Jewish Peace Letter Vol. 44 No. 9 Published by the Jewish Peace Fellowship December 2015 Arik Ascherman 4 A Hilltop Encounter and Stefan Merken 4 After Paris Philip Bentley 4 No to ‘BDS’ Alfred W. McCoy 4 American Hegemons Murray Polner 4 Our Bourbon Foreign Policy ISSN: 0197-9115 From Where I Sit Stefan Merken Aft er Paris, Quoi ? uch of the world was under- to join its murderous ranks. And the more standably shaken by the atrocities ISIS grows, the more it is able to fl ex its well- in Paris. While the French were funded and well-armed (by whom?) muscles Mstill reeling from last January’s killing of against civilians in Lebanon, Turkey, in a Charlie Hebdo’s graphic artists and cartoon- Russian airliner and now in Paris. ists, they now had to deal with even more Some in this country have called for terrorist murders. more US “boots on the ground,” ignoring Aft er 9/11 the Bush administration, sup- our military failures since 2003. Others have ported by overwhelming American pub- called for greatly enhanced surveillance of lic opinion, decided to pursue those they Americans. Th e domestic danger is that claimed were responsible. Soon aft er, US panic rather than reason oft en prevails in na- troops were in Afghanistan and then, in tional security “crises.” American history is 2003, in Iraq, and much of the blame for the replete with such witch hunts: John Adams’s rise of ISIS is due to the chaos created by the Alien and Sedition Acts; Woodrow Wilson’s US invasion. Still, at this writing we have to Espionage Act; the Red Scares of the early wonder if ISIS cynically welcomes the bomb- post-World War I years, and the ugly 1950s ing of its sites in Iraq and Syria as an excuse of Joe McCarthy and his many allies. ISIS for further terrorist attacks and a lure for young and oft en needs to be stopped. But knee jerk reactions by frenzied and disenfranchised Muslim men and women around the world opportunistic politicians and ideologues will not bring that about. And what will stop ISIS is not easy to say at this mo- Stefan Merken is chair of the Jewish Peace Fellowship. ment because there are no easy solutions. Y Yes! Here is my tax-deductible contribution to the Jewish Peace Fellowship! $25 / $36 / $50 / $100 / $250 / $500 / $1000 / Other $ ____ Enclosed is my check, payable to “Jewish Peace Fellowship” Phone: ______________________________________________ (Please provide your name and address below so that we may properly credit your contribution.) E-mail address: _____________________________________________ N _____________________________________ Below, please clearly print the names and addresses, including e-mail, A ___________________________________ of friends you think might be interested in supporting the aims of the Jewish Peace Fellowship. C / S / Z ___________________________ Mail this slip and your contribution to: Jewish Peace Fellowship Y Box 271 Y Nyack, NY 10960-0271 2 • Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter December 2015 Jewish Peace Fellowship A Settlement Upon a Hilltop Arik Ascherman I Owe My Life to My Attacker t sounds strange. How can I say anything positive trees. Security forces arrived where the theft was taking place, about a knife wielding violent and hate-fi lled young man but didn’t answer when a fi re broke out. who has turned the sanctity of the Land of Israel into I went up the hill with the initial thought of putting out Iidolatry? When one looks at the awful video of the attack the fi re. Quickly realizing that this would be too dangerous, fi lmed from afar by Rabbis For Human Rights’ fi eld coordi- I wanted to get a better position to document from afar this nator Zakariah Sadeh on Octo- wanton destruction of fruit ber 23rd, one sees that he could trees, which is forbidden in the have easily murdered me. He Torah. Focused on the fi re and was on top of me, my back was the two Israelis still far above exposed, and the knife was in me, I was surprised by an ad- his hand. One can see him al- ditional Israeli who suddenly most plunge the knife several appeared close by and ran to- times, but he doesn’t. ward me. He began throwing At the moment of truth, rocks that struck me, and then he wasn’t a killer — at least not drew his knife. I tried to keep of a fellow Jew. Perhaps he was my face towards my enraged afraid of the cameras. But he attacker while backing down could have easily smashed the the steep hill. At one point he journalist’s camera, and didn’t ran toward a journalist who know he was also being fi lmed had followed me up. I chased from afar. Perhaps his intent Rabbi Arik Ascherman. aft er him and he turned