The Passing of a Giant Bent on Keeping Hope Alive Against Overwhelming Odds

In terms of keeping hope alive, I can think of no one who worked harder for longer to accomplish that than veteran Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, who passed away this week from COVID-19 and other illnesses. Tragically, despite his protean efforts Erekat did not accomplish his dream of creating an independent Palestinian state, living in peace alongside Israel, but on a personal level he role-modeled a standard for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation that will hopefully serve as an inspiration for a future coming together of the two peoples. 

In the short run, I must acknowledge, the loss of Erekat feels like the flickering out of one of the last rays of hope that illuminated the long ago 1990's when in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Israeli-Palestinian peace seemed imminent. I remember on a visit to Jerusalem in the summer of 1999. calling Erekat to see if I could set up an interview with him for an American Jewish newspaper and receiving a gracious invitation from him to come that very day to interview him in his lovely house in in his hometown of Jericho. The interview was upbeat and optimistic--Labor's Ehud Barak had just defeated Netanyahu and hope was again in the air after a three year stretch of Likud rule. Erekat was urbane, charming and totally won me over on a personal level. 

Erekat discussed the political scene on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides in an incisive and, I thought, surprisingly manner, but he told me that he was even more excited about the growth in people-to-people ties between everyday Israelis and Palestinians, introducing me to his then-teenage daughter Dalal, who had taken part in the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine a few years before that and formed close friendships with Israeli teens, which they had maintained after returning to Israel and Palestine. Dalal, who was then about 18 and, if I recall correctly, a university student, invited me to join her and other Palestinian and Israeli Seeds of Peace alums at a meetup the following day at a mall in Mevasseret Tziyon, west of Jerusalem. That proved to be a memorable and inspiring encounter---to see the warm friendship between the young people and to feel that the sense of hope, possibility and warm humanity they evinced was the wave of the future. 

Unfortunately, it was not. The peace process crashed and burned just over a year later after the failure of the Camp David Clinton-Arafat-Barak Summit, Arik Sharon's inflammatory walkabout on the Temple Mount and beginning of the Second Intifada. I won't go into that sad history now, only to mourn the lost opportunity of the late 1990's and to wonder why too few people on both side were ultimately able to live up to the humanism, decency and passionate desire for an end to the conflict evinced that day by Saeb Erekat, Dalal Erekat and her Israelis and Palestinian friends. They had come to know the other side deeply and could not longer hate. They had understood in their bones that the only solution that would work was one that accorded justice, security and peace to both sides. 

I saw Erekat for the last time a year ago at the annual J Street conference in Washington, where he gave a passionate speech denouncing the Trump-Kushner Middle East peace plan (the so-called 'Deal of the Century') as an insult to the Palestinians and utterly unacceptable and still holding out hope that a fair two-state solution could somehow be revived. I'm not sure if he really believed that was possible anymore given the huge number of Israeli settlements that had sliced and diced the West Bank to the point where a contiguous Palestinian state seemed impossible--but he was clear that a one-state solution in the present dynamic was a recipe for apartheid, oppression and escalating violence. I was impressed not only by how affectionately he was received by the J Street crowd, but that he could still come to Jewish audiences in a warm and open-hearted way, even after all of the crushing disappointments he had endured. 

What can I say--it totally sucks the way things have turned out in Israel- Palestine, It’s been a personal tragedy for me--I can only imagine what it felt like to Saeb Erekat. I hope he took consolation in his last months of life that he gave his all to the vision of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel, and helped lay the groundwork for a day when Israelis and Palestinians live side by side in peace, equality and mutual affection--whether in one state or two. We owe it to his memory to keep working to finally bring Erekat’s vision to fruition.

The Two State Solution Is Over and Bibi Killed It

Herzl's Beautiful Dream May Be Over--Where Do We Go From Here?

There is a ‘hiding in plain sight’ corollary to the heartfelt debate in the Jewish community over Peter Beinart’s recent New York Times opinion piece “I No Longer Believe In A Jewish State”. The inconvenient and oft-overlooked truth that Israelis and Jews of varied political persuasions seem unable to wrap their minds around is this: ‘If the vision of an independent  Jewish state, first articulated by Theodor Herzl at the First Zionist Congress in 1897, is being  laid to rest in 2020, it is Bibi, not Beinart, who is snuffing it out.’

