the charges against them ignored their calls for a reasonable policy debate and did not allow them to respond with as little as a letter to the editor.

The candidate survey from Peace Action Montgomery came under attack for a single question in it, that – you guessed it – addressed the Israeli occupation.

Del. Benjamin Kramer (D-Montgomery), one of the candidates receiving the survey, issued a public letter calling the questionnaire “anti-Semitic” and promising to encourage fellow candidates to ignore it.

Anti-Semitic? You be the judge.

Question 5 is composed of only three sentences. The first two are statements of facts:

1. “In the past, the Maryland state legislature has exercised its power to order the state’s pension system to divest its holdings in companies that are complicit in illegal activities in other countries.”

2. “The World Court has ruled that Israel’s separation wall and settlements in the West Bank are illegal.”

Based on those facts, a legitimate policy question is asked:

“Would you support a similar divestment bill targeting companies that knowingly participate in these illegal activities in Israel?”

The question does not single out Jews. It does not even single out Israel. It does single out actions that break international law. What’s wrong with that?

Ask Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, who described the questionnaire by Peace Action Montgomery as “abhorrent and repulsive.” The JCRC holds its own set of candidate forums and distributes questionnaires to inform its members. But apparently others cannot do as much.

This whole controversy erupted on the front page of the local Washington Jewish Week (“Parsing the D-word”). 

Peace Action Montgomery was quoted in the D-article, but its letter to the editor following the publication of the slander was never printed. In that letter, Peace Action Montgomery called for an open, reasonable debate on the merits of BDS, pro and con. The group even invited the paper that slandered it to co-moderate the debate. But the Washington Jewish Week has chosen to ignore the invitation altogether. What are they so afraid of?

We print here what the Washington Jewish week would not publish:

“Parsing the D Word” (July 29) not only pointed out the controversy over using divestment as a strategy to encourage Israel to abide by international laws regarding human rights; it also included statements by an unidentified Jewish backer to MD Delegate, Jim Pettit, that slammed Peace Action Montgomery as “a façade” and questioned its legitimacy as an organization that truly promotes peace. In reality, anyone who took the time to review our activities would see that we have consistently opposed military interventions and U.S. funding of ALL military occupations, but particularly those in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, since they garner by far the largest chunk of U.S. taxpayer dollars. We also vehemently oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry and are offended at being defamed for our support for human rights, protection of civil rights and opposition to violations of the rule of law.



Our question to the Washington Jewish Week is why the published article neglected to point out that our letter in response to Delegate Kramer invited him to join us in a public debate on the issue of how best to advance a just resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, with Washington Jewish Week as a co-moderator of the event, along with a representative of another organization.



We have had no response to that invitation and so propose it again. We hope that Del. Kramer and/or Washington Jewish Week will accept this invitation for a much needed dialogue on this significant issue.


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My JVP colleague Sydney Levy just posted on our sister blog, TheOnlyDemocracy? This effort seems largely triggered by the Palestinian boycott of settlement goods which has already had a significant economic impact. Ynet reports:

The bill was initiated by the Land of Israel lobby in the Knesset and was endorsed by members of various factions, including Kadima party whip Dalia Itzik and Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tsachi Hanegbi.

by Sydney Levy | 

What is Israel’s reaction to the growing nonviolent movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions? Well criminalize it, of course!

We just learned new bill has been introduced in the Israeli Knesset by 25 Knesset members, that would criminalize all boycott activities or even boycott advocacy inside or outside Israel. You can find info about this in English here and with more detail in Hebrew here.

The proposed bill would target those that initiate, encourage, or provide assistance or information about boycotts against Israel.

Israeli citizens or residents of Israel could be sued by whoever was harmed by the boycott and would have to pay up to 30,000 shekels in restitution and an additional amount according to the harm established by the Israeli courts.
This provision would endanger the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace, New Profile, Boycott from Within, among others.

