Nakba Is in the Eye of the Beholder by David Suissa

My column this week in Jewish Journal:

While the world media was buzzing on May 15 about the Arab demonstrations marking the “Nakba” (catastrophe) of 1948, I was listening to a commencement address by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu at Pomona College in which he lamented, among other things, America’s inability to reduce its addiction to oil. At one point, Chu spoke eloquently about a future in which electric cars would be mass-produced, and how this might ignite an environmental revolution that could “save the planet.”

As he spoke, I thought of an article I had read on JPost that morning about an Israeli initiative to reduce global dependency on oil. The company Better Place unveiled the first electric car to be sold to the Israeli market — the Renault Fluence ZE. According to the report, “Israel will become, along with Denmark, the first country in which Better Place’s rechargeable, zero-emission vehicles will be sold commercially.”

I couldn’t help connecting the dots. On the one hand, there was the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation in 1948 as expressed by Arab demonstrators, and, on the other hand, there was a miracle country with the potential to help “save the planet.”

Which one is it, a catastrophe or a miracle?

It’s easy to cop out and say we must recognize everyone’s narrative. If the Palestinians see the birth of Israel and the subsequent displacement of Arabs as a “catastrophe,” well, then, as Gideon Levy of Haaretz proposes, even Jewish schools in Israel must mark Nakba Day. As Levy wrote, “On that day it would be possible to tell our pupils that next to us lives a nation for whom our day of joy is their day of disaster, for which we and they are to blame.”

Personally, I’m more aligned with Jeffrey Goldberg, who calls the Arab “disaster” of 1948 “largely self-inflicted because the Arabs rejected the U.N. partition plan for Palestine, attacked the just-born Jewish state and then managed to lose on the battlefield.”

In other words, the Arab definition of “catastrophe” is that they failed to destroy the Jewish state at its birth.

Regardless, though, of how one sees the Nakba, it’s clear that the Nakba mindset nurtures bitterness and resentment — elements that are hardly conducive to planting seeds of peace and reconciliation. How can an Arab student want to have a healthy and respectful relationship with his Jewish neighbors if he is encouraged to see that very Jewish presence as a mark of Arab failure — a mark of enduring Arab shame? And if he is encouraged to see this Jewish creation as something that must be corrected, or even reversed?

If you ask me, the real Nakba day for the Palestinians is the day Hamas created its official charter with hate-filled, anti-Semitic tracts like this one: “For our struggle against the Jews is extremely wide-ranging and grave, so much so that it will need all the loyal efforts we can wield, to be followed by further steps and reinforced by successive battalions from the multifarious Arab and Islamic world, until the enemies are defeated and Allah’s victory prevails.”

This Hamas “catastrophe” was made even more relevant recently with the reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. As French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy lamented in The Huffington Post, prospects for peace have now “gone by the wayside with the rehabilitation of the only party concerned that is still proclaiming that ‘the fulfillment of the promise’ shall not come until ‘the Muslims’ have not only ‘combated’ but ‘killed’ all ‘the Jews.’ ”

The plain, ugly truth right now is that there is no peace on the horizon. But many of us, including presidents, pundits and peaceniks, cannot accept that truth, so we ignore inconvenient facts or just spin them into glimmers of false hope. As Saul Bellow once wrote, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” 

Beyond all this gloomy talk, perhaps the biggest disaster of all is the inability of the Arab world to see the Jewish state as anything but a cursed presence. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think peace has a chance when Arabs still see the birth of Israel as a Nakba. In fact, I dream of the day when more Arabs will see the birth of Israel as a Fursa (“opportunity”). That would be the day Israeli Arabs discovered a messy and imperfect Jewish democracy that allowed them the freedom to speak up, and gave them rights and opportunities they could find nowhere else in the Middle East.

I even have an idea for who could lead this little movement: George Kerra, the Arab Israeli judge who sentenced the former president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, to seven years in jail for sexual aggression against a former female aide.

Think about that. A Middle Eastern country that is hated and threatened by its neighbors, forced to constantly fight for its life, manages to create a civil society where no one is above the law and where anyone can become a judge. Oh, and a society that still finds time to work on things like an electric car that could “save the planet.”

You want to endorse calling the birth of that nation a catastrophe? Don’t count me in.

A Seder for Broken Jews By David Suissa

A big fashion of recent times has been to rewrite or repackage the Passover haggadah to fit our individual tastes. If you're vegetarian, there is the "Haggadah for the Liberated Lamb"; if you're interested in Buddhism, there is the "JewBu Haggadah"; if your thing is spiritual traditions, there is "The Santa Cruz Haggadah: A Passover Haggadah, Coloring Book and Journal for Evolving Consciousness"; for all you social justice lovers, there is Arthur Waskow's "Freedom Seder"; and if you don't believe in God, don't worry, you can get "The Liberated Haggadah: A Passover Celebration for Cultural, Secular, and Humanistic Jews."

There are literally hundreds of others, but you get the point- one of the modern freedoms we celebrate at Passover is the freedom to create our own haggadah. This is so wonderfully American-- a craving to inject our personal identities into everything.

It's as if Passover were a time to break down our collective Jewish identity into individual morsels of sub-identities that we can feel more comfortable with.

The Master Story of the Jews, then, becomes the Master Story of Me. I celebrate not the story of my people, but how I have adapted that story to fit my own story, my own modern identity.

What does this say about Jewish identity in the first place? Is it not enough to carry the day for so many American Jews-or is it too much?

Leon Wieseltier, in his book "Against Identity," writes, "I am always at a disadvantage toward my own tradition. I am not only quickened by my intimacy with what I have been given, I am also dulled by it. I lack the wakefulness of the stranger. I should conduct myself toward the tradition to which I have fallen heir like an actor who has played a scene poorly: I should go out and come in again."

Too many American Jews have gone out but have not come in again. They haven't come in because they see no reason to. For 364 days a year, they live out their chosen identities, identities that were chosen to carry few burdens or complications.

Then comes seder night, the night of their ancestors, when they come face-to-face with the ancient story of their people, and it feels a little weird -- a little too close for comfort. It may be hazy, mythical and distant, but it can't easily be dismissed. This is, after all, the story that nourished their bubbes and zaides going back many centuries.

