Israel: Opinion: Working for peace is considered subversive?

Haaretz

Opinion

Supporting settlement freeze has been labeled 'subversive'
Enlisting Jewish communities against the peace process is within the framework of the "conventions" in relations between the communities and Israeli governments, and a praiseworthy act.
By Akiva Eldar

This week marked 16 years since the time when 93 American Senators wrote to President Bill Clinton, calling on him to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem. A few weeks later, the prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who had gone to Washington to address the conservative pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC, discovered that his hosts had prepared a surprise for him. The Jewish activists had collaborated with their colleagues in Likud to turn this call into legislation in Congress. Rabin's face turned red with anger. He said later, in a private conversation, that it was clear to all that the president would use his authority to delay the implementation of the legislation, and he had no doubt that the initiators wished to drive a wedge between the government and the Palestinian Authority.

The following day, when he addressed the convention, Rabin spoke highly of them. After all, how can an Israeli prime minister condemn people who are interested in the welfare of a united Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel? As we all know, the U.S. Embassy is still located on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv.

Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, who at the time was Israel's ambassador to the United States, can tell how AIPAC, the Zionist Organization of America and Orthodox rabbis tried to undermine the efforts of the Rabin government to enlist economic aid for the PA that was aimed at strengthening its position vis-a-vis Hamas. Rabinovich, who in those days headed the Israeli team that was negotiating with Syria, was forced to deal with the campaign of incitement being carried out in Congress by those organizations against the proposal to position American forces on the Golan Heights as part of a peace agreement between Israel and Syria.

I was reminded of these events when I read the news item saying that MK Otniel Schneller had initiated a debate this week in the Knesset's Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, about the "breaking of conventions of behavior between Jewish communities in the world and the governments of Israel by the Jewish-American organization J Street." The anger of this resident of Ma'aleh Mikhmash in the heart of the West Bank, a former secretary general of the Yesha settlers' council, was directed at the organization in the wake of its call on U.S. President Barack Obama not to impose a veto during the vote in the United Nations against expanding settlements.

Schneller, a member of the right wing who decided to settle in the Kadima party, condemned his colleagues from the faction who participated in J Street's annual conference in Washington and described this as "an act of subversion against the state [of Israel]."

From now on, one must say that enlisting Jewish communities against the peace process is within the framework of the "conventions" in relations between the communities and Israeli governments, and a praiseworthy act. On the other hand, support for freezing the settlements in order to further the negotiations means "breaking conventions" as well as "a subversive act against the state."

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/supporting-settlement-freeze-has-been-labeled-subversive-1.351695