Brit Tzedek v'Shalom

Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace

The following is a lengthy exploration of Brit Tzedek's founding conference, published in the online magazine TomPaine.com.

Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace --New Group Seeks To Mobilize American Jews
by David Rabin

A group of American Jews holds a founding conference near Washington, DC. Participants at the meeting voice their strong commitment to the state of Israel and ending terrorist violence.

So ... this is news? Pro-Israeli Jewish organizations are not exactly unusual in this country, with well-known and well-heeled groups like the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) getting mounds of attention from the media and from politicians seeking to fill campaign coffers and garner votes. But this new kid on the block is touting an interesting twist: Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, is calling on Israel to end its military occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, "with border agreements agreeable to both parties."

In addition to seeking an end to terrorism in the Middle East, Brit Tzedek also wants state-initiated violence to stop. The multi-generational group says it is "guided by the mitzvah, or obligation, to pursue peace and justice that is rooted in both secular and religious Jewish traditions. Every place there is justice there is peace." An uphill agenda, to say the least, particularly when you throw in Brit Tzedek's other guiding principles. These include the creation of a "viable Palestinian state based on pre-'67 borders," with "Jerusalem as the capital of both states," and a "just resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem."

Brit Tzedek leaders say the group is unique and fills a gap. They see the need for a pro-Israel, membership-driven organization of American Jews that believes Israel's long-term interests will best be served by withdrawing from the settlements. Israeli-American Marcia Freedman, a founding Brit Tzedek board member and former Israeli Knesset parliamentarian, says the group wants to mobilize what she sees as "the vast majority of American Jews" who support Israel but are "uncomfortable with the current government and its policies." She believes many American Jews "haven't been identified publicly with this issue because they're uncomfortable speaking out against the Israeli government."

Freedman says Brit Tzedek seeks to channel this relatively silent majority into a movement that will counter the "organized American Jewish community, which is speaking almost in lockstep with the Israeli government position....Yet they represent only about 20 percent of American Jewry.... The rest of us haven't really had an opportunity to speak in an organized and unified voice.... AIPAC has had a clear field." She says the strategy for achieving the group's goal is still being created but will undoubtedly rely heavily on Internet organizing, the media, and the "political and organizing savvy" of the group's board, comprised primarily of "grassroots leaders who've been active on this issue locally for years."

Brit Tzedek is certainly taking on the role of David in challenging AIPAC's 60,000-member, multi-million- dollar Goliath. Freedman says her new group currently has about 600 paying members and an additional 1,000 on its mailing list. She says it is close to achieving its initial fund-raising goal of $100,000, collected almost entirely from individual donors. One foundation has chipped in, with more expected to join. Chapters are forming in several major cities and an acting director has been hired. The group's advisory committee includes such notables as writers Gloria Steinem, Grace Paley and Adrienne Rich, as well as Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Philadelphia-based Shalom Center.

The fledgling organization's first conference included a hodge-podge of over 150 seasoned activists and younger organizers from all over the country. Some are plumbers, others are writers, rabbis and academics. And there were Israelis in attendance as well: B.Z. Goldberg, co-producer of "Promises," an Academy Award nominated documentary focusing on Palestinian and Israeli kids, and Shulamit Aloni, a former Israeli Minister of Education.

Some of the workshops offered at Brit Tzedek's founding conference in April included "Outreaching to Jews: How to Build Grassroots Jewish Peace Groups," "A Brief History of the Israeli-Arab Conflict" and "Healing the Scars of Internalized Oppression." They had the chance to get involved in direct action with an anti-war "Women in Black" vigil before the conference began, and followed up the weekend by taking their newly acquired skills to lobby their elected representatives on Capitol Hill. And, as the gathering was held over a weekend, Sabbath services were offered.

The participants got a taste of the challenges that confront them from scholar David Albert, who said many Jewish peace activists "often only speak about Palestinian suffering and Israeli atrocities. In so doing, they self-marginalize themselves from other Jews." Albert added:

"When you speak to Jews, you need to speak to their fears and address them and empathize with them. You need to listen to them.... And you need to frame what you are saying to them in the context that the policies we advocate are the real pro-Israel agenda. Our policies are the agenda that will make Israel a safer, more secure place for Jews."

Cherie Brown, with 34 years of Middle East peace organizing under her belt, also addressed the meeting. She talked about her experiences with various Jewish American peace groups that have come and gone, organizations like Breira, New Jewish Agenda and the Shalom Network. She spoke about using a "commonly shared Jewish language" when addressing more conservative Jews, incorporating certain references that make it clear that "we are not outsiders.... We are part of the Jewish community."

