NJ rabbi joins effort to ban groups from parade
Targets deny charges by hawkish coalition that they support BDS
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Rabbi Lisa Malik said, “To include organizations known to be supportive of BDS is a sabotage of Israel at the parade.”
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May 16, 2012
An e-mailed petition circulated by a hawkish pro-Israel coalition — and signed by at least one NJ rabbi — is demanding that a number of left-leaning groups be barred from marching in New York City’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade.
The petition claims that the New Israel Fund and other groups that plan to march in the June 3 parade support or fund groups that support the BDS movement, whose followers call for an economic boycott of Israel.
The organizer of the petition, JCCWatch.org, asserts that “Jewish groups that organize for the economic destruction of other Jews should not be given the honor of marching with our community.”
Sent out April 26 by the “Committee for a Pro-Israel Parade,” the letter singles out NIF and organizations that marched under its banner in last year’s parade — including Rabbis for Human Rights and Partners for Progressive Israel (formerly Meretz USA).
NIF funds a wide range of civil rights, religious pluralism, environmental, and poverty-fighting efforts in Israel.
The petition, however, focuses on NIF’s support of a few Israel-based NGOs that have either signed a letter in support of boycott activity or have urged members not to purchase goods or services manufactured in West Bank settlements.
“Jews who actively work to economically sabotage Israel should not be included in the Celebrate Israel Parade,” writes Richard Allen, founder of JCCWatch, in a note appearing on its website.
NIF has issued a statement saying: “We do not fund any BDS activities against Israel nor fund any organization for which it is a substantial part of their activities, nor will we.”
As for grantees who have signed onto some boycott activities, it adds, “Organizations with strong track records on behalf of civil and human rights in Israel will not be excluded for signing one letter. An organization that provides a list of companies profiting from their business dealings in the occupied territories is illuminating the economic effects of the occupation, and is within our guidelines.”
‘No substance’
Such a response was inadequate for Rabbi Lisa Malik of Temple Beth Ahm in Aberdeen, the only NJ rabbi whose name currently appears on the petition.
“I am against organizations that support BDS,” she said in an interview. “To include organizations known to be supportive of BDS is a sabotage of Israel at the parade. That’s very upsetting to me.”
The letter’s 17 signatories include seven rabbis as well as representatives of such organizations as the National Conference on Jewish Affairs, Z Street, and Americans for a Safe Israel. Allen created JCCWatch in 2011 to protest the participation of the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan in a film festival that included the involvement of left-leaning and Israel-based NGOs that, according to JCCWatch, “support and/or fund other groups that support BDS.”
Such efforts to isolate left-leaning NGOs mirror a debate in Israel, where hawkish legislators and activists have scrutinized the funding and activities of NIF and its grantees. In the United States, right-leaning pro-Israel groups embraced such measures, while centrist groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, expressed concerns that they would curtail free speech and damage Israel’s image as a democracy.
The annual Israel parade, which draws tens of thousands of marchers and spectators to Fifth Avenue, is organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The JCRC is not issuing a formal response to the petition, according to a source close to the parade.
The source disagreed with the assertions of the petition organizers.
“The fundamental problem is the presumption at the outset” made by the Committee for a Pro-Israel Parade, the source said. Its claims, the source said, “are not legitimate at all.” None of the organizations named actually says it supports BDS, the source added.
The source pointed out that some of the organizations singled out are members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and termed the call to ban them from the parade “inappropriate” and “nonsensical.”
“One day a year we need all pro-Israel groups to come together,” said the source. “It’s nuts to try to break up this one day that we’re supposed to be together. We’re being asked to fight a shadow. There is no substance to what is being said.”
Similarly, Ron Skolnik, executive director of Partners for Progressive Israel, told NJJN that his group does not support BDS, although it has issued a call for “a boycott of the products made in West Bank settlements.”
“We are not boycotting Jews as Jews, or even as settlers,” Skolnik said. “We are simply offering a call not to promote further economic entrenchments of settlements” in the West Bank.
To Malik, that is a distinction without a difference.
“These groups’ main objective is to bring down Israel’s economy to get to their viewpoint,” she said. “If you’re funding groups that support BDS, that’s the same as supporting BDS. Partners for Progressive Israel has a list of products to boycott right on their website. New Israel Fund should have its day, but it just strikes me as wrong for them to march in this parade.”
Added Malik: “I know people who live over the Green Line who are living there not because they want to throw the Arabs out but because that’s where they could afford to buy a house. Why should we boycott their businesses?”
Regarding the organizations she would exclude, she said, “To me, they are loving part of Israel, but not all of Israel.” The parade, she said, “is about a celebration of Israel. Groups that are anti-Israel — it’s just upsetting.”
