my reply: Pardon my ignorance, but your condescending tone distracts from the substance of this discussion. Also, I am not quoting, I am stating my own opinion. You are qoting me.

shriber: “You don’t have to be a leftist Rabbi to say that a two State solution will require the evacuation of many but not necessarily all of the settlers from the West Bank.”

my reply: True enough, but I contend that this is an insidious form of anti-semitism. Anti-semitism, I am sure you agree, is not limited to Left-leaning rabbis.

shriber: “Many of the settlers are a drag not just on the peace process but on the economy of the Jewish State.”

my reply: Does this mean that all unemployed Jews must be deported from the West Bank. Are they less worthy in your eyes? Do you apply the same tough standards to Arabs living in the West Bank?

Karl Pfeifer: “Some settlers in the Westbank (or Judea and Samaria) do not care about Human Rights of their neighbours. Some uproot olivetrees of Arab neighbours others overturn stalls in the market of Hebron. And as Shriber has correctly stated, many of them do not contribute to the welfare of Israel but on the contrary cost money…”

my reply: This sounds a lot like shriber. So you think that some bad attitudes and occasional vandalism justifies expelling 300,000 people? If some West Bank Arabs vandalized Jewish settlements (and they have), does that mean all Arabs must leave as well? Will anyone be left in the West Bank? I won’t even start talking about Arab attitudes toward human rights.

Karl Pfeifer: “I also do not like your sweeping condemnation of the left.”

my reply: My condemnation is not of the left, per se, only of this perverse form of justice I have heard them repeat so widely.

So I ask you both, shriber and Karl:
What is your litmus test for allowing a person to live in the West Bank, or in Yemen, or Morocco, or Iraq, or Lybia (my aunt’s birthplace), or Tel Aviv (my birthplace), or anywhere else on this planet? Will you apply this same litmus test to all residents, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or religion? Justice is not just if it is based on double standards.

You don’t have to be a leftist Rabbi to say that a two State solution will require the evacuation of many but not necessarily all of the settlers from the West Bank.

Only someone unacquainted with the situation on the West Bank would make the kind of comment you quote.

Many of the settlers are a drag not just on the peace process but on the economy of the Jewish State. There many places in Israel proper they can move to. The Galil and other areas within the Green line need developing.

There is talk within Israel to set up a multi million dollar fund to compensate settlers who want to move to Israel.

A two State solution is essential for the survival of Israel.

His hatred isn’t confined to Israel it’s a typical far left hatred against what he considers “bourgeois and capitalist cultures.”

In the late 60’s he was calling for a shooting war against the US “ruling class.”

He chided Horowitz for not having guns at his disposal.

He calls himself a Rabbi and he got some Rabbinic institute to give him a certificate, but to my eyes and the eyes of many other Conservative and Reform Jews he is anything but. He uses his title in order to enhance his radical agenda. His is a case of trying to infiltrate the “enemy camp” in order to subvert it from within.

The whole “Tikkun community” he built is a sham.

As I hope I made clear, you were absolutely, one hundred per cent right to ask those questions. And Tikkun is obliged to answer them all. Our attention, and the attention of many of our friends, will be focused on this matter until they do so.

I cannot really speculate about what motivates Lerner or anybody else. But I think what has happened is that questioning Israel’s right to exist has become more acceptable in the mainstream, with the result that parts of the left can longer distinguish legitimate criticism (of the settlement policy, for example) from outright demonization. When that point is reached, the Israel Shamirs of this world can reach audiences they could only previously dream about.

Ultimately, this debate is not about Lerner - let’s not give him yet another ego boost. It’s about the failure to recognize antisemitism even when it smacks you in the face.

Ken, over the years many antisemites have used articles published in Tikkun as an excuse to claim that they could not be antisemitic because a national “Jewish” magazine have also voiced similar opinions on Jews and Israel.

See: “Joel Kovel’s “On Left anti-Semitism and the Special Status of Israel” (May/June 2003)

Kovel’s views are not that disimilar to that of “Shamir.”

I was a subscriber in the 80’s when the magazine was first established and before I realized its true agenda.

I also don’t like the way Lerner has monopolized the term Tikkun which has more than one meaning in Jewish thought and not the sappy universal socialist one given it by the magazine:

On Tikkun Olam: see: “How Not to Repair the World,” by
Hillel Halkin

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/how-not-to-repair-the-world-11461?search=1

Tikkun should be criticized when it is wrong, as it was in this instance. But to demonize it is to do to it what we complain about others doing to Israel.