Save Israel From Its Rightwing Destroyers

The far right really is intimidated by J Street.

Check out this limp hit by Lenny Ben David, the West Bank settler who has been tasked with smearing J Street by investigating its donors. Lenny, who was sent packing by AIPAC after 25 years, now sits in his settlement working to bring down the organization (J Street) that hugely irritates the people who let him go. Weird.

But Lenny is like an old Stasi wannabe. At AIPAC, he used to set up spy ops against liberals, doves, and anyone who had the temerity to criticize the settlement enterprise. Then he would compile files against the troublemakers and try to make their lives miserable.

But Lenny left America a long time ago. And his tactics don't work anymore, not on the Israel issue anyway. Most Americans' response to be called out for a lack of loyalty to Israel don't take offense. We don't live there.

But the rightwing nuts think we can be shamed into confession like in the Salem witch trials. "Enough already. We love the settlements. We too are Israel firsters."

In the piece I link to, Lenny does his usual guilt-by-association number. And, like his role models at Fox News, Lenny views the worst associate of all to be Holocaust survivor, financial genius and philanthropist George Soros.

Rightwing Jews and others use Soros the way the Nazis used...the Jews. He is their all-purpose bogey man. Types like Lenny despise Soros because Soros is a racial liberal, supported Obama and does not support right-wing Jewish causes.

To Lenny and his ilk, Soros is a cosmopolitan Jew, someone who refuses to limit his concerns to any one group. No, through his Open Society and a host of other programs, Soros has improved the lives of tens of millions. But the Lennies are furious that he doesn't support the Likud platform or any form of ethnic chauvinism. The Jewish right, like anti-semites, insist that Jews are united by ties of blood and that, wherever we live, our loyalties are to each other. Not true by a long shot and Soros, for sure, doesn't buy it.

Soros is a great man and a great Jew. But no blood nationalist.

Lenny also tries to hit J Street by citing its support for the Saudi peace plan, also known as the Arab Peace Initiative.

The Arab Initiative offers Israel full peace and normalization with the entire Arab world in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the '67 territories. It is not automatic. The initiative incorporates a host of agreements and resolutions which are already out there. Israelis and Arabs would negotiate the final terms of an agreement.

Both the United States and the Israeli government have praised the Saudi initiative although neither has acted on their endorsement.

But the settlers are terrified of the Saudi plan because, if it is implemented, their colonies will disappear.

And that is why Lenny is penning screeds. He's scared.

And he knows that J Street's efforts can help achieve the negotiations the Arab Initiative proposes. And that may force him out of the West Bank and back to Israel. And he's scared so that so few Jewish Americans share his world view. If they did, they'd emigrate like he did.

So, sitting on his settlement, Lenny goes to work. One last point. As you'll see from his column, Lenny despises Arabs of any kind, including Arab-Americans. That is why he likes to find connections between Jewish liberals and the oh-so-terrifying two-state-supporting Democratic activist and Christian Arab-American, James Zogby.

In Lenny's world, taking a dime from an Arab, Muslim or Christian, American or non-American, is a crime. It's like the anti-Semites with the Jews. (Lenny could just as easily attack J Street for taking money from HOLLYWOOD or MANHATTAN).

I'll stop here. Lenny is not worth the trouble. His significance is that he typifies a certain type of personality that is not ineffective in thwarting efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace. Left unchallenged, the Lennies will prevent an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, will engulf America in an Iran-Israel war, and, in general, endanger both America and Israel's chance to survive.

The ugly fact is that rightwingers in Israel are doing far more damage to Israel's chances to survive than irrelevant leftwing Israel haters outside like Norman Finkelstein. Save Israel from the Israeli right which loves the land but hates the state. Israel is too important to be lost, even if those who would bring about its extinction happen to live there (or, actually, in the West Bank).

Lenny is nothing. But a million Lennies is a big threat. Of course, the rest of us constitute many millions more. Don't get mad, organize.