Rabbi Daniel Gordis, who is almost always spot on regarding Israel and Jewish issues, wrote an article lambasting American Rabbinic students who are training for a career in Judaism, but are anti-Israel in outlook. The issue was highlighted this week by Gary Rosenblatt, the editor of the New York Jewish Week. I suspect that Rabbinic students, much like most of the American Jewish community, slants leftward in ideology, but runs the gamut from ardent AIPAC Zionists to J Street’s let’s pressure the Israelis to make more concessions. The extent of this problem has not yet been quantified. However, even in small percentages, the issue is problematic because of the potential influence Rabbis have on their congregants on both religious matters and the state of Israel. These students will be the future leaders of the American Jewish community. So that there can be a multiplier effect on these students’ views.
So assuming the problem exists to some degree, the question becomes where did these Rabbinic students develop their anti-Israel views. My answer is to examine secular liberalism and political correctness. And to find these attributes, you need to look no further than the vast majority of college campuses throughout the United States. Stand With Us is an organization that is devoted to dealing with misinformation about Israel on college campuses and their work addresses precisely this issue.
The moral foundation of both Israel and the United States is God-based, which derives from Jewish law and Judeo-Christian ethics. Liberalism as a philosophy as exemplified by college campuses and Western Europe secularism has moved away from God as the source of morality. Secular liberalism bases rights on attempting to maximize both equality and freedom. Secular liberalism finds it impossible to base rights and discourse on anything other than the parity of various groups as they choose the way of life they prefer to follow, whether their preferences be well-founded in the God-based moral order or not.
Secular liberalism depends on a modern conviction that neither religion (which is synonymous with what I call God-based morality), tradition nor inherited loyalties has any binding authority. Anything that denies equal freedom is to be condemned as oppressive and marginalized. Without God-based morality and no absolute sense of right and wrong or good and evil, you have moral relativism.
I am sure we have all heard the phrase that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. The moral relativist refuses to condemn the terrorist’s indiscriminate murder, based on the perceived oppression of the victim’s group. If the Palestinians are denied freedom and the right to their own country by Zionist oppressors, then terrorism against Israelis and settlers in particular is therefore justified.
Now let’s see what happens when you add political correctness to the mix. Political correctness is based on the fact that certain ideas cannot be advanced because they are offensive to certain groups. The goal of political correctness is to prevent certain down-trodden groups from being offended. In that regard, Jews, despite being the most persecuted group in human history, are not considered eligible for PC treatment because of perceived Jewish power in the U.S. and Israel’s actual power in the Middle East. However, offending Arab and Muslim sensibilities would run counter to political correctness.
Now has does this all apply to Israel? I start with the premise that on college campuses, students are being taught that Israel is an oppressive regime inflicting suffering on the Palestinians who are being deprived of their own country by the imperialist Zionists. The real issues are of course much more subtle and nuanced than that. But assume for the moment that there are two sets of people with valid and historical claims to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. The historical record would support that Jews have recognized that fact and have offered to share the land with the Palestinians at multiple junctures in history, most recently in negotiations between former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Abu Mazen. In every instance of attempts to share the land between Jews and Arabs by creating two states for two peoples, it has been the Palestinians that have done the rejecting, not the Israelis.
The Palestinians have advanced an alternative version of history predicated on false premises. As has been attributed the late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts. The indisputable facts are that the Palestinians have been unwilling to compromise and share any portion of the Land of Israel with the Jewish people. It is not Netanyahu who is refusing to sit down and negotiate; it is Abu Mazen.
When Rabbinic students refuse to buy Israeli goods and are contemplating adding commemoration of the Nakba to Tisha B’Av, you have to start with misunderstanding of history, which is derived from secular liberalism and political correctness.
© 2011 Douglas J. Workman
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