The time has come again to tell the story of Yankele and the rabbi of Chelm:

Once the good-hearted rabbi of Chelm was interrupted in his devotions by the sudden appearance of one of his townspeople, Yankele, bleeding and howling in pain. The shabbes-goy¹ had gratuitously punched Yankele in the mouth. The rabbi asked solicitously if he could inspect the damage. But when Yankele opened his mouth, the rabbi was horrified. How does a Jew come to have such a healthy set of teeth? Are these the very teeth that Yankele had exposed to the shabbes-goy? Well, then, no wonder he had been brutalized. For a Jew to show such strong teeth is in itself a provocation. The rabbi counseled Yankele never to show his teeth to any Gentile again.

In subsequent weeks, although Yankele keeps his mouth dutifully shut, the shabbes-goy beats him up repeatedly. Each time the rabbi, after due analysis of the situation, discovers a provocation: once Yankele had carried a loaf of bread home from the marketplace, obviously attracting the shabbes-goy’s envy; a second time he had strayed too far out of town, obviously transgressing what the shabbes-goy considered to be the Jew’s legitimate bounds. Finally, after still another beating, the rabbi realizes the gravity of the situation and calls a public meeting of the local Jewish elders to resolve the matter. The meeting unanimously concludes that Yankele is too dangerous to keep in town. At the rabbi’s suggestion he is forced to leave, and the shabbes-goy’‘s wages are modestly raised to placate him and “move him to pity.”

This bitter little parable by the Yiddish writer, I.L. Peretz, came to mind on reading the prominent advertisement of the American Friends of “Peace Now,” published in a number of Jewish newspapers in mid-June and before that the subject of a “leaked” news item in the New York Times. The ad, a call for financial support to help “disseminate” among American Jews the ideas set forth by the sponsors, was signed by about 90 well-known American Jews. Its main thrust was to oppose the Begin government’s policy of establishing further settlements in the occupied West Bank, a policy which it identified as a critical impediment to an eventual peace agreement.

The ad did not identify any impediment to peace in the Middle East other than the policies of the Begin government, so it might be useful, to begin with, to recall the immediate context of events in which it appeared.

On May 31, the fourth national conference of Al Fatah, the largest, most moderate, and most influential faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by Yasir Arafat, rededicated itself to the complete liberation of Palestine, and to the liquidation of the Zionist entity, “politically, economically, militarily, culturally, and ideologically.” Rejecting all diplomatic initiatives aimed at modifying its stand, Al Fatah continued to define all of Israel as occupied territory, and vowed to continue its struggle “until the Zionist entity is liquidated and Palestine is liberated.”

On June 13, notwithstanding their full cognizance of this position, the nine-nation European Economic Community, at a meeting of heads of state and government in Venice, called for the association of the PLO with the Middle East negotiating process. The Venice declaration deliberately touched upon all the issues that are most sensitive to Israel, including the threat to the future of Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the government of Saudi Arabia, the recipient of American F-15’s and a regime held to be friendly to the aims and policies of the United States, denied reports that it was planning contact with President Sadat of Egypt. Having committed the crime of making peace with Israel, with the blessing of the United States, Sadat has been held in political isolation by his fellow Arabs ever since. Not a single Arab state, including the “moderate” Jordanians and Saudi Arabians, has breached this isolation.

This was the moment chosen by a new coalition of American Jews to find its voice and issue a call for action—not against the genocidal intentions of the PLO, or against the cynicism of countries held in the thrall of the oil cartel, or against the implacable enmity of the Arab states, but against the government of Israel for proving a stumbling block to peace. When danger mounts, the safest thing is still to kick Yankele out of town.

_____________

The American Friends of “Peace Now” represent themselves as a group of Jews deeply concerned with the well-being of Israel, with the ongoing manifestations of hostility to Israel, and with Israeli policies that appear to fan this hostility. Their rhetoric and demeanor are intentionally cautious. Unlike Breira, an earlier “peace-oriented” movement of American Jews which was accused of forcing Israel’s hand by calling for recognition of the PLO, the American Friends define themselves as the counterpart of a home-grown Israeli movement and hence thoroughly unexceptionable in their position. The group’s advertisement, a model of decorum, deserves to be quoted in its entirety.

First the preamble:

“Peace Now” is an Israeli peace movement supported by hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens. It is independent of any political party. Founded by reserve combat officers during the spring of 1978, “Peace Now” has since brought together a coalition of people with a wide range of political and religious outlooks to promote reconciliation between Israel and its neighbors.