Those that are neither citizens nor residents of Israel would lose the ability of entering Israel for at least ten years and would be forbidden from economic activity in Israel (holding an account in an Israeli bank, owning Israeli stocks, land, or any other good that requires registration.)
It is not clear whether this provision would apply also to entry into the West Bank, although Prof. Noam Chomsky’s denial of entry may be a sign of things to come.

A group in a foreign country would also be forbidden from economic activism in Israel. This would apply to the Palestinian Authority as well.
In the case of the PA, Israel would freeze transfer of money it owes and would use it to pay restitution to those harmed in Israel by the PA boycott of settlement goods.

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What do Jewish Voice for Peace, Madre, Amnesty International, New Israel Fund, American Friends Service Committee, Media Matters and Institute for Policy Studies all have in common?

There has been a growing backlash since the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation first announced the most restrictive funding guidelines in the country. The guidelines essentially ban recipients from giving voice to anyone who doesn’t toe the line (which the Federation ultimately determines) on Israel. No wonder the Bay Area Jewish intellectual class is in an uproar. As UC Hebrew and Comparative Literature professor Chana Kronfeld says, “All the major Israeli writers would probably be banned.”

The Open Letter to Jewish Communities in the Forward signed by Bay Area Jewish academics, rabbis  and other leaders, as well as coverage in Tablet, the Chronicle of Philanthropy and the New York Times reveals the extent to which concern about ideological policing is now a concern not just for the left but for the Jewish center.

However, what is not generally known is that the Fed’s Jewish Community Endowment Fund has also quietly pulled a number of nonprofit organizations from their acceptable charities list in an apparent attempt to ensure ideological purity.

What are those groups? Using a bit of technical sleuthing (and a tip-off from a donor), we’ve been able to pinpoint thus far 6 nonprofits that have been pulled from the list: Jewish Voice for Peace, American Friends Service Committee, the Institute for Policy Studies, Madre, Global Exchange, and the National Lawyers Guild. There is no reason to think there aren’t more - we will publicize those names as they become available. This means supporters of these groups who keep funds in the Endowment Fund can no longer designate them as recipients.

Even more interesting, one can still designate money to the Hebron Fund, FLAME, and extremist settler militia funder, the Central Fund of Israel.

The implications of this new battle that mirrors the war on human rights groups in Israel haven’t been lost on Boston activists who, within weeks of the announcement of the SF guidelines, launched their own Boston Combined Jewish Philanthropies witch hunt. (See embedded PDF file/link below-all articles from Boston’s Jewish paper, the Jewish Advocate.) Even The David Project founder Charles Jacobs weighs in on these so-called enemies of Israel: The American Friends Service Committee • Democracy Now! • The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) • The Tides Foundation • Media Matters • The New Israel Fund • Brit Tzedek v’Shalom • Physicians for Social Responsibility • The Workmen’s Circle • Amnesty International

Meanwhile NGO Monitor’s Prof. Gerald Steinberg, a man who never met a human rights organization he didn’t hate, is speaking this week at the Annual Conference of the Association for Israel Studies, at the University of Toronto on “Delegitimizing Israel: Can Jewish Philanthropy Change the Tide?”

Proposed Jewish Charity Blacklist in Boston: Not Pro-Israel Enough?

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Boycott campaigns are always controversial, even at food cooperatives. So much so that it is advisable to have a policy for dealing with them. The Davis Food Coop has one, a wise move in California. So why aren’t they following their own policy?