It's a spiritual showdown: Who shall surrender? Shall I become the story, or shall the story become me? Shall I become my grandparents, or shall they become me?

It's not an easy call. As Wieseltier writes, "Identity thrives on facts: you are the child of this man and this woman, this neighborhood, this town, this nation, this faith, this country. But there is one fact to which identity is oblivious, and that is the fact of individuation: you are nobody else and nobody else is you."

Can this help explain the mysterious power of Jewish identity? We are a family with the seed of individuation: we are nobody else and nobody else is us.

And yet, in this great American nation that has smothered us with acceptance, Jewish identity has easily morphed into: we are everybody and everybody is us.

Ironically, Passover, the unique Jewish story, has fallen all over itself to dull its Jewish uniqueness. The rationale for this is proper and utterly predictable: by making it more universal, or more personally relevant, we assert that it becomes more Jewish. This truism is now a modern sacred cow.

But it's a truism that can take us very far from the womb, and it's one that doesn't get me in the kishkes. It's a little too perfect, a little too correct. Why can't Passover become a little more Jewish-Jewish? A time when we can look inward rather than outward; a time when we can assess how we are doing as a family; a time when we can recount our master story and use it to bring us closer together.

Next year, someone ought to create a Haggadah of Broken Jews. This one would celebrate the incredible variety of our people from across time and cultures and offer interpretations from as many different sources as possible. Thankfully, the haggadah is long enough to allow for a very diverse list of Jewish thinkers, ideas and traditions that would enrich the evening with the glow of peoplehood.

In addition to all the symbols of the evening, I would also add an empty chair.

This empty chair would be there to remind us of the Jew or Jews we don't talk to. As long as that chair stays there, empty, we will never forget that we are still a broken people, still working to fulfill the Passover ideal of uniting for a common destiny.

And for those of you who would prefer to express their fondness for Budhism, social justice or vegetarianism on seder night, hey, you have the rest of the year. Give one night for your people.

Happy Jewish Passover.

Pascal Bercovitch-- Love Story

Borrowing $188 million every hour. Quote from Mark Steyn-- National Review

"How do you 'invest in the future'? By borrowing $188 million every hour. That’s what the government of the United States is doing. It’s spending one-fifth of a billion dollars it doesn’t have every hour of every day of every week — all for your future!"

Bibi Needs a Plan, Fast

My column this week in Jewish Journal:

I had a lively debate with the founder of J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, April 11 at Temple Israel of Hollywood, and as much as we disagreed sharply on many issues relative to Israel, there was one item on which we were in complete agreement: The Palestinians’ steady march toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations in September is a disaster-in-waiting for Israel.

We disagreed on what Israel should do: Ben-Ami thinks Israel should try to entice the Palestinians back to the peace table with another temporary settlement freeze, while I think the United States should pressure the Palestinians to come to the peace table without preconditions.

If that approach fails, however, Israel must do something, and do it fast.

Before Israel can figure out what that “something” is, it must admit to itself that it has lost the battle of the narrative. Right now, Israel is seen, almost universally, as the main obstacle to peace. You can cry foul all you want about this, but it won’t change the reality. From the moment two years ago that President Obama elevated the settlements as the main impediment to peace, the die was cast.

Israel has been scrambling ever since, but it’s been an impossible battle. No amount of clever diplomacy or lobbying could undo the lethal vise that Israel is in — not even last year’s partial settlement freeze.

Simply put, the Palestinians have hidden behind the United States’  initial demand for a settlement freeze to stay away from peace talks, while developing their enormous international support to do an end run around Israel and further isolate the Jewish state.

By repeating their U.S.-sponsored mantra — “We will not negotiate until Israel freezes all settlement activity” — the Palestinians have managed to camouflage the real obstacles to peace. To name just one, there is the obvious obstacle that the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs the West Bank and could still engage in peace talks, has absolutely no control over the terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza.

In fact, one of the absurd aspects of this peace process is that Israel is acting like the buyer when it should be acting like the seller. If peace is the “product,” then Israel owns it and should be selling it. Because it can control its army, it can deliver peace. Who can say with a straight face that the PA will be able to control its “army” (including Hamas) and hence be able to deliver peace?

Another obstacle is the fact that the PA has never prepared its people for a compromise on the sacred “right of return.” Sure, it may have made private statements to Ehud Olmert a couple of years ago suggesting flexibility on borders and Jerusalem, but the analyses that I have seen of the “Palestine Papers” suggest that they are far from compromise on the issue of the right of return. And that is a deal killer.

But it is the bright glare of the settlement issue that has created the perception that Israel is the major obstacle to peace. It may not be fair, but it is what it is.

What should Israel do now?

The first thing is not to expect the Palestinians to return anytime soon to the negotiating table. They won’t. They’ve got their eyes fixed on the U.N. and the world community, where they are treated like kings and never have to compromise. They want a lot more than what Israel could offer, and they think the U.N. will give it to them.

The second thing is to stop arguing. We’ve lost the argument. We can make cogent arguments until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t help.

The only way for Israel to regain the initiative is with real, dramatic action.

If I were Bibi, I would dust off a peace plan, call a press conference, and tell Abbas simply and clearly: “Sign here and the conflict is over.”

Which peace plan? The plan that’s got one of the world’s most credible names on it: The Clinton Parameters. Bibi might make a few security-related adjustments to reflect new realities, but the thrust of the plan should be unchanged.

Will Abbas sign it? Let me put it this way: The Jewish Journal will become the voice of right-wing fanatics before Abbas signs this peace plan. Why? Because he can’t. The Clinton plan is his nightmare. It forces him to compromise on too many things, including the right of return. It gives him a lot less than he has already rejected.

Compared to the Rolls-Royce he is about to be handed by the U.N., the Clinton plan is a Yugo that needs repairs. It’s dead on arrival.

Israel should present the plan not because it believes the PA will sign it, but because Israel desperately needs to present a credible alternative to the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at the U.N., a diplomatic disaster that Ehud Barak said would bring a “tsunami” of further pressure and isolation on the Jewish state.

