Jewish Peace Letter

Vol. 43 No. 4 Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship May 2014

Murray Polner Scaring Americans: A Tale Of Our National-Security State

Lists, Some Lists, He Had Some Little Lists: Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation J. Edgar Hoover.

plus Stefan Merken • Turmoil Around Us The Magnes Zionist • Loving Living in Israel Andrew Beale • Mapping Israel / Palestine Jim Sleeper • Untamed Jonathan Schell

ISSN: 0197-9115 From Where I Sit

Stefan Merken

Turmoil Around Us

here is plenty in the news to make us aware • As Boston prepared for its annual marathon race, remind- of the turmoil around us: ing us of last year’s bombings, someone left a backpack in the • A Palestinian professor, Mo- downtown area, presumably to fright- Thammed S. Dajani, took twenty-sev- en this year’s runners and spectators. en Palestinian university students to When the police blew up the back- Auschwitz a few weeks ago on a trip pack, they found a rice cooker, similar that was part of a project designed to to the one the bombers used last year to teach empathy and tolerance. When house their explosive — and confetti. he returned home, other Palestinians These events and numerous branded him a traitor, and the uni- others remind me that for the past versity at which he taught disowned seventy-three years the Jewish Peace the trip, leaving him to flee Jerusalem Fellowship has countered violence at in fear of his life. home and abroad as best we can, em- • A seventy-three-year-old white phasizing the Judaic spirit of loving ex-leader of the Carolina Knights of justice and peace. We have opposed the Ku Klux Klan killed three people wars, counseled those who in good Confetti: A weapon of terror? in Kansas City believing that he was conscience would not serve in the shooting at Jews in a Jewish community center and a Jewish military, and been fortunate to have included in our ranks home for the elderly. men and women of like mind. If you’d like to support the JPF, please consider a donation. We welcome any amount, Stefan Merken is chair of the Jewish Peace Fellowship. small as well as large. Y

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2 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter May 2014 Jewish Peace Fellowship Israel

The Magnes Zionist

Why I (Still) Love Living in Israel

recently wrote that living in Israel for Jews, Third, it’s hard to be a Jew here, really hard, and that’s especially those who have a steady income, is like flying part of what makes life interesting, especially for somebody business class, or like being in an airport club: “member- like me, who is a very Jewish Jew. Pace A. B. Yehoshua, I can’t Iship has its privileges.” That may have left the impression that think of any place in the world where it is harder to be a Jew this is the only reason I like being here. That’s not the case. than in Israel. Here’s an example: When I was growing up, I I cannot deny that despite all my misgivings about the used to listen to Christian fundamentalists on Sunday reli- State of Israel, its past, present, and immediate future, I like gion shows. As a privileged suburban Jewish liberal, I used being here. In fact, I really like being to think that Judaism was a more here. Here’s why: rational, more liberal religion than I like Israelis, and I don’t mean Christianity. I suffered from the just Israeli Jews. There is something same moral chauvinism that many about Israel that makes this place feel tribalists feel about their own tribe. like a small town. I would say shtetl, It’s only when I came to Israel and but that’s too Jewish. There is a nation- learned that whatever craziness gen- al character, an Israeliness, that, like tiles had, Jews also had it in spades, every Israeli, I both criticize and cele- and that whatever bigotry Southern brate. When traveling abroad I always (and Northern) whites had in the run into Israelis, everywhere. There is past, some Jews also had it. a freshness, a newness to this place that Only in Israel did I realize that reflects some sort of innate optimism. my feelings of moral superiority Maybe some of that is Jewish, but it’s were misplaced. I learned that Ju- not just that. How can the Palestinians daism was a lot more than the lofty not be optimistic? They have survived sentiments of the Pentateuch with their ongoing Nakbah, and their com- Rabbi Hertz’s commentary (or any munity, and the world’s recognition of book written by Rabbi Jonathan its aspirations, is growing. Sacks), and that my people contin-  $25 /  $36 /  $50 /  $100 /  $250 /  $500 /  $1000 /  Other $ ____ Second, I have lived here for so ued to commit sins in the name of long that it has become home to me. “Jewish survival” or “Judaism” just Not so much as a Jew — as a Jew as folks from other religions did it home is where my community and (and that includes the religions of Abraham Yehoshua. “Pace A. B. Yehoshua, I shul are — but as somebody who be- nationalism and secularism). I sup- can’t think of any place in the world where it came an Israeli citizen many years pose I could have learned the same is harder to be a Jew than in Israel.” ago. It’s because Israel is home to me thing growing up in some neighbor- that I view Israelis as family, and I like family. Families get hoods in New York, but only in Israel did I meet those folks into arguments, but family is family. And when my family for the first time. screws up, it pains me, but it’s also my responsibility. Of course, that doesn’t sound like a reason to love Israel, no more than you love a persistent pain. Perhaps it’s better to The Magnes Zionist is the pseudonym of Charles say that I am grateful for the difficulties of being a Jew here Manekin, professor of philosophy at the University of because of its impact on my moral smugness. Maryland, who blogs at www.jeremiahhaber.com. There’s a final reason why I love Israel. I still have faith

