Now, criticism of Israel, as of anything else, is all a matter of context, and if the context, from a Jewish point of view, is acceptable—if, that is, the identification with Israel is clear in it—then the criticism itself, whether or not one agrees with it, is certainly permissible. The question really is then: when is “identification” clearly present and when isn’t it? Ira Youdovin, for example, wants to know what’s wrong with Rabbis for Human Rights, “an Israeli-based pluralistic organization that . . . advocates a two-state solution, even as it accuses Israel of violating human rights.” Dan Fleshler argues on behalf of Jewish activists who are “ideal candidates for addressing the [anti-Israel] claims of the far Left [because they] aren’t afraid to say publicly that the occupation is morally repugnant.”

This is curious language for someone who “identifies” with Israel. “Morally problematic?” I’d have no difficulty with that. “Morally injurious?” I’d sign to that, too. But “repugnant?” It’s obviously not the Palestinians who are being labelled “repugnant” here, but the Israelis—the same Israelis who (whether or not you think they should be) are living, at considerable danger to themselves, as settlers in the historic heartland of the Hebrew Bible and whose presence there alone can enable Israel to redraw the perilous 1967 borders to its advantage. How identified with Jewish history or Israel can you be if you find such people, or the army that is protecting them and preventing daily acts of terror aimed at Israel proper, nothing but “repugnant?” How “identified” are you if you see in all this only a “violation of [Palestinian] human rights” and not, at the same time, an upholding of Jewish rights? ~Hillel Halkin

Of course, Mr. Fleshler doesn’t say that Jewish history, Israel, Israeli settlers or the Israeli army are morally repugnant, and presumably doesn’t believe that they are any such thing, but he did say that the policy of occupation that the Israeli government continues is “morally repugnant.”  Mr. Halkin regards this as excessive.  A certain degree of criticism is okay, but real, fundamental criticism is not tolerable.  This is comparable to the “centrist” hawk line that it is legitimate to criticise the administration on how it has managed the Iraq war, but not on the fundamental necessity and justice of the war.  You can be a respected dissenter, provided that it is of the McLieberman variety in which you find fault with the administration for moving too slowly and using too little force and not increasing troop levels sooner.  To do otherwise, at least as far as much of the American right is concerned, is to have entered the land of the moonbats and crazies, though this is still better than being cast out among the outright traitors and “unpatriotic” (translation from jingo: sane) conservatives. 

This is a fine example of the tendency among pro-Israel activists of all stripes to say, “Why, yes, we welcome criticism, provided that it is not fundamental or very deep criticism that strikes at the heart of one of our preferred policies.  By all means, express concern about some of the methods employed, but don’t question the inalienable right to illegally occupy someone else’s land and repress the current inhabitants.”  You, the dissenter, can disagree about how to reach the same goal that these activists have, and you can find fault with certain individuals for their failures to execute the necessary plans properly (no one excels in Olmert-bashing more than the ardent hard-liners), but you cannot question the goal, much less issue moral condemnation of a fundamental state policy–at least not without forfeiting your claim to have any real identification with Israel and implicating yourself, in the eyes of the ideological guardians, as an unwitting (or perhaps not so unwitting?) abettor of the enemies of Israel. 

I am not Jewish, but this strikes me that this is a supremely lousy tactic to employ against other Jewish people who insist that they are pro-Israel and who refuse to define being “pro-Israel” as reflexive support for whatever the Israeli government is doing.  It seems to me that, if Israel were the weak, endangered state that its defenders routinely make it out to be, its defenders would want to have as many allies as they could possibly find and would not impose maximalist demands of ideological purity on those who actually try to fend off Israel’s harshest critics.  Halkin’s test is similar to the standards used by watchdogs here in America on the lookout for “anti-Americanism.”  Expressing opposition to government policy or contempt for figures in government somehow translates into being “anti-American,” when there is every reason to think that the policy and government officials in question are opposed to everything good about our country and violate many of the moral ideals that we aspire to as a people.  We often hear the old refrain that we are undermining the government or enabling the enemy, but what we are actually doing most of the time is challenging bad policy that certain ideologues and chauvinists would have us believe is some kind of embodiment of the nation’s highest purpose.