Each year, I mark the anniversary of Paul Wellstone’s death by remembering him and something he stood for. Today, I am headed for Washington, D.C. to participate in the national conference put on by J-Street. It’s a good way of summoning up the spirit of Paul and what I think he would say about the place we find ourselves.
If he were alive today, I am confident that Paul would be a supporter of J-Street. For those who are not aware, J-Street was formed to present a different vision than the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which for too long has undermined, in my opinion, the prospects for peace.
In April 2002, Paul said, ""Despite the rage and raw feelings in the region now, most Israelis and most Palestinians crave a peaceful resolution to this conflict. This hunger for peace, and a sustained and vigorous engagement by the United States, is our best hope for achieving it."
I believe that Paul would show the same courage on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that he showed on Iraq—he was the only Democratic Senator who was up for re-election in 2002 who voted against the Iraq War resolution. Three weeks later, he would die in the plane crash that silences a voice that is so needed in today’s politics.
Unfortunately, New York’s two U.S. Senators, including my opponent in the 2010 Democratic primary, are taking a decidedly un-Wellstonian path, choosing politics over moral leadership--they have backed out of the J-Street conference, presumably under pressure from AIPAC and because they want to keep their "pro-Israel" credentials intact.
I should start by reminding people about some of my personal background. I am a Jew. My father was born in then-Palestine. In the 1940s, he fought in the Hagannah, an armed wing of the Jewish underground. I lived in Israel for seven years, including during the 1973 Yom Kippur war; a cousin of mine was killed in that war, leaving a young widow and two children, and his brother was wounded; that family’s grief altered their lives forever—as such grief has shattered the lives of so many people in the region. My step-grandfather, an old man who was no threat to anyone, was killed by a Palestinian who took an axe to his head while he was sitting quietly on a park bench. His murder was a revenge killing undertaken in retaliation for the massacre of dozens of peaceful Muslims who were slaughtered the day before, as they knelt in prayer, by an Israeli ultra-nationalist settler. Half my family still lives in Israel, including a sister who just gave birth to her second son.
My mother survived the Holocaust, fleeing Poland, though a number of relatives perished in the concentration camps. My mother, her sister and parents were "lucky" to end up in a Russian work camp in Siberia and eventually made their way to Palestine after the war ended. So, I get the fears and instincts that are pervasive in this debate.
I believe AIPAC, for too long, has exploited those fears to the detriment of Palestinians, our own country and, in the bitterest irony, Israel. AIPAC has bullied elected leaders, and people outside the government, into silence and acceptance about the facts of occupation, oppression, torture, military force used on civilians, and adherence to international law by all sides in the conflict. In the same way that patriotic Americans can march in the streets and vigorously oppose the immoral war in Iraq, anyone, Jew or non-Jew, should be able to raise legitimate critiques of our one-sided policy in the Middle East and Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians without fearing a McCarthy-like smear that they are anti-Jewish.
Rather than recount a list of transgressions, which ultimately leads to a back-and-forth about the other side’s culpability, I would simply say this: we have too often lost—in the vitriol, violence, hatred, and distrust—the ability to have honest dialogue, the end result of which is more violence. By contrast, J-Street "supports diplomatic solutions over military ones, including in Iran; multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution; and dialogue over confrontation with a wide range of countries and actors when conflicts do arise."
I have three basic principles about dialogue. First, everyone must be at the table—that includes Hamas as well as the West Bank settlers. Second, everybody has to agree to a ceasefire but you can’t ask anyone to give up weapons until they are ready to. Third, you can’t ask people to give up their dreams. Those are the three principles that George Mitchell stuck to when he successfully negotiated the Irish peace accords. While the two conflicts are different, those principles are smart foundations for resolving any conflict. The two New York Senators apparently disagree because they have shunned dialogue in favor of, unsurprisingly, satisfying a bankrupt philosophy that only perpetuates the conflict.
As a Jew, I have always been proud of the Jewish concept of "Tikkun Olam," which mean, roughly, "repairing the world." I like to think that that is what brought so many Jews into the civil rights and labor movements in the 1960s and 1970s, and into the Iraq anti-war movement—and, personally, guided me into the world of social justice work. I feel great sorrow that Israel is an occupier of another people and I believe that Israel can never be whole, democratic or at peace until that occupation is ended in a just way. And I also believe that the concept of Tikkun Olam means that we must never be silent.
We have started this petition (while the petition began as effort by progressive Jews, everyone is invited to sign—we will add that to the petition). Please feel free to sign and circulate. (here is an article about our petition)