If Palestinians say no to the Clinton plan, they then automatically become the “major obstacle” to peace.

At the very least, this might shock them back to the negotiating table.

An Early Kol Nidre for Goldstone by David Suissa

My column this week in Jewish Journal and Huffington Post:

Dear Mr. Goldstone:

You really screwed up. You screwed up so badly that Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic says you contributed, more than any other individual, to the delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish state.

The deliberate killing of innocent civilians is the equivalent of murder. As far as accusations go, that’s about as low as you can go. Your report accused Israel of a lot of things, but that accusation was the most lethal: targeting innocent civilians.

Now you write that you were wrong. Israel is not the war criminal she was made out to be. It was Hamas that targeted innocent civilians, not Israel. Well, like Goldberg says, “It is somewhat difficult to retract a blood libel, once it has been broadcast across the world.”

Remember, this was no ordinary blood libel. This was an official indictment bearing the stamp of approval of the closest thing we have to a global legislative body — the United Nations. Thanks to this stamp of approval, Israel’s enemies have feasted on Israel’s good name like vultures on a carcass.

I’m sure you’ve noticed the global campaign to delegitimize Israel, as well as the flourishing BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement that is turning Israel into a pariah state. Sadly, much of the ammunition for these movements has come from the Goldstone report — the same report you now have repudiated with a phrase that might go down in Jewish infamy: “Civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

I wonder what went through your mind as you wrote those words: “Why did I rush to judgment? Should I have paid more attention to the hundreds of thousands of Israeli leaflets and phone calls that warned civilians, and to the preliminary Israel Defense Forces reports and other publicly available information that contradicted our conclusions? Should I have put Israel’s behavior in the proper context of defending its people after years of Hamas rockets? Should I have been more skeptical of sources I knew were unreliable?”

A friend told me over Shabbat that I should cut you some slack because you had the courage to eat your words in public after getting “new information.” That’s fine, but another friend told me a parable that made him somewhat less forgiving.

It’s the story of a man who goes to his rabbi to ask for forgiveness because he spread false rumors about him. The rabbi instructs him to take a feathered pillow and a knife, go to a nearby forest and slice open the pillow. When the man returned, the rabbi said to him, “Now go try to retrieve all those feathers.”

Now go try, Mr. Goldstone, to “retrieve” all the damage your report inflicted on Israel. Go to every television and radio station, to every newspaper and magazine, to every Web site and blogger, to every Jew and non-Jew on the planet who inhaled your dark accusations against Israel, and try to take those accusations back. Try telling them you didn’t mean it.

Surely you must have known that so many past accusations of Israeli “massacres” have been proved false (see Jenin). And as an international jurist who is familiar with the phenomenon of anti-Israel bias, surely you must have anticipated the vermin that would rain on the Jewish state if a Zionist jurist formally accused it of targeting innocent civilians.

I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve had more than a few sleepless nights since then. Why? Because I do believe there is a piece of your heart that loves Israel, that believes in Israel and that now cries for Israel because of the damage you have inflicted upon her.

While you can never undo that damage, there is still something you can undo: the report itself. Given your deep knowledge of international law, with all its arcane rules and procedures, if anyone can formally retract the report or officially amend it, it is you.

It won’t be easy. You will be going up against the many enemies of Israel, those who dream of turning the Jewish state into an illegal enterprise, those for whom the Goldstone report is the gift that keeps on giving — their little gold mine rich with never-ending ammunition against the hated Zionist entity. They won’t let you take away their gold mine that easily.

But I have confidence you can do it. I have seen how you can be dogged and relentless in front of intense opposition. I have seen how when you put your mind to something, nothing can stop you, not even your own people. I have seen you go the distance.

Now go the distance on this one, Mr. Goldstone. Make this your cause. Put the Goldstone report where it belongs, in the delete button of history. You can replace it, amend it, retract it or do whatever you feel will correct it. You will not undo the damage, but you might at least stanch some of the bleeding — not just in Israel’s name, but perhaps in yours, as well.

Kol Nidre is still six months away, but you don’t have to wait that long.

From Pale Fire, by David Foster Wallace

“dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there,” namely the existential knowledge “that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back.”

J Street Needs Another Lane-- my column this week in the Jewish Journal

I was watching the J Street convention on their Web site the other day, and it reminded me a little of those underground meetings among religious settlers in the West Bank. That is, a constant flow of red meat served to the fervent and the like-minded.

In the case of J Street, this red meat can be boiled down to this: It is really, really, really, really important that Israel reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

One fervent speaker after another came down from the mountaintop to convince an already convinced audience of how really important this goal is. Whether it was Peter Beinart fearing for Israel's democratic future, or Rabbi David Saperstein appealing to our highest Jewish values, or Sara Benninga finding her meaning in life by leading weekly demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah, the theme was the same: Israel must make peace and end the occupation as soon as possible.

And who's the bad guy in all of this? Take a guess. With the J Street crowd, the underlying assumption is always that the major obstacle to peace is Israel. Palestinian obstacles to peace? They're as likely to be mentioned at a J Street convention as Avigdor Lieberman is of being invited.

Sometimes I wonder what it must feel like after three days of one of these J Street smugfests. How do you go from feeling absolutely certain that you are right to feeling even more certain that you are right?

I remember when Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun invited me to speak several years ago at one of their peace conventions in New York City. I was glad that he did, because it gave me a chance to ask a few hundred peaceniks a question they probably rarely hear: "When is the last time any of you woke up in the morning and asked yourself: 'What if I'm wrong?' "

No one raised their hand.

Yes, compassion is a great Jewish virtue, I told them, but so is humility. I confessed that, initially, I didn't believe in the Oslo peace process (because I didn't trust Arafat), but I asked myself, "What if I'm wrong?" and I ended up going along with it. So, I suggested, "What would happen if you all asked yourselves that same question?"

When I look at J Street now, I see some obviously good intentions ("We want peace!"), but not much humility. What comes across more than anything is an orgy of ideological self-confirmation toward pressuring Israel.

That's disappointing. I expect more from open-minded liberals who claim to care for the "other side." For one thing, I expect they would also care for the other side of an argument.

