Public Comment

Since, with respect to Mideast policy, the United States and Israel are inseparable, it is not surprising that, with the disastrous collapse of the Iraq project, for the first time in a long time criticism of Israel’s policies is being heard in this country. Not only political realists like James Baker, Jimmy Carter, and professors Mearsheimer and Walt, but also the anti-war left have been almost forced, despite their reluctance, into looking anew at the occupation of Palestine. Many American Jews, liberal and anti-war by inclination, have been experiencing some discomfort from this turn of events. This discomfort has been deliberately aggravated by a Zionist campaign, mounted for several years now both here and in Europe, to convince Jews that they are experiencing a huge new wave of anti-Semitism, coming, against all expectations, from the left. 

Right on schedule, therefore, on Jan. 28, the day after UFPJ’s mass anti-war mobilization, a conference called “Finding our Voice: The Conference for Progressives Constructively Addressing Anti-Semitism” was held in San Francisco. No actually progressive—and anti-occupation—Jewish organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Tikkun, and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, were invited as either co-sponsors or presenters, although BlueStarPR, an aggressive promoter of Israeli interests, was. Curious, the excluded eventually outed the anonymous conference organizer as the Anti-Defamation League. 

I bring this esoteric subject to the attention of Daily Planet readers because of one interesting local connection. The person who put the conference together was Rabbi Jane Litman of Congregration Beth El. Thus we learn three useful things about Rabbi Litman. She has connections with the ADL. She conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. And she is not averse to deceptive packaging. 

In light of this information, let’s look back at the Daily Planet’s “anti-Semitism” controversy of last summer. On August 8, the Planet published Kuresh Arianpour’s eloquent, angry, and distressed op-ed which was, unfortunately, marred by a number of false statements about Jews. Subsequently, a woman identifying herself only as “Tami from the ADL” called Becky O’Malley and asked for a meeting about the piece. O’Malley told her she thought it would be a waste of time. Finally, on Aug. 22, O’Malley published two group letters condemning anti-Semitism in the Planet. 

One letter, signed by a number of prominent Bay Area politicians, was “forwarded to the Planet” by Rabbi Ferenc Raj of Congregration Beth El. The other, signed by twenty-three representatives of 16 organizations and claiming to speak “on behalf of the Berkeley Jewish community,” claimed that “we” requested a meeting with O’Malley and were denied. O’Malley has asserted since that she was never contacted by anyone except the ADL rep; further, that none of the signatories has ever replied to her subsequent offer to meet. 

Despite the claim to represent “the Berkeley Jewish community”—a phrase which readers might assume to mean “all Jews residing in Berkeley”—in fact nine of the undersigned organizations represented in whole or in large part the interests of the state of Israel. A few of the signatories could be readily so identified: New Israel Fund, Israel Action Committee of the East Bay, and Bridges to Israel; Many others, such as the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and Hillel, function mainly, though not exclusively, as part of the huge Israel lobby machine, as do the regional Jewish community federations. Thus, if one means “Jewish” in any commonly understood sense of that term, rather than “Zionist,” on the list of signatories you were pretty much down to the synagogues. But were the synagogues representing the “Jewish community”? 

O’Malley speculated at the time of the controversy that there might have been extraneous reasons for the ferocity of the attack on the Planet—which includes, by the way, a still-ongoing boycott. For one, Julie Kennedy, president of Congregration Beth El and one of the undersigned of the Aug. 22 letter, is the wife of developer Patrick Kennedy, whose projects the Planet often opposes. I am not forgetting the great Beth El parking controversy which produced many passionate letters pro and con, some of which leveled the charge of anti-Semitism. Both of these issues change “Jewish” as in that resonant phrase “the Jewish community of Berkeley” to the perfectly local, secular, and political interests of Congregation Beth El, or members thereof. 

But finally, the Berkeley Daily Planet has been unique among Bay Area newspapers and, I would guess, American newspapers, in assuming that Israel, like any other topic, may be discussed. As soon as I had read, and published, letters in the Planet critical of Israel and the Lobby, I knew that sooner or later a boycott would be in place. What I couldn’t know was what incident would finally set it off. 

Which brings me back to Jane Litman and the ADL conference. What is shockingly noticeable about the accusatory letters now, six months after the fact, is what they leave out. Arianpour’s letter was, of course, a response to Israel’s war on Lebanon—as was the tragic attack on the Jewish federation in Seattle, mentioned in the Litman et al letter. Yet you cannot tell from reading it (or the one forwarded by Rabbi Raj, or Kris Worthington’s, published in the same issue) that a war was taking place, since the war is never mentioned. The context for the rise in anger against Jews has been carefully excised, so that the “anti-Semitism” under scrutiny appears to be still another instance of eternal hatred, not a rough-and-tumble response to Israel’s brutal attack. As we all rushed in the ensuing weeks to decry racism or defend free speech, why did we not notice that the topic of discussion had been neatly flipped from Israel’s war to the Planet’s anti-Semitism, from Jews as perpetrators to Jews as victims? 

Joanna Graham is a Berkeley resident.