Israeli and American Jews must not make the work of rejectionists easier by taking positions which do not benefit Israel’s interests and undermine its new relations with Egypt and its longstanding relationship with the United States.

Next, the group’s statement of aims, wrought as skillfully as the preamble:

“Peace Now” affirms that:

• Israeli security requires normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors. The Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is the essential first step toward that end. Peace secures borders better than borders can secure peace.
• Continued Israeli rule over more than a million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza subverts the democratic and Jewish character of Israeli society.
• All further settlement of the West Bank must be stopped. Such a policy seriously impedes any eventual agreement with the Palestinians and distresses Israel’s friends and allies. It suggests diplomatic priorities other than peace and security.
• The government of Israel should conduct negotiations with any Palestinian body that renounces terrorism and accepts the path of peaceful negotiations as the only way to solve the conflict with Israel. Such negotiations should confirm each side in its national right, including Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in secure and recognized borders and the Palestinians’ right to a national entity.

Anyone familiar with Jewish sensitivities will appreciate the care that has been taken in drafting this statement, especially the preamble with its attempt to establish the group’s legitimacy. Despite the carefulness, however, and the apparent unexceptionability of the sentiments expressed, the statement is completely one-sided, and disingenuous in its announced concern for the “democratic and Jewish character of Israeli society.” Let us start with the positions taken and work back to the position-takers.

_____________

“Israeli security requires normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbors.” True. Israel, indeed, has always made this claim, and has sought normalization not only with its neighbors, but with its neighbors’ neighbors. Thirty years elapsed before the first of those neighbors took that “essential first step,” as the statement approvingly calls the Israeli-Egyptian treaty, toward peace; as of the moment no second neighbor has followed suit.

Yet despite their declared approval of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, the American Friends appear to put less faith in it than do the parties themselves. Even as the Israelis, in one of the most generous peace offerings of modern history, are in the process of returning the last parts of the Sinai peninsula, here they are already being warned that their actions in the West Bank will “undermine” their new relations with Egypt. If peace, being as cozy as the American Friends claim, can “secure borders better than borders can secure peace,” then why should not Egypt extend to Israel the trust that partners in peace owe to one another? Or is peace, for Egypt, no more than a stick with which to threaten renewed hostility and antagonism? If so, perhaps the American Friends should have considered a different aphorism, such as that of the dour Yankee who acknowledged that good fences make good neighbors.

There is an implied link between the first point of affirmation and the three that follow, all of which suggest that Israeli settlement of the West Bank is the critical obstacle to peace. This wistful notion underlies much of the thinking of “Peace Now” and its American friends. It is, of course, a staple of the international scene by now, a fantasy that has been translated into a political program. By muddying the waters sufficiently, Arab propaganda has put the onus of “peace” on Israel’s West Bank policies, and now Jews too have leapt into the mud and are proceeding to join in the swim.

There is, however, an obvious flaw in this argument, which rests on the assumption that a halt in West Bank settlement would produce a more forthcoming attitude among the Arabs. In fact there has been no counter-offer at all on the part of Israel’s belligerent neighbors. The “rejectionists,” a felicitous term that masks the political reality of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Libya, etc., and the PLO, repudiate the state of Israel altogether, in whole and in all its parts. The rejectionists do not differentiate between “further settlement of the West Bank” (which the American Friends say “must be stopped”) and any Jewish settlement whatsoever in Greater Palestine. The rejectionists did not make their peace with the Labor government that preceded Begin, when there was less settlement, nor with the smaller Israel of pre-1967 borders, when there was no settlement, nor with the teeny-tiny Israel proposed in 1947. The American Friends urge Israel not to “make the work of the rejectionists easier,” but it is hard to know what, short of self-immolation on the part of Israel, would not make their work “easier.”

The current status of Israel on the West Bank may be undesirable for both the governed and the governors, and there is no denying that “continued Israeli rule over more than a million Arabs” under present circumstances distresses both the Israelis and the resident Arabs. But in the real world, for all that, a given condition, no matter how unpalatable, must be compared with its real alternative. The present alternative of a PLO government on the West Bank is infinitely more dangerous to the “democratic and Jewish character of Israeli society” than continued Israeli rule. There are even several Arab states that think so.