Have they studied, for example, the Palestinian Authority's global campaign to undermine and demonize Israel and the corrosive effect this has had on the peace process? Have they studied why the Palestinians have consistently rejected offers to end the occupation and make peace with a Jewish state?

As a "pro-Israel" group, why hasn't J Street pressured the Palestinians to end their glorification of terror and indoctrination of Jew-hatred that has made so many Jews reluctant to take more risks for peace?

As a "pro-peace" group, why did they not pressure the Palestinians to return to the peace table during the first nine months of a unilateral 10-month settlement freeze which the Obama administration itself lauded as "unprecedented"?

To balance their countless speakers who advocate putting more pressure on Israel, why haven't they included speakers like Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch, who has documented the continued anti-Semitic incitement in official Palestinian media, or an award-winning Mideast journalist like Khaled Abu Toameh, who makes a powerful case that the Palestinian Authority's primary interest is not to make peace with Israel - but to delegitimize the Jewish state?

If the goal is to bring together two sides, isn't it important to scrutinize both sides?

Why doesn't J Street bring in experts to explain the danger of Hamas taking over a Palestinian West Bank and pointing 10,000 rockets at Israel's nuclear installations, potentially creating a catastrophic meltdown in the Jewish state? Talk about fearing for a country's democratic future.

J Street's relentless focus on pressuring Israel isn't only unfair, it's also remarkably ineffective. A couple of years ago, Palestinian and Israeli leaders were negotiating directly as a matter of course. Now, in the face of the enormous and single-minded global pressure on Israel, Palestinians are negotiating in international forums on how best to demonize Israel. They won't even consider talking to Israel until it commits to freezing all construction in disputed territory, including, I presume, freezing any renovation of the restrooms at the Western Wall.

We've seen that the greater the pressure on Israel, the faster the cockier-than-ever Palestinians have run away from the peace table. J Street's reaction to all this is to bring 2,000 people together in Washington, D.C., to put even more pressure on Israel and urge the Obama administration to do the same.

In other words, after two years of generating bumper-to-bumper traffic on the failed road called "let's pressure Israel," J Street has decided that the best thing to do is to attract even more traffic to that road.

Maybe they ought to consider adding another lane to their congested highway and calling it "Let's pressure the Palestinians to stop undermining Israel and return immediately to the peace table."

In Los Angeles, we would call that the carpool lane.

Beach Baby

Hypocrisy Exposed

Report hailing Gaddafi's human rights record scheduled for adoption in current session

GENEVA, February 28, 2011 -- UN Watch, which heads the Global NGO Campaign to Remove Libya from the UN Human Rights Council, called on US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign minister Catherine Ashton, who are today addressing the 47-nation body in Geneva, as well as UN rights chief Navi Pillay, to urge the council president to cancel a planned resolution praising Libya's human rights record, scheduled to be adopted in the current session. (See quotes of praise below.)

Despite having just voted to suspend Libya from its ranks (expected to be finalized by the UNGA tomorrow), the UN Human Rights Council, according to the agenda of its current session, is planning to "consider and adopt the final outcome of the review of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya." According to the council's timetable, the lengthy report hailing Libya's human rights record will be presented on March 18, and then adopted by the council at the end of the month. The report, which the UN has published on the council website, is the outcome of a recent session that was meant to review Libya's human rights record.

Although the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism is often described by council defenders as its saving grace, the vast majority of council members used it to falsely praise the Gaddafi regime for its alleged promotion of human rights. Only a handful raised genuine issues.

The report also includes praise of Libya's record by the regime's representatives -- click here for quotes. Given that Libya's UN diplomats have defected and admitted that the Gaddafi regime is a gross violator of human rights, it would be nonsensical for the UN to now adopt this false report.

UN Watch called on the council president to acknowledge that the session on Libya was largely a fraud, withdraw the report, and schedule a new session in which council members would tell the truth about the Gaddafi regime's heinous crimes, which were committed over four decades yet ignored by the UN. Libya's long-suffering victims deserve no less.

The UN report's summary notes that delegations "commended" Libya, and that they "noted with appreciation the country’s commitment to upholding human rights on the ground."

democracy in the middle east

Jeff Buckley-- Everybody Here Wants You

Rufus Wainwright-- Across the Universe

Sufjan Stevens-- John Wayne Gacy Jr

A King's Speech-- my column this week in Jewish Journal and Huffington Post

If I were advising the president or prime minister of Israel, I would suggest he go on Al Jazeera this week and deliver this message to the people of the Middle East:

Dear Neighbors:

What is happening right now in our region is historic. You, the great people of the Middle East, are rewriting history. You are rising up and saying, "Enough! Enough with oppression, enough with humiliation. We want opportunity, freedom and human rights." Young and old, men and women, religious and secular, you have risen up as one and demanded a better future.

We, the people of Israel, want to be part of that better future.

It is not a coincidence that we are descendants of the same father, Abraham. Although we might be in conflict now, this was not always the case. We had our golden eras when we cooperated and respected each other like the biblical cousins that we are. We cherish to this day stories of the great Jewish and Muslim philosophers engaging each other in search of higher truths.

One of those higher truths is that we have so much in common as children of the same God and as members of the human race. We all want to laugh, provide for our families, lead meaningful lives, fall in love and be happy. Those are not Jewish or Muslim or Christian ideals - they are human ones, and they can bring us together.

Think of how infinitely proud and happy our God would be to see His Muslim and Jewish children end their conflicts and live in harmony.

Yes, Israel has made its share of mistakes. The challenges we face have humbled us. In truth, it hasn't been easy to build a nation while constantly having to defend ourselves. Sometimes, this has brought out the worst in us and made us look like we care only about our own security. We deeply regret the displacement of so many people that occurred in 1948, when we had to defend ourselves against invading armies after the Arab rejection of U.N. Resolution 181, which partitioned the land for two states.

We're human. It does hurt to feel unwelcomed in a neighborhood we have called home for 3,000 years.

We have made peace with two of our neighbors, but that is not enough. We have made further offers and even evacuated settlements, but to no avail. Because our Palestinian neighbors are deeply divided between Gaza and the West Bank, we fear we don't have the strong partner we need to make a deal - and that further evacuations might lead to more violence against us.

