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Outspoken rabbi feels the heat
Jewish backlash over stance on
Palestinians
Chip Johnson
Monday, February 25, 2002
Berkeley -- For more than 30 years, Berkeley Rabbi Michael
Lerner has been a thorn in the side of conservative Jews, but the
backlash has never been so furious.
Whether he is calling for the immediate withdrawal of Israeli
settlers and soldiers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip or
promoting his own humanitarian- based political formulas, some
hard-line Jews describe him as one of the most self-loathing Jews
on the planet.
Now, his critics have launched a campaign to kill off Tikkun, the
magazine Lerner co-founded 15 years ago as an organ for liberal
intellectuals, Jewish and otherwise. Lerner calls Tikkun the
nation's only multi-issue Jewish magazine.
The contributing writers of the San Francisco magazine include
some of the nation's most progressive thinkers, including feminist
Susan Faludi, Noam Chomsky and Harvard Professor Cornel
West.
But 17 months of renewed fighting in the Middle East against the
backdrop of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on America has given
conservative Jews a lever to try to pry people away from
supporting the magazine, Lerner said.
'We've lost some of our financial support, about one-quarter, but
we've said all along that the best way to security (in Israel) is
open-hearted and generous reconciliation with the Palestinian
people,' Lerner said.
Lerner is fighting a battle fought by every member of an ethnic
group at one time or another. It is the unrelenting peer pressure to
succumb to group- think or face being labeled a traitor.
Thinking 'outside the box' is now a trendy term for independent
thinking in the business world, but it's still widely discouraged in
many of the nation's ethnic communities.
There is a huge difference in supporting your community and
being controlled by it.
In recent months, Lerner has received threatening e-mails, many
from pro- Israeli Web sites that describe him as a traitor.
And while that is not uncommon for Lerner, a 1960s radical once
indicted as a member of the 'Seattle Seven' for inciting a riot at in
a Seattle courtroom, the strident anger and the campaign to
intimidate and silence the leftist writer-activist has escalated.
His home address was published on www.masada2000.org, a
vehemently pro- Israeli Web site. It included directions to his
home and encouraged motivated readers to 'pay him a visit.'
'For the first time in my life I've had to put up a burglar alarm in
my home -- for potential assassins,' he said.
The directions and address were recently removed from the site,
but Lerner is not taking it lightly.
Last month in New York, Lerner and about 700 supporters, a
cross-cultural mix of Jews, Arabs and others, formed the Tikkun
community to stand up against the withering campaign against the
magazine.
In addition to the new organization -- which espouses a universal
humanitarian political philosophy -- Tikkun has launched an
Earth-bound advertising campaign aimed at restoring its image,
good name -- and its funding.
Harvard's West, one of the nation's most celebrated liberal
intellectuals, pitched the magazine to liberals of all hues.
'I want to ask your assistance in keeping alive one of the most
significant visionary voices for social justice and social healing in
the world today -- Tikkun Magazine,' West wrote.
Supporters have also drawn up advertisements that they hope to
place in some of the nation's largest newspapers to fend off the
heavy criticism coming from the conservative Jewish community.
But political correctness can be a double-edged sword in the
magazine's quest for survival, Lerner explained.
'One of the things we're up against is this: Most Christians,
especially morally sensitive non-Jews, look at the news and see
there is something wrong, but feel it is inappropriate, because of
the Holocaust, to criticize them,' he said.
'There is a PC view toward Jews, but real friends would stand up
and criticize Israel when it does something self-destructive,' he
said.
Lerner's refusal to toe the company line is infuriating enough, but
his insistence on recognizing that pain is being inflicted on both
sides of the battle is considered treasonous in the eyes of his
critics.
He makes no distinction between Israeli civilians who live in fear
of the next wave of terrorist bombings or their Palestinian
counterparts, who hunker down in preparation for the inevitable --
and ferocious -- response from Israeli defense forces.
He also condemns the U.S. government and the media for
allowing a double- standard that portrays Palestinians as the
initiators of violence and Israelis as the victims.
He calls on Jews everywhere to 'allow themselves to hear the cries
of pain of the Palestinian people.'
It's a position that Lerner knows well, given the attacks aimed at
him in recent months.
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