www.jewishpeacefellowship.org May 2014 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 3 that it can become a decent, even inspiring, society, and I the first step in the process of repentance. A just society can say that because of my faith in humanity and my familiarity be built here, and that should be the primary task of Jews with Israelis. I can envision a truly liberal democracy, a state in the twenty-first century, especially those Jews for whom of all its citizens, where all Israelis learn about and celebrate Israel is a special place. It may take decades and generations, the two major national cultures and the many religious cul- but I believe it can come. tures here. I can envision an Israel that grows up, that admits So, yes, that is a dream, and I realize that for some of its responsibility for the ongoing Nakbah, that invites Pales- my coreligionists it is a nightmare, that they would rather tinians to build with Israeli Jews a just society, that tries to continue living according to the blessing of Esau — “by the make amends, an Israel that bears a special responsibility for sword” — for the sake of political power, privilege, domin- the welfare and the flourishing of the Palestinian people. ion, “Jewish pride.” It will always be easier for tribalists to live I have long thought and said that the Palestinians were like Simeon and Levi than like Jacob. the collateral damage, not the intended damage, of the Zi- But I still have faith that things can be different and that onist enterprise, and so Israelis, primarily Israeli Jews, have ultimately, whatever political arrangement, which means a collective and historical relationship towards the Palestin- little to me, these two peoples can flourish together. They are ians and their national aspirations. Hakarat ha-het — recog- certainly not going away. nizing the sin of responsibility for the ongoing Nakbah — is Anyway, that’s my dream, and I haven’t given up on it. Y

Israel / Palestine

Andrew Beale

Where Map-Making Is a Form of Struggle

ior Amihai didn’t grow up knowing the location long-held land claims can turn quickly into reality, stealing of the internationally recognized border between his property from people whose families have owned it for hun- native Israel and the West Bank. “It wasn’t until I was dreds of years. Maps have won land back too — altering the Ltwenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five-ish when it hit me route of Israel’s separation barrier, returning farmland to its that I don’t really understand what the Green Line is,” said original owners, giving communities their names back. But Amihai, a staffer for the Israeli NGO Peace Now. “It’s not on maps can obscure as much as they can reveal. the road maps. It’s not on the atlases. You just can’t find the It wasn’t until Amihai moved to London that he learned Green Line.” the exact location of his country’s borders. Now his Twitter Maps are always political, but in Israel and Palestine, account describes him as a “Settlement Watch Dog.” His job maps can erase identities, or give them back, with particu- at Peace Now, running a program called Settlement Watch, lar quickness. Hand-drawn maps deleting neighborhoods or involves tracking the creation and growth of Israeli settle- ments in the West Bank. The organization’s Web site features Andrew Beale was raised on the US-Mexico border, the most complete map of settlements, providing even more where he first learned about community organizing from up-to-date information than the United Nations. Through Mexican and American activists. He has a BA in multime- careful studies of government reports and aerial photos, dia journalism from the University of New Mexico and is a Peace Now gathers data, and staffers drive through the West certified “Auténtico” from the School of Authentic Journal- Bank to observe settlement growth firsthand. ism. He currently lives in the West Bank. This article first Peace Now’s interactive settlement map is at the same appeared in Waging Nonviolence.org. time fascinating and terrifying. Blue dots representing set-