Another lesson Brown has gleaned: when several rabbis signed on to a Middle East peace effort in the late '70s, they were attacked in the Jewish press. "A number of them lost their jobs," Brown said. "When Jews are terrified, they attack each other quite viciously. I learned that we had to make a solemn pledge to one another: any time a Jewish activist is attacked, we will leap over any mountain to come to their defense."

The attendees went on to discuss myths that dominate political rhetoric about the Middle East, including the conventional wisdom about the Camp David summit in 2000: that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat blundered by rejecting a generous proposal from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. The alternative "wisdom"? The oft-heard pronouncement that the Palestinians were offered about 95 percent of the territories doesn't go to the issue of control.

An analogy put forth by Israeli-American Jeff Halper flushes out the idea: If you look at a prison blueprint, the prisoners might appear to occupy the vast majority of the prison's space, but they do not control the prison. Similarly, the Palestinians might have been offered most of the territories, but such a nation would be a collection of non-contiguous, South African-style Bantustans, sliced up by settlements and settler-exclusive roads. In the Camp David deal, 85 percent of the West Bank settlers would remain. A large Israeli military presence would be needed to protect them, complete with checkpoints. The conferees asserted that no nation in the world would accept such a solution, and that the Palestinians are only asking for a viable state on what amounts to 22 percent of the original Palestine.

But the settlers and AIPAC-types aren't the only challenge facing Brit Tzedek: aren't there enough dovish American Jewish groups on the scene?

Rabbi Waskow says the newly formed Rabbis for Human Rights - North America focuses on Middle East human rights issues rather than broader peace concerns. Marcia Freedman says Michael Lerner's Tikkun community is a multi-issue, multi-ethnic entity. She fully supports Tikkun's efforts, but sees Brit Tzedek as a single-issue group with a singular Jewish voice. And she says that unlike Americans for Peace Now (APN), Brit Tzedek isn't associated with Israel's Labor Party, and therefore isn't confined by Israeli electoral politics. Nor will the organization focus on lobbying, or view itself primarily as an ally of the Palestinians, as do certain groups in the United States, Freedman asserts.

Gail Pressberg, a policy analyst with APN, views Brit Tzedek as tapping into those "people that are unaffiliated in the American Jewish community," but she's "not sure we need one more group ... and I say that as someone who participates in nonprofit organizations in the Jewish community as well as someone who sits on the board of the Jewish Community Foundation and has to make decisions about funding them. Having said that, any group that's trying to get more people to speak out for peace is better than none at all," she said.

But Pressberg is disappointed that, as far as she knows, Brit Tzedek's leadership never consulted with APN before creating their new organization. She wants to avoid "overlap" and ensure "outreach to different kinds of people."

While Pressberg doesn't view APN as being a membership organization, she says there are about 10,000 individuals affiliated with the group. And she denies that APN is tied to the Labor Party: "I am shocked that they [Brit Tzedek] would characterize APN as being limited by a political party. That says to me that they either haven't done their homework and talked to APN people, or there's some other reason to be uninformed."

And how does the more hawkish American Jewry view Brit Tzedek's creation? Malcolm Honlein, executive vice-chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, says he hasn't heard about the group, but he welcomes it. He understands that the Israelis and Palestinians "have to find a way to live together. And Israel is prepared for it."

Honlein contends that American Jews aren't presently focused on what a final settlement with the Palestinians would look like, but rather on the "current violence in Israel and its toll." He asserts that negotiating with the Palestinians while the suicide bombers hold sway would reward the killers. "The current situation doesn't allow those Palestinian voices that want peace to be heard," Honlein says. "Once a real peace ensues, all other questions will be resolved."

Marcia Freedman, speaking on her own behalf and not as a Brit Tzedek spokesperson, counters that ending the terror before going to negotiations is not a "sincere" position. She says the majority of Israelis would give up the settlements if it would end the suicide bombings, but Israeli leaders and extremists are willing "to abide suicide bombings ... if the price of eliminating them is getting to a peace agreement which means giving up settlements in the West Bank." And on the other side, she says, you have Hamas and Islamic Jihad, "whose numbers have grown from 10 to 25 percent of the Palestinian population," she says. "The possibility of settlement and reconciliation is held hostage by those, on both sides, that won't accept a two-state solution."

Brit Tzedek leaders understand that bringing about an Israeli withdrawal from the Occupied Territories is an enormous challenge, but maintain that a "mass movement of American Jews" is possible. Brown asserts the peace movement has come a long way, and that it wasn't that long ago that the word "Palestinian," let alone "Palestinian state," was verboten in mainstream Jewish political discourse. She believes a just peace will eventually ensue, "but it will take time. We are in a new moment, and we need to reorganize."

The conference's keynote speaker, Shulamit Aloni, summed up Brit Tzedek's importance this way: "Now is the time to speak up in dissent. It is not a time to be blindly patriotic. Israel's moral and political future is in grave danger."