editorials
Skirmishes Over Israel’s Legitimacy
L ast week, a skirmish in the battle
to promote Palestinian rights by
delegitimizing the state of Israel broke
out at the Sierra Club. The venerable
environmental organization that is
committed to defending the world’s
most precious resources suddenly
found itself uncomfortably embroiled
in the debate over the legitimacy of
the Jewish state.

For the past decade, Sierra Club
has touted Israel’s biodiversity, des-
ert environments and avian life and
sponsored numerous trips there.

One such trip was scheduled for this
month. Then it wasn’t. Sierra Club
explained that the cancellation was
because such trips are “providing
legitimacy to the Israeli state, which
is engaged in apartheid against the
Palestinian people.” Reaction was
quick, and was overwhelmingly neg-
ative. Within days, Sierra Club with-
drew the cancellation and promised
Israeli trips in the future.

The underlying challenge to the
trips was brought by one of Sierra
Club’s members who was supported
by a host of pro-Palestinian and
anti-Zionist groups. In response to
the cancellation announcement, sev-
eral patrons of Sierra Club and major
Jewish organizations objected to the
decision and questioned why Sierra
Club allowed itself to be dragged
into a political issue that has no con-
nection to the organization’s mission.

Sierra Club now confirms that it is
those whose sole objective is the
delegitimization of Israel.

But the naiveté of Sierra Club pales
in comparison to the breathtaking
chutzpah of the U.S. director of
Amnesty International, Paul O’Brien,
who told the Women’s National
Democratic Club in Washington that
Amnesty International is “opposed to
the idea … that Israel should be pre-
served as a state for the Jewish peo-
ple.” In response to the uproar over
the offensiveness of those remarks,
O’Brien claimed that what he said
didn’t express what he wanted to
say. We find that hard to believe
since O’Brien continues to assert
that he doesn’t trust the polls saying
that American Jews support Israel.

Instead, O’Brien, who is not Jewish,
has the temerity to declare: “My gut
tells me that what Jewish people
in this country want is to know that
there’s a sanctuary that is a safe and
sustainable place that the Jews, the
Jewish people can call home.” And
he posits that “[American Jews] can
be convinced over time that the key
to sustainability is to adhere to what
I see as core Jewish values, which
are to be principled and fair and
just in creating that space.” O’Brien’s
objective is a one-state arrangement
where neither Jews nor Palestinians
have the right to self-determination.

O’Brien’s ignorance is breathtak-
ing. And we reject his gut-driven
declaration that Israel “shouldn’t
exist as a Jewish state.” Amnesty
International’s continued support
of O’Brien confirms that the human
rights organization has lost its way
and its credibility. Were we to listen
to our gut, Amnesty International
should cease to exist. JE
weathered what is now a four-year
battle over an ethnic studies cur-
riculum that was initially highly crit-
icized and then revised to address
many of the concerns raised by
the Jewish community and others.

The revised curriculum was unani-
mously adopted last week. Despite
many positive changes, some mem-
bers of the Jewish community are
still concerned about the curriculum
content. For now, California’s model
curriculum is optional, and schools
in the state are not required to offer
it. But pending legislation to make a
high school ethnic studies course a
graduation requirement will almost
certainly reignite the debate on a
multitude of concerns expressed
by the Jewish community and
others. While we see the merit of educating
primary and secondary school stu-
dents on ethnic studies and minority
community issues, we are troubled
by the unrelenting efforts of those
who seek to manipulate the pro-
cess to promote antisemitic content,
delegitimize Israel and challenge the
right of Jews to self-determination.

Antisemitism and the security of our
community are a continuing concern.

In addition to disquieting high-profile
incidents we see rising antisemitism
in more subtle places — like in the
boycott, divestment and sanctions
movement and anti-Israel rhetoric
on college campuses — and we see
it festering in unchecked ethnic stud-
ies curricula proposals.

Good education can be an anti-
dote to hate and discrimination. But
the process takes work and requires
a nuanced sensitivity to significant
issues of concern to each minority
community. We encourage contin-
ued vigilance by our community and
applaud the supportive efforts of
Gottheimer. We invite other mem-
bers of Congress to join the effort. JE
The naiveté of Sierra Club pales in
comparison to the breathtaking
chutzpah of the U.S. director of
Amnesty International, Paul O’Brien.

committed to the enjoyment, explo-
ration and protection of the planet
and that it doesn’t take positions
on foreign policy matters. We hope
that’s true, and that Sierra Club rec-
ognizes the folly of allowing its mis-
sion and credibility to be hijacked by
Antisemitism in the Curriculum
O ver the past several years
concerns have been raised
over antisemitic and anti-Zionist
content being baked into school
curricula. And in this case, it’s not
Palestinian or Arab State education
materials that are being criticized.

Rather, the focus has been upon
otherwise commendable state efforts
to develop ethnic studies model
curricula to teach students about the
histories, experiences, contributions
and struggles of minority groups.