to me all along was “just” to bloody again, kicking and causing me me up a bit with rocks and kicks in order to scare me and to lose my balance. I had tried up to that point not to engage make sure that I didn’t come back. Maybe, as we read in a re- my attacker in any way, but now I had no choice but to grab cent Torah portion, he heard a voice crying, “Don’t raise your his leg when he kicked. Soon he was on top of me, with his $25 / $36 / $50 / $100 / $250 / $500 / $1000 / Other $ ____ hand against…”(Genesis 22:12). I would like to think that he knife hand free. had a moment of teshuvah, a moment in which he heard and I would like to think that this moment in which my heeded God’s call to turn from his intended course of action attacker was an instant away from becoming a murderer and return to his higher self. caused him to ask himself how he came to be on a hilltop in the Occupied Territories, so angry that the Israeli army had The problems started aft er the end of a Palestinian harvest protected Palestinian farmers harvesting their olives that he day underneath the outposts of the Itamar settlement. Since was driven to lash out. I would like to think that he has spo- RHR, the Association For Civil Rights in Israel, and fi ve Pales- ken with his fellow “hilltop youth,” explaining why he has tinian local councils won a 2006 Israeli High Court victory, Is- had a change of heart, and that his teshuvah will have ripple rael’s security forces must ensure that Palestinian farmers can eff ects reaching the communities that mentor and encourage safely access their agricultural lands all year round. Aft er the them, those who look the other way or “understand” them, farmers left the area, Israelis began stealing olives and burning and all those who have turned our shared belief in the sa- credness of the Land of Israel into idolatry by raising it above Rabbi Arik Ascherman is co-founder and director of all other values. special projects for Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights. If my attacker did ask himself what brought him to that www.jewishpeacefellowship.org December 2015 Shalom: Jewish Peace Letter • 3 October 26, 2015: A masked, knife-wielding Israeli settler attacks RCR Rabbi Arik Ascherman near the Itamar settlement in the Occupied Territories. moment, what was his answer? Was it hatred of non-Jews? others what was done to us (Exodus 23:9). We have moved An enjoyment of the exercise of power and control? Fear? from using our power to guarantee our survival and well be- Rage because of Palestinian terror? A desire for “action?” A ing to exploiting our power to take from others that which sense of Jewish privilege? Did he recall that the traditional we desire. The Midrash teaches us not to delude ourselves: Yom Kippur confession of the sin of tzarut ayin, our resent- The hand that strikes the non-Jew will eventually strike the fulness toward the good fortune of others? The Talmudic Jew as well. Thus, the violence unleashed against me is the sages decry those who wish to prevent others from benefit- inevitable outcome of civilian and state violence directed at ting even if they themselves will suffer no loss zeh( neheneh Palestinians on an almost daily basis. Our sages’ observation v’zeh lo khaser). The only loss I can imagine is the loss of the in Pirket Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) that “The sword dream of driving non-Jews out of the biblical Land of Israel comes into the world because of justice denied and justice by dispossessing them and denying them the ability to sup- delayed” is not a justification of the sword; rather it is a cau- port themselves with their olive trees. tion that our unjust actions bring the sword upon us. It would be easy to pin all of the blame on hilltop youth I believe there is an additional element. We founded the and the settler communities that created them. (Only a small state of Israel correctly vowing “never again.” We must al- percentage of settlers behave this way.) Many of the hilltop ways have the power to ensure that Jews may never again be youth look at their parents who founded the settlements as helplessly slaughtered and persecuted as we had been for two weak compromisers. But the settlement community and their thousand years because we had been stateless and homeless. pockets of support within the wider Israeli population are the There are still those who would “throw us into the sea” if they hothouse that has cultivated the golem sh’kamal yotzro, the could, and we do not yet live in a messianic age in which the Frankenstein’s monster that has turned on its creator.