4 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter May 2014 Jewish Peace Fellowship tlements blur together, too many when he first started working at to count. Each one can be clicked Bimkom over a decade ago, even on to give further information, the planned route of the wall was and it’s hard to imagine how much unknown. work must have gone into creating “We went to the court and the map — never mind building they agreed to give [information the settlements themselves. about the route] to us,” he said. In eye-catching yellow and red, “Slowly, slowly we understood the map also shows the huge swaths that there is a strong connection of the West Bank populated by Pal- between the route of the barrier estinians — people who are often and expansion of lands of settle- left out of the Israeli narrative. Peace ments.” By demonstrating this in Now’s strategy is to make Israelis court, Bimkom was able to play a and internationals understand that role in getting the route of the wall these areas are inhabited, in contrast changed. “Since then, we have to the Israeli narrative of the region [amassed] this huge collection of as “a land without people for a peo- maps, of municipality areas, of ple without land.” Map-maker, map-maker, make me a map: Pales- plans for settlements.” tine, circa 1880-1900. Using technology to display Putting the Wall in Its Place. Another Israeli and create maps has changed the way Bimkom is able to vi- human rights organization, B’Tselem, provides regularly sualize the occupation, giving it more tools with which to updated maps of Israeli checkpoints, settler violence, road fight for the rights of Palestinians. closures and other features of the occupation. Its map of re- “Geographical information systems let you have a lot of in- strictions on Palestinian movement in Hebron is handed out formation which shows the situation on the ground, and you can on anti-occupation tours organized by Breaking the Silence, put layers on, one by one,” Cohen-Lifshitz said. “It’s a crucial tool a group made up of former Israeli soldiers. for us to understand what we are fighting against.” By overlaying Media reports almost never discuss the geography of maps of settlements with ownership records, Bimkom has been Hebron in a frank manner. Although the population is able to demonstrate that certain settlements were built entirely overwhelmingly Arab, some roads in the old city center are on privately owned Palestinian land. closed to Palestinians, disturbing traffic patterns through- out the city and forcing many locals to endure daily check- Geography as Justification. Mapping Palestine points. The situation is so shocking, and so rarely spoken of, isn’t advocacy in a vacuum. It’s a pitched battle with fierce that simply showing a map of it is an act of resistance. Most pushback from the other side. people who take Breaking the Silence’s tours, mostly liberals On a press tour of “Judea and Samaria” — the name from Israel and abroad, have never seen the map before and the Israeli government uses for the West Bank — a Govern- react with shock to the stark representation of Hebron’s sys- ment Press Office spokesperson passed out a booklet called tem of open discrimination. “Israel’s Story in Maps.” It featured, among others, a map Sarit Michaeli, coordinator of B’Tselem’s mapping proj- titled “The Oslo Agreements: Israel No Longer Controls the ect, uses maps not only to help reporters and the public un- Arabs,” which showed the areas under nominal Palestinian derstand the occupation of Palestine, but also as an integral Authority control, as well as the larger settlement blocks out- part of legal advocacy. On several occasions, maps have won side Palestinian-controlled areas. By excising the settlements land for Palestinians in court. This is true in the case of Isra- inside