Despite our fears, we still yearn for peace. But it is not enough to just meet and "negotiate directly." If both sides don't bring to the table good faith and a willingness to compromise, our hopes will only be false hopes.

The fact that our Palestinian neighbors refused to negotiate last year for the first nine months of our 10-month settlement freeze was not a sign of good faith. Neither are their efforts to undermine us in international forums. Israel has already demonstrated its ability to make painful compromises in all areas, including settlements. Now is not the time for either side to demand preconditions that belong to the negotiating table. Now is the time to sit down in good faith and try to resolve our differences. We say to our Palestinian neighbors: We are ready to begin tomorrow morning. Are you?

We bring the same message to all our neighbors of the Middle East: We are ready to meet tomorrow morning to begin the journey of reconciliation. We dream not only of peace but of a future in which we would all enjoy the fruits of peace. We dream of the day when delegations from Yemen, Bahrain, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and others will visit Israel and see that we are not the enemy, but a friend-in-waiting.

We can cooperate in trade, commerce and culture. We can share our technological and medical innovations to improve quality of life. We can enjoy each other's movies, poems, stories, music and food. Our rabbis can talk about God with your imams. In short, we can create a new golden era of mutual respect and cooperation.

We might disagree, even on some important things, but one of the great human values is not to allow disagreements to turn into animosity and violence.

Beyond our own disagreements, we see too much pain today on the faces of the millions of Arabs rising up throughout the Middle East. We urge all leaders to honor their people by trusting that freedom, dignity and human rights will lead to a better future.

Israel would love nothing more than to have free and democratic neighbors, and we want to be your partner in this momentous endeavor. Cynics will claim that this partnership is impossible - that you have been taught only to hate Jews and Israel, and that it will take a hundred years, if not more, before we can reconnect as the children of Abraham.

Maybe so, but I have no doubt that if our patriarch Abraham were alive today, he would hold our hands and bless us. He would bless us that we should find the strength to transcend our animosities and embark on our journey of reconciliation.

And he would remind us that Allah is with us, watching, hoping we will succeed.

Shalom and As-Salamu Alaykum.

David Suissa is a branding consultant, weekly columnist and the founder of OLAM magazine. For speaking engagements and other inquiries, he can be reached at suissa@olam.org or at davidsuissa.com.

Sting-- Fragile Planet

Ana Calvi-- Jezebel

Wilco-- Either Way

Anna Calvi-- I'll Be Your Man

The 22-State Solution

My column this week in the Jewish Journal and Huffington Post:

Has the world ever witnessed such a radical and overnight transformation of one country? Have we ever seen a nation, in 18 short days, go from a place that represents darkness to one that represents hope, renewal and liberation?

I'm not talking about Egypt; I'm talking about Israel.

In the branding business, we have this thing called "truth transformation." In a nutshell, it says that if your brand has "issues," you can fix them only by finding a deep and meaningful truth. A legendary example is Pepsi, which made great headway against Coke by showing that "in a blind taste test, more people prefer the taste of Pepsi."

Well, it turns out that in a blind taste test, more Arabs prefer the taste of Israel.

I'm not sure people realize yet the extraordinary nature of this transformation. Israel, the most maligned, boycotted and condemned country on the planet, the nation held perennially responsible for the frustrations of millions of Arabs across the Middle East, turns out to have what those frustrated Arabs are now clamoring for: freedom, human rights and a system that protects those rights.

Overnight, this brave and besieged little country has gone from demon to model - from being the curse of the Middle East to its potential cure. We may not see such a radical shift of perception again in our lifetimes. 

And yet, hardly anyone is talking about it. I see two reasons. First, the hero country that ought to be promoting this transformation, Israel, is focused more on immediate security than on exporting its democratic gold to its neighbors. This is not unreasonable. Israel already has serious threats on its doorsteps - like Hamas and Hezbollah - and its deep wish is that the chaos of newfound freedom in Egypt will not result in a new security threat.

Second, and more important, the global forces that have worked for years to undermine Israel are now suddenly on the defensive, and they're desperate to keep you focused on "big, bad Israel." They can see the writing on the wall. The edifice that took them decades to build - making Israel global enemy No. 1 and the Palestinians the world's glamour victims - is now in real danger of crumbling.

Just look at the facts. There are 330 million Arabs in the Middle East region who, according to Freedom House, live in countries considered "not free." While those Arabs languished for decades in misery and oppression, where do you think the world concentrated its attention and its billions in aid? That's right, on the Palestinian Arabs who represent less than 1 percent of that total.

And what did the world get in return? A split group of permanent victims who teach the hatred of Israel while refusing to make any real concessions for peace. Talk about a crummy deal.

That's why I wouldn't want to be with the Palestinian PR machine right now. They worked so hard to pull a Houdini and convince the world that Israel is the scourge of humanity and Palestinians the world's biggest victims, and now look - millions of competing Arab victims come to Tahrir Square and steal the attention.

From now on, anyone who pushes for a boycott of Israel can and should be denounced as a hypocrite who couldn't care less about Arab victims not connected with Israel. And good luck to anyone trying to claim with a straight face that pressuring Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should remain the central mission of the world - not when millions of other Arab victims who have lived for so long under the "occupation" of brutal dictators are finally getting their voices heard.

And not when those Arab voices are craving the very freedom and human rights that Israel, with all its warts and imperfections, already offers. 

It is also laughable now for peace-process junkies to claim that a three-state solution (Israel, Palestine and Hamastan) is "more urgent than ever," and would help fix other Middle Eastern problems, like the threat of a nuclear Iran or bringing human rights to the Arab world.

Israel can surely keep chasing the dream of peace with Hamas and the Palestinians, which would be wonderful if it ever happened. But if the world is really serious about responding to the revolution of Tahrir Square, then the real urgency is to stop ignoring the 99 percent of Arab victims not named Palestinians.