The Begin policy of continuing West Bank settlement, elsewhere referred to in “Peace Now” statements as “expansionism” but here prudently watered down to “a policy [which] seriously impedes any eventual agreement with the Palestinians,” is not even that. The Sinai peninsula (which many Israelis believe a Labor government would not have handed back as easily as Begin has done) boasted not only Jewish settlements but a valuable supply of oil. All this was ceded in return for a firm promise and policy of peace. There is thus on Israel’s part a precedent to prove that settlements are not an impediment to peace. Had King Hussein of Jordan joined the peace talks at Camp David, the limits of Jewish habitation in Samaria and Judea might now be an issue for mutual consideration between the two countries. Since Jews have always lived in this region, and since Arabs continue to live in great numbers within Israel’s pre-1967 borders, it will be natural for some Jewish settlement to continue and develop long after any peace agreements are signed. The only serious impediments to an agreement with the Palestinians are those who claim to represent the Palestinians.

In their final call upon Israel to conduct negotiations “with any Palestinian body that renounces terrorism,” the American Friends have entered the field of diplomacy themselves, going considerably beyond the language of the Camp David accords which they claim to honor—and in a manner that changes and subverts the consensus position in Israel on this matter. Whereas the Camp David agreement—and President Sadat’s plan for the West Bank—speak of recognizing the “legitimate rights of the Palestinians,” the American Friends call upon Israel to confirm the “national right” of the Palestinians and speak of a Palestinian “national entity,” hardly minor distinctions in the careful semantics of political discourse, and in fact code words for a PLO-governed Palestinian state. Moreover, the statement’s seemingly bland formula that “negotiations should confirm . . . Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in secure and recognized borders,” if it is to be taken literally, masks a weakening of the position to which the United States has publicly bound itself since 1975—namely, that it will not speak to the PLO until the latter both renounces terrorism and accepts UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which stipulate Israel’s right to exist in secure and recognized borders. For a prominent group of American Jews to proffer terms of negotiation less favorable to Israel than those accepted by the U.S. State Department and the President of Egypt would seem, to put it mildly, a serious sign of demoralization.

_____________

Who are the American Jews who take this extraordinary position—supposedly out of a concern for “reconciliation between Israel and its neighbors”? In the preamble they identify themselves not as a group in their own right but as individuals responding to the initiative taken by “hundreds of thousands” of Israeli citizens, a “coalition of people with a wide range of political and religious outlooks.” Thus the Americans are simply adding their own voices to an indigenous Israeli call for peace, which they wish to promote in an analogous fashion within the American Jewish community and before the American public at large.

Unfortunately, the implied relation between the two groups is either inadvertently or deliberately misleading. When the Israeli peace movement puts pressure on the Begin government and singles out current policy on the West Bank and Gaza as Israel’s contribution to the stalemate in the Middle East, it is acting in an accepted and reasonable way within the democratic process of that country. The Israelis must judge and inform their leadership, and make their grievances known. One may agree or disagree with the tactics and policies of Israel’s peace movement, but its moral and political justification is self-evident. Citizens of a democracy are expected to share the responsibilities of government by fighting for the best leaders and the soundest policies they deem possible.

But American Jews are not Israelis, and the government they seek to influence is not Israel’s but their own. Political actions must be assessed not only for their avowed intentions but also in the light of their actual and foreseeable results. While American Jews may differentiate between the Begin policies and the state of Israel as such, they should be intelligent enough to realize that the rest of the world does not usually make such distinctions, and may knowingly exploit opposition to a specific policy for the purposes of justifying a much broader attack on the very legitimacy of basic Israeli security needs. The current American Jewish battle against the Begin government provides an incentive for American and European policies unfavorable to Israel, and creates a strong disincentive for the Arabs to develop any more conciliatory approaches to basic issues.

Actually, the United States could be called upon to apply pressure to any number of the “heavies” in the Middle East drama, some of them longstanding and quite outspoken enemies of peace, and far more dangerous to the cause of reconciliation than ever the government of Israel was or is. It is odd, for example, that the politically conscious Jews who signed the advertisement of the American Friends of “Peace Now” addressed no calls for negotiation to King Hussein when he recently visited Washington. Here is an autocratic ruler, whose claim to the land he governs goes back no further than 1921 (four years after the Balfour Declaration), who launched his own war against Israel in 1967 with the hope of assisting in that country’s destruction, and who, despite entreaties from all the interested parties, has refused to enter into peace talks either under the Camp David auspices or since. The American Friends, in a bid to introduce some equilibrium into Middle East affairs, might have used Hussein’s visit to call for a grass-roots peace movement among Jordanians that would nudge their monarch to the bargaining table. Instead, by singling out the current elected government of Israel as the object of their concern, the American Friends of “Peace Now” exercise the right of free speech to help tip further the weight of public opinion and political action against Israel, while hiding behind the “cover” of an indigenous Israeli movement.