Palestinian Authority areas, the map portrays Pales- el’s so-called separation barrier, known to many Palestinians tinians as having access to a lot more land than they actu- as the “apartheid wall.” Construction on the barrier, which ally do. The map purposefully hides the actual “facts on the began in the early 2000s, does not follow the Green Line, but ground” — a phrase the Israeli government is fond of using instead snakes through the West Bank in violation of inter- to justify settlements on the basis that they already exist and national law. cannot be easily removed. “When you’re bringing information to the High Court, While some Israeli maps exaggerate Palestinian auton- and you show them the map and you show them how a cer- omy, others efface it. Even apparently neutral private com- tain route [of the separation barrier] that was proposed by panies can use maps in ways that entrench the occupation. the government is actually there not because it’s the best se- Waze, for instance, is an Israeli smartphone app (recently curity route but because they want to build a big settlement acquired by Google) that allows users to choose which road and annex the area, it can be very effective,” Michaeli said. system they want to see — Israeli or Palestinian. Bimkom is another Israeli NGO which uses maps to “If you do the Israeli-controlled roads, it’s Israel-plus-set- fight the wall. Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, its director, said that tler roads in the West Bank,” Amihai said. “And that’s highly www.jewishpeacefellowship.org May 2014 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 5 exclusive. It’s amazing. It’s director of community assess- making it one entity.” ment and mapping. Th e Israeli government Th e Grassroots al-Quds also uses maps as a legal tool Network provides Palestin- to deprive Palestinians of land ians living in East Jerusalem and rights. Th e process was with tools to create maps of explained to me by Cohen-Lif- their communities, which are shitz, whose work at Bimkom oft en left off tourist maps of focuses on the way Israeli plan- the area. Th ey use a tool called ning authorities arrange to Open Street Maps to create take ever-increasing amounts physical representations of of Palestinian land. Th e gov- East Jerusalem which refl ect ernment’s work, of course, be- the Palestinian presence in gins with a map. the city. Community mem- “What they’re doing is tak- A Wall Runs Th rough It: Palestinians hammer at the secu- bers can also tag maps with ing an aerial photo, in some cas- rity barrier. certain sites, such as buildings es it’s not even updated,” he said. that have received demolition “And they mark an area around the built-up area. Mark a line, orders from the Israeli government, in order to mobilize a blue line, around the built-up area, and say, ‘Th is is the plan. community resistance eff orts. Th is is the area for development.’” With a hand-drawn map on Moller showed me a tourist map that displays the tram an aerial photo, Israeli authorities determine where Palestinians that runs through East Jerusalem and uses Hebraicized can and cannot build. names of Palestinian areas — places that have Arabic names dating back centuries. “What you see in maps for Jerusalem Wiped Off the Map? Maps like those produced by the is the Palestinian presence wiped off the map,” she said. She Grassroots al-Quds Network can help people win back their pointed out an entire section of Palestinian East Jerusalem identity. “Our primary goal is to work with the community, portrayed as a simple blob, devoid of roads, houses, or life. to help them build their message to deliver to the interna- “It’s my goal to get the people who live in that blob to put tional community,” said Elaine Moller, the organization’s themselves on the map,” she said. Y

