Dublin Opinion

I’ve recently become a fan of Jerry Haber’s blog Magnes Zionist. Jerry is an academic and Orthodox Jew who works in the US and Israel and takes grave exception to how the Israeli government are treating Palestinians.

The Magnes of the title refers to Judah Magnes, a Reform Rabbi, who originally worked in the US with a number of Jewish organizations, but moved to Palestine in 1922 and founded the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. According to his wikipedia entry he believed ‘that the land of Israel should be built in a “decent manner”, or not built at all’ and this seemed to inform his opinion right up to the end of his life, which coincided with the formation of the State of Israel.

In a post written a couple of days ago, Jerry referred to a recent Haaretz article, which discusses Magnes efforts at the end of his life to try to ensure that the new Israeli state wasn’t a Zionist state, but a United States of Israel.

The quote Jerry’s summary:

“Magnes was a pragmatist and a tireless diplomat. As I have said before, he should be distinguished from Buber, Simon, and the Brit Shalom crowd. Before the establishment of the state, he pushed for a binational state, and was encouraged by the minority UNSCOP that called for a federal state.”

And

“Following the establishment of the State of Israel, he argued for a federation of several states with a joint army, economic and foreign policies.”

The quote from the Haaretz article is worth providing in full:

The details of this forgotten period during Israel’s struggle for independence are revealed in excerpts of Magnes’ diary, published here for the first time, which describe the Zionist leader’s attempt to convince the president of the United States to force a cease-fire and prevent both the implementation of the partition plan and the establishment of a Jewish state.

When the United Nations passed the partition plan on November 29, 1947, not all the Jews celebrated in the streets. A group of intellectuals, most of them Hebrew University lecturers, believed that the war that would break out in the wake of the establishment of a Jewish state would bring disaster down on the Jews and the Arabs alike. Magnes, a Reform rabbi, pacifist and anti-imperialist who was known for his opposition to World War I, was one of the most important Zionist leaders of his era. He was a leading figure in the New York Jewish community and was a key liaison between the Zionist leadership and the American administration. He moved to Israel in 1922 and came out in support of the establishment of a single, binational state for Jews and Arabs, with a government comprised of representatives from both peoples.

Magnes’ personal diary, which he wrote in English, discusses his despair at the violence as the British Mandate came to an end, intermingling those accounts with descriptions of his worsening health and his nightmares.

On April 12, 1948, Magnes wrote in his diary: “For more than a generation I have been pleading for peace, conciliation, understanding. How can I not and stand before the world and say: ‘Friends, stop the bloodshed. Understanding is possible.’ This is the moment I have been preparing for all these years.”

The American consul told Magnes that if no trusteeship were formed by May 15, Palestine would enter a period full of “very grave danger with bloodshed,” Magnes wrote the same day. “Great need of courageous, constructive attitude such as mine,” he wrote. “Therefore time come for me and others selected… or me alone to come to U.S. in order to cooperate.” Magnes expressed the hope that if a state were declared, the United States would impose sanctions on Israel, saying that there can be no war without money or ammunition.

On April 13, Magnes was informed that 34 Hebrew University and Hadassah hospital employees were killed in an attack on a convoy to Mount Scopus. All told, 77 people were killed in the attack, many of them Magnes’ friends. But Manges was no less shocked by the massacre than he was by the circumstances that preceded it: Four days earlier, the Irgun and Lehi pre-state Jewish underground militias killed more than 100 Palestinians at Deir Yassin.

At the funerals of those killed in the convoy attack, Magnes condemned the cruelty of both sides, and was denounced as a traitor by many members of the Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine).

“Unlike other Zionist leaders, like [David] Ben-Gurion, Magnes’ diaries are not just a political document,” says Hebrew University Prof. Aryeh Goren, who is researching and editing Magnes’ writings. “His writing is very personal - he shares and talks about his misgivings and his weaknesses.”

Magnes considered himself to be a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and the prophet Jeremiah, and opposed all forms of nationalism that are based on military force. The Ihud (Unity) association he established with several others is seen as the flagship group of left-wing Zionists regarding all that pertains to Jewish-Arab relations. Its members were attacked by nearly all the political parties in the pre-state period, and were described as defeatists, ghetto-like and anti-patriotic.

Today, Jerry is writing about the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, and it’s a post that is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the situation at all. Again, Jerry is quoting from Haaretz, but in much more qualified way, as I suspect there is much in Bradley Burston’s commentary in general that he disagrees with. On this occasion though, it seems that Burston is not in the mood for celebrating the Anniversary.

However, Jerry goes on to tell a story:

The other day I was asked whether I recite the Hallel prayer with a blessing on Yom ha-Atzma’ut. That is traditionally a demarcator between enthusiastic religious Zionists and more halakhically cautious ones; of course, the ultra-orthodox don’t recite it at all.

This is what I told the questioner: There is a famous midrash on the parting of the Red Sea, where the Almighty rebukes the angels who are singing His praises by saying, “My creatures (i.e., the Egyptians) are drowning, and you sing a song of praise?” Now God may allow recently-freed slaves to rejoice over the downfall of their oppressors. But surely not that is not the ideal. And when those who are drowning in sea are not oppressors but innocent victims of, according to the Zionist narrative, Jewish liberation — then how can any decent person rejoice?

The answer is that despite the sixty-year old (100 + year old?) Nakba, there are some positive elements to the Jewish state founded sixty years ago, that imperfect regime that engaged (and engages) in ethnic cleansing and dividing up the spoils of war. In fact, they are too numerous to mention.

Jerry then provides the ‘liberal wimp’s’ list of things to celebrate. I know this is after the day and everything, but the list is worth reading. And you know, it’s never to late to tell someone who you think should know better to cop on.