All parade participants are required to sign a “Tone & Spirit Agreement and Release” agreeing that the sole purpose of the parade is to “demonstrate the community’s love for Israel” and that it is “held with pride and with a sense of unity, despite philosophical or political differences within the community-at-large.”
Skolnik pointed out that parade organizers have made it clear that the targeted organizations will be permitted to march.
“To the extent that that decision is not challenged, we don’t expect to offer a formal response,” he said.
Comments
Steve
May 16, 2012
I am a supporter of both the New Israel Fund and Partners for Progressive Israel and am appalled by Rabbi Malik’s and others support of a petition against our participation in the Celebrate Israel Parade. These organizations and other progressive Zionist groups are fighting to uphold the principles of Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which upheld the equality of all its citizens and for peace and social justice.
Lou
May 16, 2012
In many ways the Occupation for Israel is like the slavery period or the segregation period in he US. All three institutions are inherently illegal and immoral. They deny or denied those subjugated by it their most basic human rights AND discourse about them in the societies that support or supported them was normal. Abolitionists were treated as crazy radicals, even in the North. Segregation may not have been a favorite idea by many in the US then but it was normal, and who wants to upset things. Well, the Occupation has run out of time. It is not normal. Those who oppose it are the best friends Israel has. Those who oppose Occupation abolitionists are not much different from those who opposed abolitionists during slavery or the freedom riders during Jim Crow. The attempt to ban peace, human right and anti Occupation groups from the Parade is an attempt to ban dissent and to effectively say the Parade is Pro Occupation and pro oppression only…
Lori Lowenthal Marcus
May 16, 2012
Lou, Thank you so much for laying out your understanding of the “Occupation,” in support of the “right” of those who oppose the “Occupation” to march in the Israel Day Parade. Because you clearly have no historic or legal understanding of the situation, and simply rely on a moral - but entirely fallacious - point, you assist all of us who, like Rabbi Malik, feel confident that it is time for the lies and false narrative to be driven from the debate. Please, we urge you to spend some time learning the facts and then come back and join in. Steve, you are better at using words that seem to have content relevant to the debate, but you fall short in your understanding of the situation. If you really cared about equality, peace and social justice you would be fighting against the Arab Palestinian leadership which oppresses their own people, which practices misogyny and homophobia and which is right now engaged in a fierce censorship crackdown on dissidents within their community and, especially, in their own press. Please - stop pretending to be pro-Arab Palestinian and Pro-Israel. When the curtain is drawn back, you are simply anti-Israel.
Richard Allen
May 17, 2012
Rabbi Malik stands tall defending Israel from those that wish to delegitimize the State of Israel through the evil that is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
One is not defending Democracy when they support the pleasant sounding New Israel Fund. They are funding groups that actively call for sanctions, boycotts and divestment of the only Democracy in the Middle East.
Partners for a Progressive Israel calls for the Boycott of Ahava Cosmetics, SodaStream, B&B Bagels and nine Israeli Vineyards. This is simply unacceptable for a group that wants to be “Pro-Israel”. They fool no one.
Rob
May 18, 2012
Being Orthodox i would never have called a woman a Rabbi.All the women Rabbi’s i have read about to some extent have been pro BDS.However Rabbi Lisa Malik stand would make me proud to call her Rabbi.I think Orthodox people would be more accepting to Female Rabbis if there were more Woman Rabbis like Rabbi Lisa Malik
Ed Frias
May 18, 2012
Lou’s a liar.
Barak and Olmert offered the Palestinians a state, something no Arab or Islamic country ever did.
Israel offered the Palestinians a state, even though there was never in history any state called Palestine governed by Palestinians.
I have 2 words for you. Palestinian Rejectionism.
The Palestinians refused to end the conflict as long as it meant that they would have to accept the legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign, permanent country and neighbor. Only when the Palestinians extremist/rejectionist/supremacist attitude changes will peace really be possible.
Why dont Lou see how the Palestinians glorify terrorists who massacre Israeli civilians, names streets after these terrorists and talk how Israel will be eliminated.
I guess talking about that dont fit Lou’s radical lies.
Lou do a google search of Palmediawatch to see what i’m talking about.
Find me one Palestinian leader who talks about 2 states for 2 people? You cant do it.
The Palestinians want a state free of Jews and to flood Israel with millions of Arabs for the 2nd Pal state.
Even the crazies who run Sudan agreed to a 2 state solution with South Sudan.
Imagine North Sudan telling South Sudan you have to take in millions of Arabs.
South Sudan would have laughed at them.
99% of South Sudanese voted to be free from the Arabs.
ISRAEL which is defending itself against Pan-Arabism, Arab imperialism and Arabization of the Middle East – that is the “problem you dont like.
The real problem is global Arab/Moslem insistence to spread hate, violence, wars, terrorism, lies, false accusations against Jews and reducing Jews to subhumans or second class citizens – slaves or servants – without any human rights.