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6 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter May 2014 Jewish Peace Fellowship A Tale of the National-Security State

Murray Polner

Scaring Americans

uring and after World War I, and especially the war.” Betty Medsger’s striking and well-paced investigative after the notorious Palmer raids, the government reportage in The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s and a legion of vigilantes went hunting for “sub- Secret FBI (Alfred A. Knopf), sympathetically describes the Dversive” left-wing- burglars, and un- ers. Phones were kindly, to say the tapped and postal least, portrays J. Ed- workers opened gar Hoover and his mail, which led an relentless pursuit of old-fashioned tra- political opponents ditionalist named he feared and de- Henry L. Stimson, spised. Herbert Hoover’s Ironically, on Secretary of State, March 8, 1971, the to close down day of the epic and the government’s widely-viewed cryptological sec- Muhammad Ali- tion in 1929 with Joe Frazier heavy- a quaint warning weight champion- that “gentlemen do ship bout, eight not read each oth- otherwise com- er’s mail.” monplace people, How charming, led by Davidon, how innocent, how forced open the calming. door of a subur- President Richard Nixon (second from left) conferring with (from left to right) In late 1970, ban Philadelphia Attorney-General John Mitchell, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Assistant to the however, William President for Domestic Affairs John D. Ehrlichman, May 26, 1971. FBI office in Me- Davidon, “a mild- dia, Pennsylvania, mannered physics professor at Haverford College,” writes Betty using a homemade crowbar. Once inside, they snatched about a Medsger, decided to issue a frontal challenge to government thousand confidential files which, when publicized, sent Hoover snoopers and “privately asked a few people this question: ‘What and his supporters into shock. Never before had the unchal- do you think of burglarizing an FBI office?’” (Full disclosure: I lenged FBI been so violated. The burglars’ unprecedented haul interviewed Davidon several times about another case) revealed what Hoover’s FBI had been up to for decades. As Meds- Davidon hated the Vietnam War and a draft that forced ger carefully outlines the raid and its consequences, she reveals reluctant kids into the military, which he believed had helped that Hoover had been running a secret, illegitimate FBI program make the country an imperial, warrior state. Inspired by paci- called Cointelpro, whose purpose was to destroy dissent and dis- fist men-of-action Dan Berrigan and A.J. Muste, he wanted to do senters. The burglars also discovered a long-established “Secu- more than march and picket and lend his name to antiwar ads. rity Index,” aimed at rounding up and detaining “subversives” in To do so, he recruited six like-minded men and two women the event of a “crisis.” who “were looking for more powerful nonviolent ways to protest Once they read and absorbed the documents, their next decision was to alert the national press, which had the means Murray Polner is Shalom’s co-editor. and the voice to spread the news. They mailed the documents www.jewishpeacefellowship.org May 2014 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 7 to Medsger, then a Washington Post reporter, who several weeks espionage, and intelligence, was stunned at his boss’ statement. after the burglary filed the first piece about the stolen files. Cop- “I don’t think we’ll even have a case against them, and they could ies were also sent to the LA Times’s Jack Nelson and to The New have a case against us.” Earlier, at a United Press International York Times’s Tom Wicker. The documents also went to antiwar editors meeting, Sullivan was asked, “Isn’t it true that the Ameri- Senator George McGovern, who loathed Hoover, but denounced can Communist Party is responsible for the racial riots and all the burglary and returned the materials to the FBI. The group the academic violence and upheaval?” “No,” he answered, “it’s then retreated into a forty-three-year silence. absolutely untrue.” NBC’s Carl Stern began filing Freedom of Information re- When Washington Post cartoonist Herblock mocked him, quests for the documents and thereby played a crucial role in in- Hoover ordered a file opened. James Wechsler, a critic and editor troducing Cointelpro to the American people. It was, we learned, of the once liberal New York Post, and Murray Kempton, the bril- a covert and unlawful program designed to penetrate, shame, liant literary journalist who believed Hoover’s anti-Communist and destroy domestic, essentially left-wing, political groups. It crusade was a travesty, earned extensive files. included the now-famous letter threatening to expose Martin Even more unforgivable was the prosecution and persecu- Luther King Jr. for adultery unless he killed himself. tion of four non-political Boston