The second claim to legitimacy advanced by the American Friends is that it, like the “Peace Now” movement of Israel, is “independent of any political party.” The list of American signatories tries to strike the same note of general consensus and coalition that is claimed for the Israeli counterpart. There are Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jews (though not, to my knowledge, any Orthodox). There are affiliated Jews, executive directors of Jewish organizations, and marginal friends of Israel (the inclusion of Arthur Miller and Diana Trilling is a triumph of balance in itself). There are many academics and not too many holdovers from previous unpopular Jewish causes. And if there are prominent non-Zionists in the leadership of the group, they have also managed to bring in under their umbrella people like Marie Syrkin, with solid Zionist credentials.

But the implied analogy between the “wide coalition” in Israel and America is once again misleading. The Israel peace movement emerged spontaneously out of the bitterness and frustration that followed the Yom Kippur war. Vowing to remain free of politics, it gave vent to the anger Israelis felt toward their leaders who had misjudged the enemy before the war, and seemed to be doing no better in its wake. The Israelis, who have lived in a garrison state for over three decades, who serve in their armed forces until their mid-fifties, when Americans are beginning their early retirement, and who see no end to the struggle for recognition they have been waging as long as most of them can remember, feel undeniably, and understandably, cheated. It is not their protest that is surprising, but its mildness. The defiant postures of the Gush Emunim are another expression of that same grim protest.

_____________

As for the American Friends, despite the studied diversity of the ninety signatories, this is neither a spontaneous movement nor representative of Jewish grass-roots emotion. A small nucleus, all of them, I believe, academics, and all with a longstanding commitment to a liberal-Left point of view, designed this “Call for Support” and garnered the appropriate signatures, not to express the public sentiment of Jews but, by their own admission, to formulate it. Rather than giving voice to the dissatisfaction of American Jews with the Begin government, they are worried that there is not enough dissatisfaction, and are trying to provoke it through the dissemination of “educational materials, advertisements, symposia, and debates.” They placed their ad in Jewish publications so as to maintain the fiction of speaking within the community, but took care first to leak their story to the heavyweight press that would spread the message more widely. So eager was the New York Times to report on “Jews Disputing Begin Line” that it ran its summary of the ad, with a complete list of signatures, before the Jewish Week and other Jewish publications had even reached their subscribers.

The American Friends, by openly “disputing the Begin line” in an election year, hope to persuade American Jews and Americans in general to dissociate themselves from the policies of Israel’s elected government and to force Begin from office. This manipulative activity gives the lie to the group’s expressed concern for the democratic character of Israeli society. Representatives of “Peace Now” have been coming to America—and if the solicited funds are forthcoming will continue to be brought to America—to speak against the policy of the elected government of a democratic country. But the Israeli public is composed not only of “Peace Now” supporters but of a majority of non-supporters, including “hundreds of thousands” of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who are somewhat less sanguine about the prospective merits of PLO control of the West Bank. Frustrated by the slow process of convincing their own electorate, the representatives of “Peace Now” have turned to America where the climate is ripe for a concerted anti-Begin assault, and where there are local Jews itching to help in the effort. The purpose of this joint Israeli-American maneuver is to do from outside the country what cannot be done as quickly within, by increasing American pressure on a very wobbly government. Whatever ideal motivates this group, it is certainly not faith in “the democratic character of Israeli society.”

_____________

One of the myths perpetrated by critics of Israel in recent years is that of a docile, monolithic American Jewish community, falling in behind an official Israeli party line like so many goslings behind their mother goose. In contrast to this image of blind obedience, the critics present themselves as daring voices of dissent, braving the hostility of the organized Jewish community to register their independent views. They must speak out publicly, they say, because of their great concern for Israel’s safety which takes precedence over communal solidarity and chauvinistic self-congratulation.

The truth of the matter is actually the reverse. The American Jewish communities—for no two are alike—are ridden with factionalism and dissension on every conceivable point. The issue of American support for Soviet Jews is debated with bloody intensity and great moral anguish. The degree of communal support for Jewish education is a growing subject of controversy between supporters of the American public-school ideal and defenders of the day school as the only reliable source of Jewish identity. Jews argue about the value of their participation in Jewish affairs as opposed to applying their energies to the improvement of the community at large. In some cities, like Seattle and Montreal, antagonisms flare between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. In others, the battles among Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox interests are being fought with old-country relish.