Several groups, including the
Jewish community, have expressed
concern. While some communities
like Sikhs and Armenians protested
their exclusion from some drafts,
the Jewish community was critical
of the presentation of the American
Jewish experience and for including
antisemitic language and anti-Israel
content. Earlier this month, Rep. Josh
Gottheimer (D-N.J.) sent a letter
16 to Secretary of Education Miguel
Cordona to share his concerns
about the issue. Gottheimer’s let-
ter discusses how some school
districts are considering curricula
that claim that “criticism of Israel’s
policies of apartheid and oppres-
sion of Palestinians is not antisem-
itism.” And he notes that such a
claim goes against the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s
definition of antisemitism, which
includes denying the Jewish peo-
ple the right to self-determination,
such as by claiming Israel is a racist
endeavor. Gottheimer called on the
Department of Education to ensure
that schools don’t teach bigoted
curricula and for a “united, biparti-
san and national commitment” to
address antisemitism.

Among those
copied on
Gottheimer’s letter was California
Gov. Gavin Newsom. California’s
state board of education has
MARCH 24, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



opinions
Ukraine, Russia and the Unbearable
Lightness of ‘Never Again’
BY YEHUDA KURTZER
A fter decades of fearing that we would forget
the horrors of our recent past, I am starting to
fear the opposite possibility: that we Jews remember
our history all too well but feel powerless to act on
its lessons.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine invites analo-
gies to our traumatic past. History begs us to learn
from what came before. These analogies to the
past are never perfect. Seeing analogies between
past and present does not mean we think that
anything that happened in the past would be iden-
tical to anything happening in the present.

For comparisons to be useful, however, they
need not be exact. It is enough for us as Jews
to see familiarity in the past and resemblance in
the present. We do this to activate our sense of
responsibility, to ask if we have seen this plot point
before, to fi gure out how we are supposed to act in
the story to change the inevitability of the outcome.

We become diff erent people when we remember,
as the past merges with the present and points to
the choices we might make.

But now: What if we remember well, but cannot
act upon it? Will Jewish memory become a prison
of our powerlessness?
I grew up believing that appeasement was just one
rung above fascist tyranny itself, and at times possi-
bly worse: Appeasers replace responsibility with
naivete and facilitate demonic evil even when they
know better. The narrative of the West juxtaposes
Churchill the hero with Chamberlain the villain; the
philosopher Avishai Margalit uses Chamberlain as
the archetype of the “rotten compromise,” for mak-
ing concessions that make people skeptical of the
morality of compromise altogether. I know that the
sanctions regime imposed against Putin’s Russia
and his oligarchs are the most severe in history, and
still I wonder: What is the threshold of appeasement,
and will we know if we have crossed it?
We still debate FDR’s decision not to bomb the
train tracks leading to Auschwitz. It was a viable
option, and we know this because Jewish leaders
pleaded with American offi cials to consider it, and
they decided against it. None of us has any idea
whether such a bombing operation would have
succeeded, much less whether it would have made
a dent in the Final Solution. But our memory of the
story makes us wonder whether it might have, and
it makes us furiously study the current invasion,
seeking opportunities for a similar intervention.

Our insistence on memory — and the belief
that it will change things — never quite works.

This is because the invocation of memory
can be banal, and because it can pull us apart.

At the same time, we fear that we will only know
what actions we should have taken a long time
from now, and that our children will study such
actions with the same helplessness that plagues
us when we read about FDR’s decisions.

My great-grandparents came to America well
before World War II. But I have read about and
feel chastened by America’s turning away Jewish
refugees during the war. I am in shock watching
the largest and fastest-developing refugee crisis
unfolding before us and seeing our country fail-
ing to participate in a proportionate way — given
our size and economic power — to the absorp-
tion and resettlement eff orts. Why do we have
a museum celebrating American intervention in
wartime, as we do in the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, and why do we have such
a profound educational apparatus focused on
helping Americans understand how to not be a
bystander, if not for moments like this?
It is not hard to imagine the museum that will
one day mark this unfolding atrocity.

Our insistence on memory — and the belief that
it will change things — never quite works. This is
because the invocation of memory can be banal,
and because it can pull us apart. “Never again”
is everywhere now — Meir Kahane’s appeal to
Jewish self-defense became a rallying cry to prevent
genocide, a banner to fi ght immigrant detention, a
slogan for schools and gun control. And whatever
we wanted the legacy of the Shoah to be, we have
in no case been successful. American presidents
mouthed these words seriously even as they failed to
intervene, or intervened too late, to stop genocides
in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, Syria and elsewhere.

If the fear was forgetting, it was unfounded. But
remembering and acting on the memory is some-
thing else entirely. The legacy of our past indicts us
when we can’t carry the former into the latter.

I never expected — even watching the politics
of memory pull apart the legacy of remembering
for opposing political ends — that we would shift
from a fear of forgetting to the fear that comes
with remembering. The past glares at us now, it
revisits us every day in the news cycle, and I am
scared. It is not because we have forgotten it, but
precisely because we remember it, and we do not
know how to heed it. JE
Yehuda Kurtzer is the president of the Shalom
Hartman Institute of North America and host of
the Identity/Crisis podcast.

Letters should be related to articles that have run in the print or
online editions of the JE, and may be edited for space and clarity
prior to publication. Please include your first and last name, as well
your town/neighborhood of residence. Send letters to letters@
jewishexponent.com. JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
17