men “framed” by the FBI for a In previous years, the FBI had accomplished much, notably killing they did not commit. “They were convicted and kept in investigating and breaking up Soviet spy networks, as a forthcom- prison for more than three decades — where two of them died — ing book by Mark A. Bradley, A Very Principled Boy: The Life of on the basis of the false testimony of an informer the FBI knew Duncan Lee, Red Spy and Cold Warrior (Basic Books), clearly was lying, and who, worse, actually had been coached by the demonstrates. Hoover, though widely glorified, was possessed by FBI in his lying,” notes Medsger, who points directly at Hoover, a narrow-minded, indeed absurd, obsession that Moscow lurked who, she writes, “was informed of, and approved, each step of the behind critics and nonconformists, an inability to accept the slight- framing of the men.” est disparagement, and a refusal to recognize the growing presence Toward the end of World War II, the British mathematician of organized crime. Such manias tarnished his record further, and and philosopher Bertrand Russell offered his insight into every Medsger tells of FBI agents who, unhappy with his methods, were age’s Torquemadas and the terror and panic they were able to ignored or given the choice to follow orders or leave. spread: “Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted In 1950, Max Lowenthal’s ground-breaking and long out- to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a Great of-print book, The Federal Bureau of Investigation, deeply upset Fear.” Hoover, and his admirers in the press trashed the book in their Hoover, the propagator of fear, may or may not have been reviews. Still, the more the deification of Hoover and the FBI clinically paranoid, but given the absence of any oversight he soared in films and pop culture, so did his dark side. Cointelpro could do just as he pleased to preserve his unparalleled power. portrayed him as petty, cunning, pitiless and indifferent to fair- Medsger dispenses with psychobabble and a full portrait of the ness and justice. For years he directed a chilling vendetta against man, leaving that to his able biographers Athan Theoharis, John dissidents, African-American faculty (Metzger says he hated Stuart Cox, and Curt Gentry. Instead, she concentrates on how blacks), college students, academics, and politicians on whom he and why one man was able to generate so much anxiety among compiled extensive files, especially their sexual peccadilloes, for so many Americans. possible future blackmail and reprisals. Signers of antiwar, anti- For five years the FBI searched unsuccessfully for the Me- draft newspaper ads were placed on file. People who wrote letters dia burglars and produced 33,698 pages about the case. At the to newspapers deemed anti-FBI were noted. The anti-Vietnam same time, many more conventional Americans may have asked War college-age daughter of antiwar Wisconsin Democratic themselves, “Who would go to prison to save dissent?” And who Congressman Henry Reuss was placed under FBI surveillance, would dare resist so powerful a government agency? Obviously, as was a fourteen-year-old boy whose case was dropped when Medsger believes the Media raid and the positive things it pro- a sane agent finally protested that he was only a kid. Hoover duced were well worth the risks involved, since for her it was rarely read a serious book, and loathed intellectuals and writers. really about the indefensible power of unnecessary government William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Thomas secrecy and the resulting corruption of democracy. Mann, Carl Sandburg, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, Hannah William Davidon died in 2013. John Raines, in 1971 a Temple Arendt and Graham Green all merited watching, and files on University professor of religion, and his wife Bonnie, the parents them were assembled. of three young children, were among the burglars. Raines had Medsger includes the FBI’s manufacture of a “crime” falsely been introduced to the Catholic-left peace movement by a nun, meant to indict twenty-eight draft board raiders, which a Cam- Sister Sarah Fahy, whose father was Judge Charles Fahy, of the den, New Jersey judge wisely threw out. Hoover also informed U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC. Looking back, John a House Appropriations Subcommittee, without a shred of evi- Raines rightly told Medsger, “It looks like we were terribly reck- dence, that the Berrigan brothers were leading a new and gi- less people. But there was absolutely no one in Washington — gantic conspiracy in America and planning to “kidnap a highly senators, congressmen, even the president — who dared hold J. placed government official [Henry Kissinger].” William Sullivan, Edgar Hoover accountable. It became pretty obvious to us that if the FBI’s third-ranking agent who supervised criminal activities, we don’t do it, nobody will.” Y

