There is much discussion today about a two state solution for the Israeli – Palestinian conflict. One might think that a majority of people, including leaders of multiple countries, is in favor of such a solution. I have a strong recollection of what it was like for Jewish/Zionist young adults such as myself who advocated such a solution for this conflict thirty years ago in the 1970’s.
During that decade, I attended and graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA
(B.A. in Sociology in 1976, and M.S.W. – Masters in Social Work in 1979). While I was an undergraduate student, I participated in demonstrations and signed petitions on behalf of Israel and Soviet Jewry and helped to collect money for Israel during and after the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Shortly after that war ended, I began to question certain Israeli governmental policies, which included alleged discriminatory treatment of its Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish citizens and its Arab citizens. Additionally, I also became troubled by Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied territories. This writer began to question the wisdom of growing Israeli governmental expenditures towards such settlements in the face of growing social and economic gaps between Israel’s Ashkenazic and its Mizrahi and Sephardic Jewish citizens, and its Arab (Palestinian-Israeli) citizens. I was also concerned that this settlement building would obviate the opportunity for negotiations between Israel, the Palestinians, and other Arab countries and entities, by telling the world that Israel was more interested in land than in peace with its neighbors.
As a member of Young Judaea, (a general Zionist youth movement sponsored by Hadassah), I studied all of the various political philosophies contained within the Zionist movement and was told that they all had equal merit. It never occurred to me that the mainstream adult Jewish community would insist on blind obedience to every Israeli policy, regardless of its lack of practicality and/or morality.
Philadelphia was a challenging place in the 1970’s. The turfs of twenty-two street gangs crisscrossed Temple University’s North Philadelphia campus where I lived and studied. My parents’ Wynnefield neighborhood (initial home of Har Zion Temple) was in transition from mostly Jewish and Caucasian to mostly African American. My parents remained in that area until 1984, due to a strong commitment to racial integration.
I frequented Temple University Hillel Foundation’s facility on the North Philadelphia campus, as it was a meeting place for many Jewish student activists such as myself. Its small but well stocked library contained magazines such as Response, Jewish Spectator, Jewish Currents, and New Outlook (from Israel). The writings of Professor Jacob Neusner, Ms. Inge Lederer Gibel, Ms. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, and Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz taught me how to remain pro-Israel while being critical of some of its policies.
In the spring of 1974, I attended a speech by Mr. Meir Pa’il (a retired Israeli career military officer), who was a Knesset (Israeli Parliament) member and the leader of the Israeli Moked party (now Meretz). The speech was held at the Downtown Branch of the Philadelphia Young Men’s-Young Women’s Hebrew Association and was sponsored by the left-wing Zionist organization known as Americans for Progressive Israel (now Meretz, USA). Mr. Pa’il advocated a two state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and criticized the Israeli policy of “creeping annexation”(settlement building) in the occupied territories along with Arab and Palestinian denial of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and Palestinian anti-Israel terrorism. These activities were all viewed as obstacles to a two state solution. My father accompanied me to that meeting, even though he was not happy to hear anyone publicly criticize the Israeli government, which at that time was headed by Labor Party leaders Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin.
My father had been a Labor Zionist (a member of Poalei Zion) in the 1920”s and 1930’s. Upon returning home in 1945 from four years of service in the United States Army in World War II, he became a General Zionist (a member of the non-partisan American Jewish League for Israel). He also became involved in the Civil Rights Congress, using his professional expertise as a lawyer to defend an African-American tenant farmer from the South who ran away to the North after physically defending himself against his abusive Caucasian landowner in the South. Unfortunately, the judge who handled the case ordered that the tenant farmer be returned to the South to face criminal charges stemming from the above offense. My father also defended two Philadelphia Jewish schoolteacher friends who had been dismissed from their jobs for refusing to take the loyalty oath during the McCarthy era. He also took the case of a young man who had been locked up in a Fairmount Park Guard house by Philadelphia police officers for handing out leaflets protesting the United States’ involvement in the Korean War. In spite of all of his activism, my father was reluctant to publicly criticize Israeli policies because of the Holocaust and unrelenting Arab hostility to the State of Israel.
Later in 1974, the Philadelphia Union of Jewish Students decided to sponsor a Sunday afternoon panel discussion on Israel and the Palestinians with speakers representing the leftist, centrist, and rightist sectors of the Israeli political spectrum. In those days, the Israeli right (the Likud), advocated Israel’s annexation of all territories won in the 1967 Six Day War, which included the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank of the Jordan River, and the Golan Heights. The Israeli centrists (Labor Alignment), worked to maintain the status quo with calculated settlement in the occupied territories and vague references to Arab-Israeli peace negotiations in the future. The Israeli left (Moked and Ratz) advocated negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Such negotiations would eventually lead to the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state along side of Israel. The Executive Director of the Jewish Campus Activities Board contacted several students, including this writer, in an attempt to dissuade us from holding this program. He told us, “Jerusalem does not want you to hold this program.” We held the program anyway.