Well, apparently there are boycotts and then there are boycotts.
The Davis Committee for Palestinian Rights (DCPR) believe they gathered enough signatures for a vote on a boycott of Israeli products. However, even as they collected signatures, the coop management has informed them that they will not be allowed a vote. The reason is that the vote is likely to be “controversial.” What’s more the coop board  raised the specter of federal anti-boycott rules. There is no evidence that the law, intended to apply to Arab States during the 1970’s oil embargo, would ever be applied to a Davis Food Coop. The office of the federal government that tracks violations of the law lists only Arab States, no other campaigns. Eventually, according to organizer Mikos Fabersunne, the coop backed away from that argument and emphasized in fairly blunt terms the threatened financial impact of the coop by people upset with the decision. Boycott opponents echoed this sentiment.
If the issue is indeed controversial, isn’t that all the more reason to follow one’s own rules?
The local organized Jewish community, namely the board co-President of Congregation Bet Haverim Karen Firestein, is opposed to the boycott and said in a written statement on the synagogue’s website , “If the Co-op becomes a political tool for those who want to commandeer it for ideological reasons, it will no longer be able to serve the entire Davis community. Long term members who do not want to be associated with the boycott’s message will have no choice but to resign from the Coop and patronize other markets.” In other words, a boycott!

Why can’t the coop board members, if they feel such a significant portion of the membership is opposed, simply hold a vote? Similar resolutions were defeated overwhelmingly at the Ann Arbor People’s Food Coop, Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, and my own Philadelphia neighborhood’s Weavers’ Way. The coop board’s justification that anything besides food quality is hard to enforce rings similarly. As much as I would like to believe my fair trade coffee or my locally grown beet tastes better than the alternative, coops are about much more than the flavor of the food. Citing dubious legal precedent and attempting to stifle controversy prematurely seemed geared to inflame the situation further. There is nothing inherently antisemitic about boycotts, as evidenced by the Firestein threatening one herself. In contrast to the notion that he is singling out Israel, organizer Fabersunne supports it as a tactic against China, Sudan, and Burma, the latter two already being on the United States’ sanctions list.  As for the other group opposed to the boycott, the Davis Interfaith Peace Coalition, their only Google search result was an event to say how great Israel was, suggesting they are hardly advancing Peace and Justice in the Middle East. It seems they were explicitly founded to counter the BDS movement.

Congregation Bet Haverim itself had a brush with controversy when it had a speaker from the Council on American Islamic Relations in 2007, in which the audience had several outbursts and one attendee had to be asked to leave. This briefly led to a ban on “controversial events,” which seems to have been lifted as the syngagogue recently hosted a panel in which anti Occupation activists (who were not present) such as Jewish American Anna Baltzer were accused of being antisemitic. The synagogue also cancelled an April 2009 talk by David Wesley on “Jews, Arabs and Government Officials: Power Relations Inside Israel.” But the past controversy and the existence of the group “Jewish Peace Alternatives,” suggests the synagogue has a broader range of views that is being represented by its Board Co-President. And if it wants to attract unaffiliated members, I would suggest that stifling votes is not the way to do it.

Meanwhile, the DCPR activists are planning future boycott actions at neighborhood supermarkets, and the BDS movement shows no sign of dying out. Nor does the effort to stifle it. Congregation Bet Haverim actually adopted a similar position to  the San Francisco Jewish Federation, banning speakers who oppose Israel as a Jewish or Democratic state. In practice, this has meant a much wider category of speaker cannot get synagogue endorsements. According to member Sarah Pattison, the local group Jewish Peace Alternatives decided to “err on the side of caution” and did not even bother to ask if they could sponsor Breaking the Silence, though there is no evidence that these Israeli Soldiers are against the Jewish State. Here in Philadelphia, the local Hillel has passed a similar policy, and then gone on to strategize in the local Jewish press about how speakers such as Hanan Ashrawi might have their lectures “challenged from the inside” at schools with a small Jewish population.

It seems likely that this a coordinated strategy on the part of Israel’s defenders, and will be fought out locality by locality. But the overall futility of trying to demonize this nonviolent tactic seems to me clearly unlikely to be ethical or effective. Longtime coop and synagogue member Gene Borack put it best when he stated his belief in “populist democracy, that people who have all the information will make the best decisions for themselves and their families.” I can’t think of a better summary of the mission of Muzzlewatch (and our sister blog The Only Democracy?) Thanks to the hard work of the BDS activists, the information is getting out there. Now when will people really be able to make those decisions, in Davis or elsewhere?
-Jesse Bacon

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