In other words, instead of the narrow-minded "two-state solution" mantra that is repeated ad nauseam, the future of the Middle East should revolve around a more just and inclusive "22-state solution," whereby the nations of the region would gradually be exposed to the liberating and dignifying values of democracy. Maybe the United Nations, instead of issuing another condemnation of Israel, can send a mission to the Jewish state to pick up some pointers on how they might introduce democratic institutions and economic prosperity to the rest of the Middle East. 

I'm not holding my breath. The industry of maligning Israel is a deeply popular one, and the obsession with Palestinian victimhood is a global phenomenon. Still, the wrenching process of "truth transformation" has begun. The fact that the freest Arabs in the Middle East live in Israel is a truth that Israel's enemies cannot bear. In the post-Tahrir Square era, more and more Arabs will come to see that Israel was never the enemy - but a model to aspire to. 

Once the shock of that truth wears off, we'll see how many will taste it.

David Suissa is a branding consultant and the founder of OLAM magazine. For speaking engagements and other inquiries, he can be reached at suissa@olam.org or at davidsuissa.com.

Letter to George Soros: Israel, Stumbling Block or Shining Light?

From this week's Jewish Journal and Huffington Post:


Dear Mr. Soros:

I saw that you wrote in The Washington Post last week that Israel is the "main stumbling block" to democratic progress in Egypt. You also said that "as a committed advocate of democracy and open society, I cannot help but share in the enthusiasm that is sweeping across the Middle East."

I'm writing to let you know that I share your enthusiasm for democracy and open societies, but I need to challenge your view of Israel.

For many years now, I have been struck by the tragic absence of basic freedoms and human rights throughout the Middle East. You might have seen the latest findings from the independent Freedom House, which reports that "The Middle East and North Africa remained the region with the lowest level of freedom in 2010, continuing its multiyear decline from an already-low democratic baseline."

They define freedom based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of the 18 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, 14 countries (population: 330 million) are "not free," 3 countries (population: 39.3 million) are "partly free" and only one country (population: 7.6 million) is "free."

That free country is Israel.

Since you are a world-famous liberal and the founder of the Open Society Foundations (it works "to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens"), I figured that Israel's democratic success would be a source of pride. I hoped that you might look at the turmoil in the Middle East and then point with pride to Israel and say: "Hey, look, there's an exception! This is what the protesters in Egypt are screaming for - their rights and freedoms, just what Israel already offers!"

But you didn't do that. Instead, you actually called Israel "the main stumbling block" to the hopeful evolution of an Egyptian democracy. Not just a stumbling block, but the main stumbling block!

This, with due respect, is ludicrous. As if Israel has the magical power to "block" the evolution of democracy in Egypt or any other country, even if it wanted to.

And as if some real and concrete stumbling blocks aren't already there in Egypt, like a history of anti-democratic regimes that have ruled the country since before Israel was born; or the absence of myriad democratic institutions that are essential to the flourishing of a civil society; or the widespread dissemination of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and anti-anything Western; or the fact that the only significant organized group in the country - the Muslim Brotherhood - is enamored more with the theocracy of Shariah law than the democracy of Thomas Jefferson.

Aren't these "made in Egypt" stumbling blocks big enough for you? You still had to find a way to squeeze in Israel as the main culprit?

In a sense, I see where your obsession with blaming Israel comes from. It hit me the other night, when professor Micah Goodman of Israel was speaking at a private home about his new book, "The Secrets of the 'Guide to the Perplexed.' " Our personalities and characters are guided by our actions, he said, not the other way around. We become our actions.

You, Mr. Soros, have been criticizing Israel for so long that you have become that criticism. Even when you are presented with a glaring example of the value of Israel's open and civil society, you refuse to give the country its due. You must criticize Israel, you must find a way to blame it, because this is what you do - and this is who you are.

You are like many Israel bashers who call themselves "pro-Israel." They're so used to criticizing Israel under the guise of "tough love," that when they see an opportunity to show a little pride, they, well ... they quickly change the subject. "Israel still hasn't made peace with the Palestinians! Israel must make peace now more than ever!" As if Israel doesn't crave peace and has never made any offers or sacrifices for peace.

God forbid Israel bashers should ever take a time-out from criticism and say, "Israel must spread its democratic values throughout the Middle East!" But no, that would make Israel look too good, and shift the attention to the 330 million Arabs who are not free, who are not under Israel's rule, and whose voices have been drowned out for decades by the world's obsession with blaming Israel for the ills of the Middle East.

Well, thanks to the extraordinary human eruption now happening in the Middle East - an eruption that is about freedom and dignity and not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - it will become harder and harder for people like you to make your "blame Israel first" arguments. I have no doubt, though, that you will keep trying.

So I am challenging you to a live debate: "Israel: Stumbling Block or Shining Light?"

Because I don't have a private jet, let's do it in Los Angeles.


David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine, OLAM.org and is a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Jewish Journal. He can be reached at Suissa@olam.org.

My column this week-- "Israel Never Looked So Good"-- has struck a nerve.

Over 6,000 "likes" and 2,000 "shares" in a liberal pub like Huffington Post. Who knew? Thanks to all who "shared."

Yemen Blues

Découvrez Découvrez Mondomix.com, le magazine des Musiques et Cultures dans le Monde!

Israel Never Looked So Good

My column this week in the Huffington Post and the Jewish Journal:

They all warned us. The geniuses at Peace Now. The brilliant diplomats. The think tanks. Even the Arab dictators warned us. For decades now, they have been warning us that if you want "peace in the Middle East," just fix the Palestinian problem. A recent variation on this theme has been: Just get the Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to "freeze" their construction, and then, finally, Palestinian leaders might come to the table and peace might break out.

And what would happen if peace would break out between Jews and Palestinians? Would all those furious Arabs now demonstrating on the streets of Cairo and across the Middle East feel any better? Would they feel less oppressed?

What bloody nonsense.

Has there ever been a greater abuse of the English language in international diplomacy than calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the "Middle East peace process?" As if there were only two countries in the Middle East.

Even if you absolutely believe in the imperative of creating a Palestinian state, you can't tell me that the single-minded and global obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the enormous ills in the rest of the Middle East hasn't been idiotic, if not criminally negligent.