When you have Palestinian leaders teaching their people, If their are 10 Jews and you kill 6 of them, how many Jews are Left?
When you have these same wicked leaders telling their people that Jews are the sons of Pigs and Apes.
When you have Palestinian Mufti’s teaching in Mosques that all Jews must be exterminated, are we shocked when Palestinians celebrate butchering Jews.
Opposing Arab colonialism and Muslim theocracy, oppression of women and non-Muslims, and supporting the free and democratic state of Israel are progressive positions.
Arabs CANNOT make peace with Israel. Without Israel to blame for all the death, poverty, estruction, misery and oppression across Islam, who will the Islamic people blame?
Wait, they’ll blame the Mossad Shark,
Mossad Vulture, the 4000 Jews who didn’t show up at the World Trade Center, and the new crazy Arab theory that Bugs Bunny doesn’t like Muslims.
If only the Arab could put himself in the 21st century.
Even the 19th century would be an improvement.
Dan Kelso
May 18, 2012
The barrier to Palestinian statehood has never been the Jews or the State of Israel. The Jews offered Arabs a two-state solution in 1919; accepted the two-state solution of the Peel Commission in 1937; accepted the UN two-state solution in 47-48. Israel offered the Palestinians a state in 2000; accepted the Clinton Parameters in 2000-01; and offered a state again at the end of 2008. The Palestinians rejected every offer, becoming the first people in history to reject a state 6 times and then set conditions for discussing another one.
The Palestinians continue to assert they will never recognize a Jewish state. They can’t – it is inconsistent with their identity, and the purpose for which the Palestinian identity was forged. From the Palestinian standpoint, the “peace process” is not about peace, or even about a state, but about reversing history: they seek a state on the 1967 lines to reverse the 1967 war and seek to flood Israel with millions of Arabs to reverse the 1948 war — to return to the time before the wars the Arabs started and lost, and before there was a Jewish state. The real barrier to Palestinian statehood is Palestinian hatred, lies and Rejectionism.
The Arabs in their own words.
http://www.assabeel.net/studies-and-essays/assabeel-essayists/89280-عمر-اليهود-قصير.html
Jewish life short .
Wednesday, 16 May 2012
D. Salah al-Khalidi
On the fifteenth of May, forty-eight Jews declared their state on the land of Palestine, and this year will be their age (distorted) and sixty-four years! This short-lived in the age of individuals, prior to be in the age of nations, peoples and countries?
A Jewish state in Palestine cacophony and bizarre, and the state has any elements of its existence as well as the continuation, not the elements of a historical or cultural or natural and immoral, inhuman or innate, it is such as (Dimple) virosa festering strange that appears in the human body, and collects the material from the shallow end of the various members of the body, accompanied by the use of quick drying treatment, and remove it! The State of the Jews on the land of Palestine (DML) is infested with rotten in the body of humanity in this time and does not have any justification for its survival, despite the lapse of these years it - and will go through more years it - but the years are short, will get rid of it humanity, God willing, at the hands of the Mujahideen coming God willing.
Dan Kelso
May 18, 2012
Article continued.
Ages of Nations is the age of individuals, and if the age of individuals is measured in years, or tens of years at most, the age of nations is measured by centuries, and when it is said: So and so lived (seven) tens of years, it is said: the nation the Romans - for example - she lived fifteen centuries.
Tthough history tells us that the nation (Israel) above the pre-Islamic did not last for centuries on the land of Palestine, that is, they did not live life one individual, although the people good, where ended the state of Israel after the death of Prophet Sulaiman peace be upon him. . And the dispersion of the Jews in the land since that date to the present era, where they had gathered - and they are unbelievers Almlonon wrath on them - and they set up their own state, and the curse of God pursuing the Jews and the focus on them, and cheats this state that now exists.
Though history tells us that any nation invading occupied the other nation will not last occupation her long, has passed (the Tatars) passing through stormy devastating effect on the Muslim world, but just pass or not they remain for a .. When he came Crusaders - before the Tatars - to the Holy Land for permanent residence therein; did not reach the residence to two centuries, where expelled by the Muslim Ummah to wake up the spirit of jihad for the sake of God, and centuries in measuring the age of the United Kalashran years in the lives of individuals!!
We must infer history We live in the Jewish-based challenge, honest witness history, and that we must also look ahead, and not remain prisoners of the Arab reality spaniel, and in fact the Jewish Almentvh transcendent empty!! The profiles and signals that indicate the short life of the Jews in Palestine many, and is growing, but needs to Muslim seer deftly to pay attention to it, and draws the attention of the nation it!!
History will record that the State of the Jews on the land of Palestine, died in her childhood crawling, before standing on the her feet, God willing