In his article, Beinart persuasively points out that massive Jewish settlement of East Jerusalem and the West Bank has deep-sixed any realistic possibility of a two state solution; whether or not Israel moves ahead with annexation of much of the West Bank as advocated by Prime Minister Netanyahu. Given that bleak assessment, shared by majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians, liberal Zionists must now adapt and struggle instead to achieve what most of us hitherto considered to be the lesser of two evils; namely, a one state solution based on equal rights for all its inhabitants, as opposed to an ‘apartheid’ one state solution with the Jewish half of the population repressing the Palestinian half. To sweeten the deal, Beinart floats the vision of a confederation known as Israel-Palestine, in which each of the two component parts enjoy cultural autonomy and a good measure of self-government. Yet he acknowledges that sovereignty would ultimately be shared.   

Predictably, Beinart has been excoriated by self-proclaimed Zionists from hard right to center-left for having renounced the cause of Jewish statehood. Yet, it was not longstanding believers in liberal Zionism who snuffed out the dream, articulated in Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah (The Hope) of a free Jewish state in its ancestral land.  Instead, it was the Israeli right that ensured there would be no sustainable Jewish state by flooding  East Jerusalem and the West Bank with 650,000 Jewish settlers, deliberately mixing them with the Palestinian population so as to make  separation all-but-impossible.

Given that history, it takes enormous chutzpah for Netanyahu and company to wrap themselves in the Star of David and accuse the Jewish center-left of being anti-Zionist. They themselves destroyed the dream of a viable Jewish state and should not be allowed to project that sin onto the rest of us.

I write this essay as someone who devoted nearly 50 years to advocacy for Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation which would allow Israel to survive and flourish as a Jewish state. I was advocating for a two- state solution by the early 1980’s; more than 10 years before Israeli officially accepted that position—at least for a time--by signing the Oslo Accords in 1993. I felt in my gut for most of my life that if Israel were ever, God Forbid, to be destroyed, I would not want to go on living. Therefore I take umbrage at the Israeli right accusing me of being anti-Zionist; usually contemptuously throwing in that extra-sweet appellation ‘self-hating Jew’. Dear reader, I ask who is the real self-hating Jew: the person who devotes his or her life to the fulfillment of the vision of a democratic, Jewish state or someone sets out purposely to destroy it?    

It is admittedly hard for most of us—including myself---to fully absorb the implications of the very real premise that the chief culprit in the demise of Zionism is the Jewish state itself. Yet successive Israeli governments of Israel dating back to the 1970’s deliberately erased the Green Line and flooded the area they renamed ‘Judea and Samaria’ with Jewish settlers. To be sure, Palestinian rejectionism and violence played an important role in convincing many Israelis to oppose surrendering the occupied territories. Yet neither Hamas, the PFLP or Fatah compelled Israel to create even one settlement. We did that to ourselves.

So how to explain why successive Israeli governments seemingly took leave of their senses and sabotaged the existence of an independent and sovereign Jewish state? The answer, I believe, is that adherents of these policies deluded themselves into believing it would be possible to sustain an enlarged Israel with a Jewish majority by inducing large numbers of Palestinians to emigrate, or by forcing them out. Yet that strategy failed to anticipate that deteriorating conditions across the Middle East and drastic limitations on immigration in many western countries would sharply limit the ability of Palestinians to emigrate, even if they desired to do so. In the absence of large scale Palestinian emigration, the only solution the Israeli right has to the demographic dilemma of maintaining a Jewish state in a bi-national space, is to deny citizenship and basic rights to the Palestinians and keep them under perpetual occupation.

That policy is not only immoral and un-Jewish but impossible to sustain over the long term. An occupier cannot successfully absorb a piece of land without providing for the rights and well-being of the people who live there, nor prevent an eventual growing together of constituent communities living side by side within one polity. Increasingly, we see ever-greater cultural and economic integration of so-called Israelis Arabs, and the birth of a palpable new Israeli-Palestinian identity among Arabs and Jews alike. A similar dynamic will take place over time in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, as growing numbers of Israelis and Palestinians build a vibrant network of NGOs and individuals dedicated to improving the quality of life for all, while strengthening inter-communal ties of friendship and trust.

Might the two-state solution be somehow revived? Sadly, it seems decidedly unlikely, given the Israeli government's fixation on settlement and eventual annexation; but miracles do happen and if this one does, no one will be happier than I. In the meantime, it is incumbent for those of us who care about both peoples to focus on nurturing conditions in which Israelis and Palestinians are able to live side by side in equality and peace. Whether it turns out to be one-state, a confederation or two states, we are duty- bound to fight so that it doesn't turn into apartheid.   