While tens of millions of Arabs have been suffering for decades from brutal oppression, while gays have been tortured and writers jailed and women humiliated and dissidents killed, the world -- yes, the world -- has obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As if Palestinians -- the same coddled victims on whom the world has spent billions and who have rejected one peace offer after another -- were the only victims in the Middle East.

As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world.

While self-righteous Israel bashers have scrutinized every flaw in Israel's democracy -- some waxing hysterical that the Jewish democratic experiment in the world's nastiest neighborhood has turned into an embarrassment -- they kept their big mouths shut about the oppression of millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East.

They cried foul if Israeli Arabs -- who have infinitely more rights and freedoms than any Arabs in the Middle East -- had their rights compromised in any way. But if a poet was jailed in Jordan or a gay man was tortured in Egypt or a woman was stoned in Syria, all we heard was screaming silence.

Think of the ridiculous amount of media ink and diplomatic attention that has been poured onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict over the years, while much of the Arab world was suffering and smoldering, and tell me this is not criminal negligence. Do you ever recall seeing a U.N. resolution or an international conference in support of Middle Eastern Arabs not named Palestinians?

Of course, now that the Arab volcano has finally erupted, all those chronic Israel bashers have suddenly discovered a new cause: Freedom for the poor oppressed Arabs of the Middle East!

Imagine if those Israel bashers, during all the years they put Israel under their critical and hypocritical microscope, had taken Israel's imperfect democratic experiment and said to the Arab world: Why don't you try to emulate the Jews?

Why don't you give equal rights to your women and gays, just like Israel does?

Why don't you give your people the same freedom of speech, freedom of religion and freedom to vote that Israel gives its people? And offer them the economic opportunities they would get in Israel? Why don't you treat your Jewish citizens the same way Israel treats its Arab citizens?

Why don't you study how Israel has struggled to balance religion with democracy -- a very difficult but not insurmountable task?

Why don't you teach your people that Jews are not the sons of dogs, but a noble, ancient people with a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel?

Yes, imagine if Israel bashers had spent a fraction of their energy fighting the lies of Arab dictators and defending the rights of millions of oppressed Arabs. Imagine if President Obama had taken 1 percent of the time he has harped on Jewish settlements to defend the democratic rights of Egyptian Arabs -- which he is suddenly doing now that the volcano has erupted.

Maybe it's just easier to beat up on a free and open society like Israel.

Well, now that the cesspool of human oppression in the Arab world has been opened for all to see, how bad is Israel's democracy looking? Don't you wish the Arab world had a modicum of Israel's civil society? And that it was as stable and reliable and free and open as Israel?

You can preach to me all you want about the great Jewish tradition of self-criticism -- which I believe in -- but right now, when I see poor Arab souls being killed for protesting on the street, and the looming threat that one Egyptian Pharaoh may be replaced by an even more oppressive one, I've never felt more proud of being a supporter of the Jewish state.

Hamid El Shaeri-- Arabic groove

U-Cef ft Black Tip

Bocelli-- Santa Lucia Luntana

Neil Young-- Like a Hurricane

Van Morrison-- Days Like This

Akasha-- Brown Sugar

Tinariwen-- Assouf

Swell Season-- When your mind's made up

Boolandrix (a birthday party in Gambia)

Crystal Castles-- Not in Love

Twin Shadows-- Forget

Local Natives-- Airplanes

Catherine Deneuve-- Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Villagers-- Twenty Seven Strangers

Rebbe Soul-- Sephardic jam in kitchen

George McCrae-- (early disco)

Love Like Blood-- Angie

Hold Your Horses-- 70 Million

Amos Lee- Flower

Why Do Jewish?

My column this week in the Jewish Journal:

Can Orthodox Jews learn something fundamental from unaffiliated Jews? That is, can Jews who practice Torah rituals learn something from Jews who practice virtually none? This question was on my mind recently as I attended two events representing the polar opposites of Jewish life.

The first was the annual West Coast convention of the Orthodox Union, where the theme this year was “Keeping Our Values for the Next Generation.” I attended several of the events and moderated a closing panel on “Values for Our Future.” While the overall theme was values, the underlying mission of the convention was how to strengthen the Orthodox movement, and, in particular, how to keep the next generation from straying from the Modern Orthodox derech (path).

In the same way that the broader community constantly talks about “Jewish continuity,” the Orthodox community is also very busy these days with “Orthodox continuity.”

This idea of Jewish continuity played a big part of the second event I attended,  “Funding Your Passions: A Breakfast With Harold Grinspoon.” Grinspoon, a renowned philanthropist, talked about many things, but one subject in particular put a twinkle in his eyes: The PJ Library, a 5-year-old initiative that has already distributed more than 2 million children’s books to thousands of Jewish families across North America. For many of these families, who are unaffiliated, these colorful and engaging bedtime books have become their major connection to the Jewish tradition and their entrance to the Jewish community.

What I found remarkable about the books is that while they are fun to read, they don’t dumb down Judaism. One of my favorites is “The Only One Club,” a charming and intelligent primer on one of the philosophical dilemmas of modern Jewish life — how to balance the particularity of the Jewish tradition with the universality of humanism.

It is books like “The Only One Club” that made me think of how programs for unaffiliated Jews might help programs for Orthodox Jews. The Orthodox community spends a lot of time on the who, what, where, when and how of Jewish rituals, but not as much, it seems to me, on the “why.” We study Torah commandments from all angles, but rarely will we ask: “Why should I do this in the first place?”

“Because God and our Sages said so” and “because our ancestors did so” are easy and powerful answers, but they are not the only ones. For the Orthodox community to thrive, it will need to open up to the kind of “why” questions outreach groups like the PJ Library routinely ask: “Why is Judaism good for me? Why do I need it? Why is it meaningful?”

These are not the kinds of questions my grandparents asked in their cozy Orthodox neighborhoods of Casablanca, but they are questions that are sneaking up on the Orthodox world and in our Modern Orthodox shtetls like Pico-Robertson.

While outreach to the unaffiliated deals more with identity — “Why be Jewish?” —outreach to the Orthodox must deal more with activity — “Why do Jewish?” Both questions are fundamental. They both ’fess up to the reality that in today’s world of nonstop distractions, we can’t assume that Judaism of any denomination will simply sell itself.

