I agree, robo. Ad Hominem. That's the only argument you have presented so far against any of the sources I have provided.

As to what I offer, I offer this...


Comments on "the soul of American Jewry"

An excerpt from an op-ed article by
Georgetown Law Professor Norman Birnbaum
published in the Los Angeles Times...1999

    "We claim full rights in this country by virtue of universal criteria of citizenship. For most American Jews, life here is marvelous, free of the savage persecutions of the European past and of the subtler but still painful discrimination earlier generations encountered in America. Our Israel, in other words, is here.

    That ties of solidarity and sympathy connect us to the people of Israel is clear. There is, however, a flagrant contradiction between our enjoyment of citizenship in a multi-ethnic, multireligious and multiracial democracy and the notion that solidarity with Israel requires that we accept any policy it might choose to follow toward the Arabs it rules. The matter is made worse when Jews who think differently are branded as self hating,and Gentiles who disagree are told that they are anti Semitic. Fortunately for Israel, its population debates this matter strenuously. The recent election demonstrates that an Israeli majority wishes to make a new beginning in relations with the Arabs.

    That has been lost, apparently, upon some of Israel's supporters here. The phrase about Israel living in a "bad neighborhood" speaks volumes. It applies American notions of class and racial conflict to a totally different historical situation, and reveals the ignorance of those who employ it. Egypt and Jordan are not bad neighbors to Israel; they are very good ones.

    The phrase is revealing in another way. It bespeaks a view of life as a jungle in which survival demands a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye--and the permanent oppression of the Arabs in their own homeland.

    A good many Israelis see that if conflict with the Arabs continues, they are in danger of becoming like the Germans from 1933 to 1945--accomplices if not perpetrators of permanent oppression. American Jews can pay tribute to our tradition--and to our own experience of America--by backing them. We should also reach out to fellow Americans who are Arabs and whose rights to full citizenship are as great as ours.

    The most profound threat to American Jewry comes from the unreflective belief that humans are subject, in the last analysis, only to the law of the jungle. Nothing, in that case, can protect us--here or anywhere else."