Rather than falling into despair and mourning what should have been, let us therefore embrace a different, but equally uplifting dream: working to ensure that all the people of Israel-Palestine share equally—and rejoice together in—our precious Common Land. 

Why I Decided to Write This Blog—to Help Keep Hope Alive in a Time of Peril and Transformation

A few of you reading this may remember my lively blog published from 2006-2008 entitled Ruby Jewsday in which I ruminated on issues I covered in those days as a freelance writer for the New York Jewish Week, New York Daily News, and other media; especially the Russian Jewish community but much more. I summarized it as "Walter Ruby's Riffs On Russian Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, American Politics, the Meaning of Life and Whatever Else Is On My Mind."

You can check out the old blog here: http://rubyjewsday.blogspot.com/

A lot changed in my life around the time I stopped writing Ruby Jewsday. Around that time, I had taken a new position as Muslim-Jewish Program Director at the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding (FFEU) and went on to a subsequent career at FFEU and beyond working to strengthen ties of communication and cooperation between Muslims and Jews across the U.S. and around the world. I am presently preparing to publish a book with co-author Sabeeha Rehman entitled We Refuse To be Enemies: How Muslims and Jews Can Make Peace One Friendship At A Time to be published in April 2021 by Arcade Publishing. And I have re-engaged the situation in Israel-Palestine through my work as coordinator of Project Rozana Greater Washington Chapter. Project Rozana works to save the lives of desperately ill Palestinian children by arranging their transportation to hospitals in Israel, and to strengthen the health care infrastructure inside Palestine with the support of Israeli and international NGO’s. At the moment, we are working at the request of the PA to get desperately needed ventilators to overstretched hospital ICUs in the West Bank and Gaza to combat a spike in COVID-19 cases.

Learn more about it at https://projectrozana.org

I also recently turned 70 and am increasingly coming to grips with the idea that I may turn out not to be immortal after all and might not even fulfill the wonderful Jewish imprecation that each of us should live to be 120. I have a lot to share with the world and a limited amount of time to do it. So, I have decided to start a new blog provisionally entitled Walter Ruby: Keeping Hope Alive. Folks, I realize that Keep Hope Alive—a slogan popularized by civil rights movement icon Jesse Jackson—is an idea that has been around for a while and may not be the sexiest slogan in the world. Yet at this moment of plague and grave peril to our democratic system and the very survival of our planet, Keeping Hope Alive is the essential element in equation that will give each of us the strength to make vitally important contributions to tikkun olam (repairing the world and making it whole). Without hope that we can change the present disastrous trajectory of things, all will truly be lost. Therefore, we must summon all of our strength to believe that if we act now, we can help to ensure a sustainable, and hopefully radiant, future for our children and children’s children.

What do I have to contribute to this transformation and affirmation of hope at this point in my life? I want to share some of the experiences and lessons I have learned—and my co-author Sabeeha has learned-- by taking part in a wonderful movement over the past decade and a half in which thousands of Muslims, Jews and allies have come together to build ties of friendship and trust. I want to affirm the promise of America, a country I have come to love ever more deeply even as it has struggled against powerful forces sowing fear and division—including one presently encamped in the White House. located exactly two miles down 16th Street in Washington D.C. from the small apartment I share with my life partner Tatyana. That elemental promise of America is that all human beings are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It also contains the premise that America is a welcoming nation of openness and diversity, where people of all races, religions, ethnicities, orientations etc. should co-mingle fruitfully, cherishing our differences while embracing our shared Americanness and celebrating our common humanity. And that we should love one another. To cite immortal words recorded by Anne Frank in her diary at an even darker moment than this one:

“In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.”

Like Anne, I too retain the conviction that the vast majority of human beings are good at heart; something I witness every day in the harried but kindly faces of people on the streets of Washington as they struggle to stay afloat and protect themselves and their loved ones from the plague and attendant challenges—including the small children they clutch by hand. I am not sanguine—I see the enormity of the challenge we face as a species--- but I also see the seriousness of purpose of the younger generation to redeem the future, which is powerfully evocative of the millenarian optimism of the 1960’s counter-culture in which I myself took part. I believe that if we step up now as individuals, Americans and human beings, we can overcome fear and bigotry and heal our sacred Earth. Yet to succeed in that existential struggle, we must keep hope alive. As long as I am around, I plan to make a contribution to that effort.