In early 1976, along with six to seven other Jewish/Zionist student activists, I signed a petition protesting the Israeli government’s policy of “Judaization of the Galilee.” This petition was mailed to the Israeli Consulate in Philadelphia. It was our belief that the method of this policy’s implementation evinced substantial insensitivity to the large Israeli Arab population residing in that area. The violent reaction of the Galilee’s Arab population on “Land Day”, on March 30, 1976, only served to prove our point.
One day shortly after the petition was mailed to the Israeli Consulate, I was having lunch at Hillel with several other students. One of the other students remarked that he had heard that the Israeli Consulate had placed the students who had signed the above petition on a list for those who were “mistaken about Israel.” I was young and hotheaded and didn’t determine which individual at the Consulate was responsible for the creation of such a list. Instead, I telephoned the Israeli Consulate from Hillel and yelled at the first person that answered the phone, “ How dare you put me on a list! This is McCarthyism and my father fought against McCarthyism in the 1950’s!” One of the Hillel staff members came into the lobby and tried to calm me down, as she was sympathetic to my situation. Most of the staff persons at Temple Hillel at that time were Reconstructionist Rabbinical College students who were moderately left wing in both their American and Israeli politics.
However by 1977, these people had tempered their open expression of dissenting views on Israeli policies. This was due to an edict that was issued by the Jewish Federation and/or the B’nai Brith Hillel Foundation that stated that any Hillel staff person who publicly expressed dissenting views on Israeli policies might face termination from his/her Hillel job. This person would face automatic termination if s/he were a member of Breira (Alternative), which was a Jewish organization that advocated a two state solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.
During 1976-77, I attended multiple Breira meetings. Additionally, several Jewish/ Zionist students (including this writer) wrote letters to the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, in which we criticized the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and advocated a two state solution to the conflict. Two prominent Reform Jewish rabbis, who publicly supported such a solution, endured threatening phone calls and written death threats that were mailed to their homes. A sixteen-year-old suburban Jewish teenage girl, who was a member of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), was arrested on these charges and later released on bond. The above two rabbis declined to prosecute her. One of the Breira meetings I attended took place at a Reform Temple, which was headed by one of the above rabbis. At this meeting, JDL members picketed outside the temple and also verbally heckled the Breira speakers inside the building.
At another Breira meeting I attended in a private home, JDL members arrived and threw rocks at the front door and windows of the house. The female president of this group was present and she yelled, “Jewish Babies’ Blood is on Breira’s Head!” The Jewish Defense League believed that any Jew/Zionist who advocated territorial compromise and mutual recognition between Israelis and Palestinians was a traitor who supported the Palestinian terrorists who executed the horrific massacres at Maalot, Kiryat Shemona, Beit Shean, and Nahariya.
Several years later, while in attendance at the annual Philadelphia Salute to Israel Parade and Rally, I observed the above female Jewish Defense League leader chasing a female Breira member around the Breira information table. I then placed myself between the two women and prevented the JDL leader from further harassment of the Breira member. Subsequently, I looked the JDL leader in the eye and asked her, “Why don’t you leave her alone?” She responded by saying, “Her organization’s opinion is wrong and dangerous to Israel.” I responded to her saying, “ Their organization has a right to its opinion just as your organization has a right to its opinion.” The JDL leader just stared at me, unable to understand what I had just said to her.
Nothing in my past involvement in the Zionist movement had prepared me for the Jewish Federation’s and the Jewish Defense League’s reactions to Jewish dissent surrounding Israeli policy.
During the next twenty years, I established myself personally and professionally. In 1977, I was privileged to watch Anwar Sadat’s peace mission to Israel on television. This mission was the catalyst for the 1979 Sinai accords and peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The 1981 Israeli War in Lebanon and assassination of Anwar Sadat, and the early 1980’s murder of Israeli paratrooper and peace activist Emil Grunzweig during a Peace Now demonstration in Jerusalem dampened this joy. I also attended a couple of New Jewish Agenda meetings while living in St. Louis, Missouri, during this time period.
In 1991, my wife and I became supporters of the New Israel Fund while living in Rockville, Maryland. We have maintained our support of this organization up to the present time. The New Israel Fund provides financial, technical, and moral support to hundreds of Israeli groups that are working to strengthen Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. We were thrilled with the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, horrified by the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, and were saddened over the 2000 collapse of the Oslo Accords that had begun in 1993.
In closing, if someone would ask me today if I would still have advocated a two state solution in the 1970’s in spite of the hostility evinced by many other Jews, my answer would still be YES! I still believe that a two state solution, if properly implemented by both Israel and the Palestinians, would be beneficial to Israel, Palestine, the Jewish people, the Arab nations, the entire Middle East, and the whole world. It is my opinion that the ultimate goals of a Jewish and democratic State of Israel living within secure borders next door to an economically viable, politically independent, and non-expansionist Arab State of Palestine are worthwhile ones for which to work.
