{"id":2807,"date":"2015-07-09T10:04:02","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T15:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/?p=2807"},"modified":"2015-07-10T07:05:12","modified_gmt":"2015-07-10T12:05:12","slug":"maccabees-reform-rabbis-and-the-quest-to-slay-the-bds-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/maccabees-reform-rabbis-and-the-quest-to-slay-the-bds-monster.html","title":{"rendered":"Maccabees, Reform Rabbis and the Quest to Slay the BDS-Monster"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"143.Judas_Maccabeus_Pursues_Timotheus\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As I blogged\u00a0about\u00a0several weeks ago, Sheldon Adelson & Co. have founded a new multi-million dollar effort to slay the BDS-beast<\/a> that is stalking college campuses. The knights that they set loose will be known as the campus Maccabees. (I also pointed out\u00a0what a poor choice of names this is.)<\/p>\n

In this week\u2019s\u00a0Forward Jay Michaelson has a great piece<\/a> about why this effort will fail. He enumerates four reasons, beginning with the fact\u00a0that the Adelson project is an effort built on \u201cethnocentrism and a refusal to admit ambiguity and nuance.\u201d This type of approach does not go down well with the college crowd.<\/p>\n

He concludes with an observation\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0similar to the one that I\u2019ve been making on this blog. The pro-BDS movement is not primarily driven by antisemitism:<\/p>\n

\u2026the Maccabees Strategy that we\u2019ve seen so far is going to backfire because it willfully misdiagnoses why so many people are critical of Israel right now.<\/p>\n

The reason is not because the critics are anti-Semitic, hopelessly liberal or otherwise deluded. It is because many people think it\u2019s wrong for any state to deny 4 million people the right to vote, to determine their own future, and to live free of military occupation. That\u2019s true of China too, but when it\u2019s the Jewish state (and one propped up by American aid), American Jews feel particularly implicated.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Michaelson\u2019s column was published several\u00a0days ago. To his four reasons we might add a fifth after today\u2019s news\u00a0that the Maccabees have announced\u00a0that their commander will be David Brog<\/a>, the executive director of the evangelical Christians United for Israel. That\u2019s the group founded\u00a0by Pastor John\u00a0<\/span>Hagee. You know him. He\u2019s the guy whose reaction to the\u00a0SCOTUS\u00a0same-sex marriage decision was that the\u00a0\u201cSupreme Court has made America the new Sodom and Gomorrah<\/a>.\u201d T<\/span>hose liberal Jewish college students\u00a0are really going to\u00a0love\u00a0his pal\u00a0Brog.<\/p>\n

Sadly, it seems that the entire organized Jewish world is caught up in this BDS hysteria. That includes\u00a0the liberal Reform movement\u2019s rabbinical body.<\/p>\n

Late last month the United Church of Christ (UCC) voted to divest itself of investments<\/a> in seven companies that it believes contribute to the Israeli occupation. I think that some of their choices were silly (I\u2019m a big lover of SodaStream which is about to relocate from the West Bank in any event). I\u2019m also quite unconvinced that the largely symbolic BDS effort will have any real\u00a0economic impact on Israel or the targeted corporations.<\/p>\n

But the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) could not refrain from offering this over-the-top\u00a0response<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2026the UCC has now taken sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has explicitly joined the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a contemptible effort to delegitimize the State of Israel and deny the Jewish people\u2019s right to statehood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The very first paragraph of the UCC statement talks about \u201ca just and fair resolution to the conflict\u201d and the importance of \u201cIsrael\u2019s secure existence.\u201d Disagree with their decision all you want, but to call it \u201ca contemptible effort to delegitimize the State of Israel and deny the Jewish people\u2019s right to statehood\u201d is plainly inaccurate.<\/p>\n

The UCC did reject a second\u00a0proposal that would have labeled\u00a0Israel an \u201capartheid state.\u201d A majority of its General Synod voted in favor of the statement, but it failed to achieve\u00a0a required two-thirds majority. The CCAR noted the simple\u00a0majority vote \u201cwith revulsion\u201d and took \u201ccold comfort\u201d in its failure to meet the two-thirds threshold.<\/p>\n

I, too, disagree that Israel proper is an apartheid state. There is significant discrimination\u00a0against Israeli Palestinians, but not rising to\u00a0the level of apartheid.<\/p>\n

The occupation of the West Bank is another story altogether. Now approaching its fiftieth (!) year, it\u2019s\u00a0certainly creating\u00a0some kind of parallel to apartheid. When you have hundreds of thousands of residents of the same piece of land who are entitled to vote for the leaders who govern\u00a0them\u00a0while at the same time there are millions of disenfranchised residents living right alongside them with no say in the matter, it certainly can\u2019t be called equality. And don\u2019t even get me started on the Israelis-only West Bank bypass roads<\/a>\u00a0and other inequities.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, while Adelson\u2019s Maccabean knights wander America\u2019s\u00a0campuses on their quest to slay\u00a0the BDS-monster, Israelis lie on beaches and sit in coffee houses slowly committing suicide. That image, by the way, comes courtesy of the ominous op-ed column written by the very Zionist Ari Shavit in today\u2019s Haaretz.<\/a> Anyone who really cares about Israel should read it.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I blogged\u00a0about\u00a0several weeks ago, Sheldon Adelson & Co. have founded a new multi-million dollar effort to slay the BDS-beast that is stalking college campuses. The knights that they set loose will be known as the campus Maccabees. (I also pointed out\u00a0what a poor choice of names this is.) In this week\u2019s\u00a0Forward Jay Michaelson has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":2809,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20,21,24],"class_list":["post-2807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-israel","tag-israeli-palestinian-conflict","tag-liberal-judaism"],"yoast_head":"\nMaccabees, Reform Rabbis and the Quest to Slay the BDS-Monster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As I blogged\u00a0about\u00a0several weeks ago, Sheldon Adelson & Co. have founded a new multi-million dollar effort to slay the BDS-beast that is stalking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/maccabees-reform-rabbis-and-the-quest-to-slay-the-bds-monster.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Maccabees, Reform Rabbis and the Quest to Slay the BDS-Monster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As I blogged\u00a0about\u00a0several weeks ago, Sheldon Adelson & Co. have founded a new multi-million dollar effort to slay the BDS-beast that is stalking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2015\/07\/maccabees-reform-rabbis-and-the-quest-to-slay-the-bds-monster.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-07-09T15:04:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-07-10T12:05:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/554\/2015\/07\/143.Judas_Maccabeus_Pursues_Timotheus-1024x812.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"812\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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