[PEN-L:29986] Re: FW: An open letter to Dr. David Hartman

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lorentzen, Robin wrote:

> Louis, I forwarded your PSN posting to Denny Clark, professor of 
> religion at my college, and he indicated that I could forward to you 
> his reply. Please respond directly to him if you like.
>  
> Robin Lorentzen
> Albertson College

It would be better for me to answer him publicly, since my original post 
was directed to progressive email lists on the Internet and I believe 
that others need to be engaged in this life-or-death question.

> I did not see the PBS documentary mentioned in this letter, so I have 
> no idea how well its author is characterizing what David Hartman was 
> presented as saying there.  I am somewhat suspicious, though, of 
> whether Hartman's comments were edited out of context. 

What is the proper context for belittling the American Indian?

>  In my first trip to Israel about 15 years ago, I spent four weeks at 
> the Shalom Hartman Institute (named after the father of David 
> Hartman), of which David is the director.  During those four weeks, I 
> was with Hartman daily -- and I have been with him in Baltimore for a 
> week since then.  Hartman is an Orthodox rabbi, but in a most 
> "unorthodox" way -- and the letter writer certainly is off-target in 
> how Hartman actually approaches things, although I grant the real 
> possibility that the PBS presentation may have given an incorrect 
> impression. 
>  

You can hear for yourself what David Hartman has to say on the Shalom 
Hartman Institute Website. It is even more dreadfully self-righteous 
than anything he said on camera:

"Though I wish Palestinian hatred did not exist, I cannot deny that it 
does. And as long as I am aware that this hatred exists, I must stand 
firm and state that peace, reconciliation and cooperation cannot be 
achieved now. It is tragic but perhaps it is now necessary for us to act 
unilaterally to determine and safeguard the most effective border 
arrangements required for maintaining our security and the safety of our 
population."

http://www.hartmaninstitute.com/davidhartman/teachings/archive/peace.html

> Hartman was the most frequent editorial voice in Jerusalem in support 
> of the pragmatic politics of former Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek, who 
> took immense heat from the religious right for his commitment to 
> treating Palestinians in East Jerusalem fairly and even-handedly, and 
> for frequently putting infrastructure improvements in East Jerusalem 
> ahead of those in Jewish neighborhoods. 

âWe have uttered a lot of nonsense, but have failed to implement 
anything. We have declared, on several occasions, that we would extend 
equal rights to Jews and Arabs in the city - but those were empty words. 
Levi Eshkol and Menachem Begin made commitments to grant equality to the 
Arabs, but neither of them kept his promises and never provided them 
even with a semblance of equality under the law; they were and remain 
second and third class citizensâI did something for Jewish Jerusalem 
during the past 25 years, but in East Jerusalem nothing! What did I do? 
Schools? Nothing. Pavements? Nothing. Cultural centers? None. Yes, we 
did build a sewage system for them and we improved water supply. Do you 
know why? When several cholera cases were declared on the Arab side 
[early 1970s], the Jews panicked at the prospect of the disease reaching 
them, so we set up the sewage and water networks to contain the cholera.â

Former Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek
(Interview with Maâariv, 10 October 1990)

> Hartman was the one who made it possible for the group of American 
> scholars I was with to meet with Palestinian leaders and Palestinian 
> human rights advocates, documenting egregious human rights violations; 
> Hartman was the one who made certain we met with members of the 
> Israeli Knesset in the Knesset building itself, whose unanimous 
> message -- even at that time -- was that an autonomous Palestinian 
> state was an absolute necessity; Hartman was the one who severely 
> criticized Gush Emunim (one of the most rabid organizations promoting 
> Israeli settlements in the West Bank for religious reasons) and 
> criticized the construction of settlements in the West Bank; Hartman 
> was the one who repeatedly criticized the "ghetto mentality" of much 
> of Israeli politics and its tendencies to demonize the Arab world; 
> Hartman was the one who insisted that shalom (peace) can never occur 
> in the absence of justice for the Palestinians.  Hartman's style of 
> Orthodoxy is absolutely nothing like the gross, demeaning stereotypes 
> the letter-writer assumes.