On the matter of Israel there is also much divisiveness—contrary to the impression of monolithic consensus about which one hears so much. Rising inflation and unemployment in the United States have forced a painful reconsideration of the financial commitments of American Jews to Israeli causes, and some of the bitterest fights on the Jewish agenda concern the balance between “Israel” and “local needs.” Within Zionist circles the old rivalries between the Right and the Left have been complicated by newer rivalries between the “secular” and the “religious” and even between the old and the young. If factionalism is an index of vitality, most American Jewish communities are thriving.

But there is one area in which the Jewish communities have—at least until now—shown exceptional discipline. Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, American Jews have recognized a certain change in their status, requiring an adjustment of their normal habits and responses. Though they remain in the Diaspora, the presence in the world of a Jewish state means a reentry of Jews into the arena of international politics, an arena from which Jews as a sovereign people had been excluded for millennia. A country cannot wander from place to place, making necessary adjustments and currying the favor of successive rulers, but must stand in physical defense of itself, alongside its neighbors when possible, against its neighbors if need be. A country must have one central government, empowered to act for all the people it represents in all public areas of life. The Jews who choose to remain in the Diaspora are free to function in their own lands as they wish and as they can, but in assisting, supporting, and caring for the survival and security of Israel, they have to follow the guidelines of the elected government of the state, which has been entrusted with the powers of rule.

This respect for Israeli sovereignty has been an unusual phenomenon, requiring as it does sustained restraint and self-discipline on the part of a fragmented and fractious people. Despite the mistakes of successive cabinets of Israeli leaders, mistakes which have seemed—especially to Jewish businessmen—as numerous as the stars in the firmament, American Jews have continued to support Israel along the lines that its government set out. They swallowed the disappointment of Menachem Begin’s election to power, recognizing that if Begin was not their own favored candidate, and not the one likely to come off best on Meet the Press, the Israeli people had a right to make their own choices and even, if necessary, their own blunders.

What has distinguished American Jewry above and beyond this has been its willingness to dissent on Israel’s behalf from the prevailing wisdom of the media, and to fight the gangup of the UN and now of most of the West. American Jews opposed the Arab boycott, and continue to oppose its ubiquitous force. They resist the conventional wisdom that Israel is responsible for the problems of the Middle East. They recognize that the blaming of Israel falsifies history, sacrifices morality to expediency, and inverts the categories of international law.

At least so it has been until now. What we see emerging is an older style of Diaspora Jewish politics in which Jews attack one another—always in the name of some lofty ideal—rather than confronting the severer danger they face as a people. A growing number of American Jews are now beginning to treat the government of Israel as just another political faction to be exposed, pilloried, and defeated. The American Friends are only the most sophisticated of several groups placing opposition to “further Jewish settlement on the West Bank” at the top of their political agenda. There is also the new Committee of Americans for Peace in the Middle East, a Jewish group that brings its studied even-handedness to a dramatically uneven struggle. There is an Ad Hoc Committee for Peace and Justice in the Middle East, with its base in Boston, a group that is no longer concerned with “who started it” as long as the cycle of violence is ended, once and for all, and presumably on any terms. A further group of fifty-six Jews, orchestrated by Leonard Fein, the editor of Moment magazine, and duly publicized on the front page of the New York Times, has actually issued an open “vote of no-confidence” in the present government of Israel because the Prime Minister has not been receptive to their criticisms in private conversation. If the duties of Israeli citizenship are too arduous for these American Jews to assume, they do not seem to be above arrogating to themselves all the privileges of citizenship—if not, indeed, of veto power—by casting a vote of no-confidence when they have never even won the right to vote.

_____________

Jews have often tried to reinvent their enemy in a more palatable image. They write out his conditions of acceptance for him, and then try to satisfy their idea of his expectations. They have not had much success with this strategy in this century. Nevertheless, they have not abandoned it.

Peretz’s little satire about Yankele and the shabbes-goy was directed against the Jewish socialists and other idealists of his day who tried to justify the pogroms against the Jews by eliminating the Jewish “provocations,” and to find the causes of anti-Semitism in the Jew so that they would not have to come to his defense. Israel has rescued Jews from the political condition of statelessness, but apparently not from its psychological handicaps. As Peretz wrote, there’s a little of the rabbi of Chelm in each of us.

¹ A Gentile hired to perform domestic tasks forbidden to Jews on the Sabbath.