The good news is that if we use our imaginations, we can come up with great answers. One answer I give to my kids for “Why do Jewish?” is that a mitzvah is not something that boxes you in, but rather, a gift box from God.

Open the mitzvah box and create your own personal meaning. For example, kissing the mezuzah reminds me to show love to my friends and family. Separating meat from milk reminds me to separate work from play. Making a blessing on food reminds me to show gratitude and help the hungry and less fortunate. Putting on tefillin reminds me that God is a filter between me and negative forces. Lighting Shabbat candles reminds me that I must aspire to be a shining candle in the world.

At Passover time, cleaning out the chametz from my house reminds me not to meddle with my neighbor’s chametz; in other words, not to do lashon harah. The possibilities are endless.

Every mitzvah is a gift box of personal meaning. The real gift we get when we do the mitzvah is that we start to own it. It becomes ours, not only God’s. There’s nothing like a sense of personal ownership to deepen your attachment.

This is what I learned from a program like PJ Library that is geared to non-Orthodox and unaffiliated Jews. It’s always a good idea to start at the beginning and ask, “why?” It’s a question that works for everyone — either as an entry door for the beginner or as a source of personal renewal for the observant. It’s the kind of no-nonsense approach that can only bring out the best in us.

Jewish leaders of all denominations shouldn’t be afraid to “sell” Judaism. Even an Orthodox convention can permit itself to show how Torah rituals can help make Jews better and happier people.

Seriously. If Coke Zero can sell happiness and a bank can sell meaning of life, so can we. 

Lauren Zoeller-- A Song for You

Pete Yorn-- Life on a Chain

Ella Fitzgerald-- Black Coffee

Mat Kearney-- Nothing left to lose

Debbie Friedman, R.I.P.

Iron and Wine-- Love Vigilantes

Leona Lewis-- First Time

MED feat. and Aloe Blacc-- Where I'm From

So Long, Eva

My column this week in the Jewish Journal:

So Long, Eva

It's not easy to handle death. It's so naked and finite. No matter how much we talk about the spiritual journey to the next world, about legacies that never die, about a life well lived, there's really no consolation for the pain of missing someone - really, really missing someone.

I will miss Eva Brown, a Holocaust survivor who passed away last week at the age of 83 after a three-year fight with cancer.

What I will miss most is the sparkle in her eyes. She seemed to always have it - when she first told me about her cancer; when she'd listen to me complain about stuff in my own life; when someone would let her down; when things were really good or when things were really bad.

She even had it a couple of weeks ago, when I brought my kids to see her one last time to say good-bye. I had a premonition it would be the last time, because my friend Marci Spitzer had left me a message that "Eva would like to see you very soon." When I got to Eva's house in West Hollywood that Sunday afternoon - where we'd once been neighbors and where she had lived for nearly 60 years - Eva told me the doctors had said her long battle was over. By now, her two surviving daughters and her granddaughter were there with her around the clock. She was taking painkillers. It was just a question of time.

But she still had the sparkle in her eyes, the sparkle that said, "I'm still here."

She mentioned that for the past few days she had been having visions of her father and husband walking through her room. They were the two men closest to her. She lost 59 members of her family in the Holocaust, but her father, a prominent rabbi, miraculously survived. They had moved to America after the war, and she never lost her attachment to him. She spent many hours at our Shabbat table telling us stories of what it was like to grow up as the daughter of the chief rabbi of a little town in Hungary, when there was plenty of love but no running water.

She had a 50-year love affair with her husband, Ernie, who passed away about 10 years ago. But they had different outlooks on life. Her husband could never get over the pain of the Holocaust and the bitterness in his heart. She once shared with me that on his deathbed, he confessed to her that he regretted having been bitter most of his life.

Eva, somehow, managed to avoid bitterness. At the age of 16, she was sent to 10 concentration camps in just one year. Her signature story, captured at the beginning of Thomas Fields-Meyer's book, "If You Save One Life," describes her encounter with an American soldier, who rescued her from a long death march. He asked her, in Yiddish, "Who did this to you?" and she didn't have it in her heart to point her finger at a German soldier. She believed in justice, but not revenge. She also believed, as her father taught her, that every life was worth saving - hence the title of the book.

This ability to be positive and look to the future was almost inexplicable, because she spent so much of her time talking about the pain of her past. For many years now, she has been part of the family at the Museum of Tolerance, where she has spoken regularly to various groups about her Holocaust experience. The last few years, as if she could sense the clock ticking, she increased her appearances at schools, churches and colleges. El Camino College in Torrance even set up the Eva Brown Peace and Tolerance Educational Center in her honor.

I attended many of her talks. The extraordinary thing about Eva's message is that even as she talked about death, murder and pain, she always ended up in the same place - with an intense love of life. She left Holocaust theory to the intellectuals. Her specialty was living.

It was as if her years in the pits of darkness had led this tiny woman to reveal herself as an emissary for the celebration of life. She saw this as a very Jewish thing - savoring every breath of life that God gave her. She loved going out. When I would take her as my "date" to the Maimonides Academy trustees dinner, she'd put on a nice dress and perfume and would ask to go in the sports car, even if she had trouble getting in.

Her sparkle attracted a "circle of love" from Jewish women in the community, among them Sara Aftergood, Lesley Wolman, Marci Spitzer and Kathy Barnhard, who constantly brought her the soup she so loved and invited her for Shabbat and holiday meals. When Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer visited her a few days before she died, Eva didn't want soup - she wanted to hear the song, "Eshet Chayil." She soaked up pleasure until the very end.

One of those pleasures was taking pictures. Her house was full of them.

On that last Sunday when my kids and I went to say good-bye, after we all shared kisses and sweet words, she asked me in a weak voice: "Can we take a picture?"

We took a couple of great shots with the kids. If you look carefully, you can still see that little sparkle in her eyes.




To see a memorial for Eva Brown, visit evabrown.net.

Everything But The Girl-- Missing

Jimmy Hendrix-- All Along The Watchtower

Over the Rhine-- Desperate for Love

Zaz-- Eblouie par la nuit (blinded by the night)

Burqa Woman-- Not seeing is believing