I strongly suspect this might have described Hartman at one point, but 
like many in the Israeli "peace movement," he seems reconciled to the 
hamfisted, apartheid policies of the current regime. There's a very good 
op-ed piece in today's NY Times that describes this downward spiral:

How Israel's Peace Movement Fell Apart
By DAVID NEWMAN

BEER SHEVA, Israel â The peace movements in Israel have been silenced in 
the past year. The onslaught of terrorism and suicide bombings has given 
rise to a discourse of revenge, implemented by the government of Prime 
Minister Ariel Sharon and the country's mighty military force, replacing 
any discourse of reconciliation and peace.

The war against terrorism led by the United States has made nearly all 
forms of retaliatory action undertaken by Israel more acceptable; public 
survey data may show that the majority of Israelis still support a 
two-state solution, including withdrawal from the occupied territories 
and the dismantling of settlements, but until then we are fighting and 
killing each other with bombs and tanks on an almost daily basis.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/30/opinion/30NEWM.html

> I frankly think I understand the comparison Hartman apparently made to 
> American Indians, and it fits rather well with the way he approaches 
> things.  The point, it seems, is that there can be no "turning back 
> the clock."  The Palestinan-Israeli conflict has to deal with the 
> present realities, not with wiping out history.  The solution is NOT 
> going to be one of Jews suddenly vacating all the real estate they 
> occupy, as though they had never been there. 

This is absolutely disgusting. The real issue is not whether Jews have 
to leave the country, but whether they will agree to stop humiliating 
the Palestinian people. The proper framework is not what happened in 
1948 but what is happening all through Israel and the West Bank and Gaza 
today. The Zionists treat Palestinians like dirt. In Shipler's 
documentary, you saw a sign in a window: "Apartment for rent--No Arabs." 
If next week a bunch of Christian Identity fascists backed by the 82nd 
Airborne stormed into the Lakota reservation and started throwing 
Indians off their land in order to build lodges, you'd have a situation 
that begins to approximate apartheid Israel. I know that is painful for 
some American Jews to accept, but those are the facts.

> The solution will be found in trying to find a way forward for 
> Palestinians and Israelis together, not in going backward.  That is 
> NOT a justification of genocide, but the only real way of getting 
> beyond a genocidal mentality.  Manhatten ISN'T going to go back to 
> Native Americans, and Hartman's analogy would seem to work rather well.

In fact Syracuse recently went back to the Seneca because the Seneca had 
a LEGAL TITLE TO THAT LAND. If socialists and progressives cannot accept 
the land claims of indigenous peoples who were forced violently and 
illegally from their land, they'd better stop kidding themselves. Unless 
the Zionists accept the fact that they were INVOLVED IN A CRIMINAL 
COLONIZING PROJECT, they will never know peace. It is interesting that 
the original Zionists knew exactly what they were up to: "[the 
indigenous population was akin to] the rocks of Judea, as obstacles that 
had to be cleared on a difficult path." (Chaim Weizmann, Expulsion Of 
The Palestinians, p. 17)

>   But simply because THAT particular act doesn't occur does not either 
> justify past genocidal activities toward Native Americans nor absolve 
> the United States government and its people from continuing to seek 
> justice in dealing with native peoples.  To imply that David Hartman 
> somehow revels in death of Palestinians is an offensive absurdity that 
> does not at all justly represent his views.  Taking snippets from an 
> edited TV program as an adequate portrayal of a person's views and 
> then extrapolating all sorts of things from that about the person is a 
> questionable procedure at best -- one which reveals far more about the 
> letter writer than Hartman, and which is precisely the kind of 
> self-righteous posturing that impedes moves toward justice and peace 
> more than helps them.

What impedes moves toward justice and peace is Zionism. As long as 
Israel operates on a racially and religously exclusivist ideology, 
violence and the moral degradation of Jews in that part of the world is 
inevitable.

--

Louis Proyect
www.marxmail.org