{Originally posted to the author’s website, FirstOne Through}
Some passionate and eloquent liberals have bemoaned the state of inclusiveness among Jews today. Leon Wieseltier, editor of the New Republic penned an angry piece “J Street’s Rejection Is a Scandal” about the exclusion in 2014 of J Street from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Angry voices are again being heard about J Street due to their position in favor of the Iranian nuclear deal that is being promoted by the Obama administration. Is Wieseltier correct in that we only seek to hear our own voices and that “the orthodoxies and the bubbles and the closed loops and the echo chambers are everywhere?” Is there a “red line” that J Street and others have crossed and therefore deserve to be excluded from the broad tent of acceptable conversation?
Individual Hate Speech
Many countries have laws that ban hate speech. Sometimes the exact language is clearly spelled out about what cannot be said publicly and sometimes it is more general in nature.
For example, several European countries, including Germany, have laws that prohibit Holocaust denial. Those countries took such steps not simply because such expressions offend Jews, but because of the continent’s failure to step in and protect Jews which led to their slaughter. Silence became complicity which must never happen again.
For its part, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted Resolution 16/18 whose goal is “Combating Intolerance, Negative Stereotyping and Stigmatization of, and Discrimination, Incitement to Violence and Violence Against, Persons Based on Religion or Belief.” The resolution was drafted principally at the behest of Islamic countries who were worried about the spread of “Islamophobia.”
The various laws against hate speech all seek to curtail an incitement to violence and harm. The banned speech relates to a specific group of people (say Muslims) and not a concept (say a religion like Islam). While a person can legally say disparaging remarks about a concept (“Communism is evil”), one risks breaking the law by attacking a group of people (“All Communists should be beaten up”).
Banned Groups
Hate Speech laws are typically drafted against individuals. However, laws are also drafted against groups that incite violence. Israel banned two political parties, Kach and Kahane Chai in 1994 as they were defined as terrorist organizations. The groups’ ideology was based on the teachings of Rabbi Meir Kahane who called for expelling Arabs from Israel. Israel has also banned some Arab parties from running in elections if they support terrorism.
BDS, Hamas and Iran
Liberals and J Street supporters feel that BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions), Hamas and the Iranian nuclear deal should be rightly within civil discourse.
BDS: Reasonable people can arrive at different conclusions about Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria. Some feel that all the settlements are completely legal as called for in international law in 1922, while others feel that Jews living east of the Green Line is against international law as recently stated by the UN Secretary General. Those competing viewpoints would fall within the legal and acceptable conversation.
However, inciting hatred against settlers is inciting violence. Calling on the economic strangulation of Jews who legally purchased homes and businesses is akin to hate speech. As such, new laws are being passed which specifically outlaw supporting BDS.
Hamas: Hamas is a rabidly anti-Semitic organization that calls for the complete destruction of Israel. It has fired well over 10,000 rockets into Israel, killed thousands of people in hundreds of attacks. Since completely taking over Gaza in 2007, Hamas has engaged in three wars against Israel.
Supporting Hamas in any way is supporting terror.
Iranian nuclear deal: The Iranian nuclear agreement took various turns over the past several years. As Iran openly calls for the destruction of Israel, any group supporting Iran or helping Iran obtain weaponry would be supporting violence against Israel.
While the Iranian deal may arguably slow down Iran’s pathway to nuclear weapons, it certainly gives Iran tremendous financing and weaponry. As such, 78% of Israelis oppose the Iran deal in its current format.
J Street Views
J Street has taken provocative stances on these three issues.
- On BDS, the group technically states that it opposes the BDS movement, while it supports people and groups that do call for BDS.
- On Hamas, the group’s own website states that “Hamas is a political movement with an important and significant base of support within Palestinian society… and we support efforts by third parties to achieve reconciliation [between Fatah and Hamas which Israel opposes] and a unity government.” One could similarly say that the Nazi party was a political party.
- On Iran, the group is launching a major campaign to support the deal, in direct opposition to pro-Israel groups such as AIPAC. They were even against sanctions in 2009.
On these issues which directly harm Israelis and the state of Israel, J Street has sided against the stated desires of the government of Israel. Each time, they have taken stances which closely align with Israel’s enemies. Further, J Street has urged the Obama administration to vote against Israel at the United Nations Security Council, the sole voice of support in many instances.
A Related View from Tisha b’Av
The Talmud relates a story about the reason the Second Temple was destroyed:
In Gittin 56ab the Talmud tells the story of zealots who wanted to fight the Romans as they got ready to attack Jerusalem. These zealots burned decades worth of food that had been stored in Jerusalem in order to force the residents of the city to confront the Romans.
These zealots undoubtedly considered themselves pro-Jewish. They thought that by destroying all safeguards and alternative options, they could force the rest of the Jewish people to take their position in the battle against Rome.
J Street, like the zealots 2000 years ago, view themselves as pro-Israel. While the Arab and Muslim world (f/k/a Romans) may seek to attack and destroy Israel, J Street views their approach to the conflict as the only logical course of action. As such, they have engaged in coopting the US government to take positions against those sought by the government of Israel. Like the zealots who burned all of Jerusalem’s food supplies (now known as US support), they feel that Israel stripped of all of the territories won in 1967, without a Gaza blockade, and with a nuclear pact in place with Iran will secure Israel’s future. J Street is pursuing global and US pressure to make that happen, rather than seeking to convince the Israeli government.
In the minds of many, the J Street positions have made them a modern-looking version of Neturei Karta, the ant-Zionist Chasidic sect.
Debating the merits of different approaches for how Israel deals with hostile neighbors is within constructive debate. Consistently arguing in favor of Israel’s enemies that seek to destroy the country is akin to inciting violence.
Review the statements and positions of J Street here and consider whether such voices deserve to be heard in your community.
Related First One Through articles:
New York Times Confusion on Free Speech
A Disservice to Jewish Community