YOU CAN’T MAKE UNITY WITHOUT THE LOYAL OPPOSITION
(Washington, D.C.): Sunday morning, thousands of
American Jews will converge upon Madison Square Garden in
response to a call to pay a “memorial tribute to the
late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin” and to show
“solidarity with the government and people of Israel
and the pursuit of peace.”
Many of them may do so, however, in the belief that
their presence will help promote unity within their
community and in Israel — healing wounds already
inflamed by the heinous murder of Mr. Rabin. After all,
one of the principal organizers, Malcolm Hoenlein, who is
the executive vice president of the Council of Presidents
of Major American Jewish Organizations, told New York
Jewish Week: “[It is hoped the rally will be a]
unifying effort that will be able to bring Jews of all
walks of life, ideological and political affiliations,
together to demonstrate that what unites us far outweighs
what divides us.”
Unfortunately, such a statement appears
significantly at odds with the true character of
the event — and the purpose it is likely to serve.
It is hard to see how “unity” will be advanced
since “Jews of all walks of life, ideological and
political affiliations” are actually not
invited to the Garden rally. In particular, prominent
Israeli Jews associated with the loyal opposition have
been deliberately excluded from the list of speakers.
representatives of the Israeli government and supporters
of its formula for the “pursuit of
peace” (notably, Prime Minister Shimon Peres, Mr.
Rabin’s widow, Leah, and Israel’s Chief Rabbi, Yisrael
Lau) will be allowed to address the gathering. Even the
head of state, President Ezer Weizman, was barred from
attending since he has been critical of his Labor Party
colleagues’ peace policies.
A Political Rally By Any Other Name
As a result, those attending the rally in the
genuine desire to encourage healing and reconciliation
are at risk of having their presence cynically
misrepresented as evidence that American Jews
overwhelmingly endorse the highly divisive and
increasingly reckless peace policies pursued by the
current Labor-led Israeli government. If this outcome
is being obscured by the organizers’ platitudes
concerning the need to show support for Israel and the
pursuit of peace, one sponsoring group — Americans for
Peace Now — is making no bones about its agenda. In an
“urgent” letter which Peace Now sent on 30
November calling on its supporters to attend the rally,
this far-left wing pacifist group said: “The call
for a rally in support of ‘the people of Israel, the
government of Israel and the pursuit of peace’ was
carefully worked out to allow a broad spectrum of
organizations to participate. We believe that this
formula of support for the Government coupled with the
fact that the main speakers all support the peace process
will give a clear endorsement to Prime Minister Peres and
his policies.” (Emphasis added.)
What is especially troubling is that the Clinton
Administration appears to be party to such partisanship.
At this writing, Vice President Al Gore is also expected
to appear and address what amounts to a thinly disguised
political rally. For the same reasons that it would be
unseemly and ill-advised for the American ambassador to
appear at a Labor rally in Israel, top U.S. government
officials should not be seen at one in this
country. Respect for the democratic process in Israel
should oblige Mr. Gore either to insist that genuine
unity will be reflected on the dais by the inclusion of
the leadership of the Israeli opposition figures — or he
will not appear there himself.
Of course, the organizers of Sunday’s Madison Square
Garden rally claim that by limiting the participants to
Israeli and American government officials, they are
rising above politics. This is hardly the case. As Morton
Klein — the courageous president of the second largest
Jewish group in America, the Zionist Organization of
America — has observed in declining to participate in
this event:
“If in the United States, only Republicans
were invited to speak at a rally for national unity,
it would be clear to everyone that the rally is one
of a political nature. Only if Democratic leaders
were [also] to take part would the rally be viewed as
one of national unity.”
The Bottom Line
The Center for Security Policy has repeatedly urged
the Rabin-Peres government and friends of Israel in this
country to eschew the politically motivated intrigues and
vitriolic personal attacks that have often been employed
in lieu of substantive responses to informed criticism of
the present “peace process.”
recently, this argument was advanced in the
by the Center’s director, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. which was
published last week in the Wall Street Journal Europe.
The Center strongly seconds the view expressed
in a 27 November letter to fellow members of the Council
of Presidents from ZOA’s President Klein and his Chairman
of the Board, Michael Orbach:
“If the only speakers at the rally are those
who represent one point of view on how to pursue
peace, it will send a message of disunity, a partisan
message suggesting that only one side is searching
for peace, when in fact, all sides in Israel and
American Jewry are searching for peace, in different
ways. It would be wrong to send a message implying
that the half of the Israeli public and the many
American Jews who are concerned about this peace
process are not searching for peace when, of course,
they are. For the sake of advancing the cause of
Jewish unity, responsible representatives of both
sides in Israel and American Jewry should be
permitted to address the rally as well.”
If the Madison Square Garden rally winds up serving
as an instrument of partisan divisiveness rather than
genuine healing and reconciliation, it should be
boycotted. To paraphrase Yitzak Rabin’s now famous quote,
Labor must make unity with the loyal opposition — not
exclusively with its own partisans.
(1) At the last moment Ovadia Eli,
who is Number 24 on the Likud list, although he holds the
largely ceremonial position of Deputy Knesset speaker,
was added to the roster. No such invitation was extended,
however, to Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud, or
Benjamin Begin, one of the party’s most respected figures
(who happens to be in New York this weekend).
(2) See, for example, the Center’s
recent Decision Brief entitled A Memo For
Rabin: Will His Legacy Be An Israel At Risk And An
American Pro-Israel Community Too Fractured To Help? (
1995).
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