8 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter May 2014 Jewish Peace Fellowship Untamed

Jim Sleeper

A Bridge Remembering Jonathan Schell

lthough I know that he didn’t think of him- self this way, the writer Jonathan Schell, who taught courses at Yale on nonviolence and nuclear arms Athrough 2012, and who died last month of cancer at the age of seventy, in his home in Brooklyn, was a luminous, noble bearer of an American civic-republican tradition that is in- herently cosmopolitan and embracing. He strengthened that two-way bridge between republi- can commitments and cosmopolitan openings, not because bridge-building was his project, but because he himself was that bridge. From his work as a correspondent for The New Yorker dur- ing the Vietnam War; his rigorous manifesto for nuclear disar- mament in The Fate of the Earth; his magisterial rethinking of state power and people’s power in The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People, and his wry, rig- orous assessments of politics for The Nation, Jonathan showed Jonathan Schell, 2007. how varied peoples’ democratic aspirations might lead them to address shared global challenges. they flock to serve the powerful. Yet he also carried an American, WASP cultural sensi- Jonathan taught instead that power flows ultimately not bility — about which he was humorously self-deprecating from the daunting, the dazzling or the wealthy, but from — into the dawn of a transracial, global civil society he was seemingly powerless people who stop obeying and reconfig- helping us to envision and understand. ure their lives together without permission or certification or So doing, he set a strong counterexample, perhaps espe- reward from above. cially for Yalies, of how to challenge established power and He explained why practicing nonviolent but coercive its premises, not by railing against the privileged and their noncooperation is hard but effective. He showed how oth- emulators but by showing them to live up to something bet- ers have done it and how they’ve borne the inevitable costs ter and to help make it happen. of doing so. When he and I worked at Newsday in the early Perhaps because he was always respectful, even diffident, 1990s, and a writer we knew there was fretting about not get- towards everyone he met, he immediately saw through the ting a book award he’d been assured was coming, Jonathan kinds of power that subtly encourage and train you to believe said impishly, “Well, most awards are really just a society’s that naked emperors have clothes and then compel you to way of petting you on the head and certifying that you’ve rush to supply the missing drapery, as some Yalies do when been tamed.” It’s not recognition by the powerful that counts, in oth- Jim Sleeper is a lecturer in political science at Yale. er words, but courage and skill to reconfigure power itself He has written for The New Republic, The Nation, The New against what’s “recognized.” Jonathan knew that a liberal Yorker, Washington Monthly and many other publications. education nourishes this by interrogating things as they are, This article originally appeared in the Yale Daily News. not by rushing to facilitate them. www.jewishpeacefellowship.org May 2014 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 9 His The Unconquerable World shows, historically and that although “sophisticates” dismiss democratic yearnings philosophically, how unarmed, marginalized people have for candor and equality as impractical, those yearnings are brought down vast empires and national-security states — irrepressible. When impoverished black churchgoers, naïve, from British India and the regimes of segregation in the unarmed and trembling, walked into silent Southern squares American South and South Africa to Soviet Eastern Europe. ringed by armed men, they shamed segregationists by credit- He also shows how would-be tyrants nevertheless keep ing them some dignity and good intentions even while ex- rushing to dominate others “with refreshed ignorance,” only posing their shortcomings. to founder as they grasp for strength and security in the Jonathan understood what brave artistry that requires. He wrong stockpiles and protocols. understood — and he could himself have delivered — the in- Jonathan insisted that a state that floods its streets with vocation that Yale’s chaplain, William Sloane Coffin Jr., gave soldiers and police and scrambles to shut down or censor its at my own commencement in 1969: “Help us to free the op- communications is only displaying its impotence. He noted pressed in such a way that the oppressor, too, is freed.” Y Quote / Unquote

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction

is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?”

Mohandas Gandhi, Non-Violence in Peace and War

The Challenge of Shalom: The Jewish Tradition of Peace and Justice Edited by Murray Polner and Naomi Goodman

Highlights the deep and powerful tradition of Jewish nonviolence. With reverence for life, pas- sion for justice, and empathy for the suffering, Jews historically have practiced a “uniquely powerful system of ethical peacefulness.” The Challenge of Shalom includes sections on the Tradition, the Holocaust, Israel, Reverence for all life and Personal Testimonies. $18.95 per copy, plus $5 shipping.

Jewish Peace Letter

Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship • Box 271 • Nyack, N.Y. 10960 • (845) 358-4601 Honorary President Rabbi Philip J. Bentley • Chair Stefan Merken • Vice President Rabbi Leonard Beerman Editors Murray Polner & Adam Simms • Contributing Editors Lawrence S. Wittner, Patrick Henry, E. James Lieberman

Established in 1941 E-mail: [email protected] • World Wide Web: http://www.jewishpeacefellowship.org Signed articles are the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the JPF.

Illustrations: Cover • Byron E. Schumaker/National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. 2 • Ben Aveling, via Wikimedia Commons. 3 • Wikimedia Commons. 5• Flickr/T. H. McAllister, via Wikimedia Commons. 6 • WNV/Andrew Beale. 7 • Marion S. Trikosko/U.S. News & World Report/Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. 9 • David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons. 10 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter May 2014 Jewish Peace Fellowship