Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 36, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 3, 2009 Page: 2 of 32
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2 I September 3,2009
TEXAS JEWISH POST & SINCE 1947
AJCommittee director: Israel is under intellectual assault
David Harris
pessimistic about
peace process
progress
By Dave Sorter
Israel is undergoing an "intellectual
assault" from enemies seeking to dele-
gitimize and perhaps destroy the Jew-
ish state, and the Arab-Israeli peace
process won't move forward until the
Arab nations make a "quantum leap"
to recognize Israel's right to exist.
Those are the opinions of Ameri-
can Jewish Committee Executive Di-
rector David A. Harris, who spoke to
the Texas Jewish Post on Monday dur-
ing a visit to Dallas. He later discussed
the same issues with an audience of
about 200 at a private home at an event
organized by the local AJCommittee
chapter.
Albertsons
It means a great de§f
Harris, who has led the AJCom-
mittee since 1990, said that the "head-
line challenges" that top the organiza-
tion's current agenda are:
*A potentially nuclear Iran, what
it would mean to the world and the
measures needed to prevent Iran from
reaching nuclear status.
The potential for moving the
peace process forward, tied in with the
state of U.S.-Israel relations.
The growing effort to delegiti-
mize Israel and the various manifesta-
tions of anti-Semitism.
That last is "an intellectual assault
from the United Nations, an assault
in intellectual circles and an assault
on university campuses," Harris said.
"It seems to take a page from the anti-
apartheid movement" in South Africa
that resulted in a transformation of
the government in that nation.
Harris referred to a "BDS move-
ment" — boycott, divestment and
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David Harris, American
Jewish Committee ex-
ecutive director
sanctions —
"which aims
to isolate Is-
rael." He also
mentioned
"the three D's
— demoniz-
ing, double-
standards
and delegiti-
mization,"
a phrase
coined by
Natan Sha-
ransky, the former Soviet dissident
and Israeli deputy prime minister.
"If Israel's very right to exi st is chal-
lenged, if the right of the Jewish people
to self-determination — the right to
exercise the right to statehood — is
challenged, it is a unique situation on
the world," Harris said. "There is no
other nation in the world whose right
to exist is challenged. This is very dif-
ficult tor friends of Israel, 61 years after
the state of Israel was created; 62 years
after the UN. stated its support for a
Jewish state."
One example of this assault, Harris
said, was an opinion piece by journal-
ist Donald Bostrom in the Swedish
newspaper Aftonbladet that claimed
the Israeli Defense Forces killed Pales-
tinians to harvest their organs.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl
Bildt, a former prime minister, reject-
ed calls to condemn the column, citing
freedom of the press. He also, Harris
said in a letter to Bildt published on his
Jerusalem Post blog (http://cgis.jpost.
com/blogs/harris/), distanced himself
from statements of condemnation by
Elisabet Borsiin Bonnier, the Swedish
ambassador to Israel.
"When we have the most-read pa-
per in Sweden publishing [a] modern
blood libel, it is an attempt to isolate
Israel. If it were true, then Israel or
any other country that would do that
should be isolated," Harris said on
Monday.
"But it's not true. It's far from true.
To condemn the ambassador and not
the newspaper is reprehensible."
Harris said he does not know if the
intent of this intellectual assault is an-
ti-Semitic, but the effect is. "It's hard to
avoid characterizing it as anti-Semitic,
and it's not a term I use loosely."
H arris, who in the past 30 years has
been instrumental in helping Soviet
Jews emigrate and in rescuing Ethio-
pian Jews, is not optimistic about the
short-term success of the Arab-Israeli
peace process.
"The core of the conflict today
is exactly the same of the core of the
conflict in 1947 [when the subject of
a Jewish state was first seriously dis-
cussed]," he said. "That is, the Arab
world refused to recognize the legiti-
macy of a Jewish state and that Jews
are an indigenous people. They see
Israel as a foreign transplant and... as a
temporary, colonial condition."
What's needed, he said, is the same
"quantum leap" from the Arab world
that Israel made in the 1990s by recog-
nizing Palestinians as part of the Arab
world — and that Egypt and Jordan
see AJCOMMITTEE, p.18
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I
Harris says U.S.-lsraeli
relations have changed in
tone, not substance, under
Obama
By Dave Sorter
U.S.-lsraeli relations have
changed in tone, but not nec-
essarily in substance, in the
seven months since President
Barack Obama took office,
American Jewish Committee
executive director David A.
H arris said on Monday.
"In many areas and in many
ways, U.S.-Israel relations are
still very strong," Harris said.
"The Obama administration
has pursued the [Arab-Israeli j
peace process from the begin-
ning. But also from the begin-
ning, it has aired its differences
with Israel in a different way
than the [George W.] Bush
administration or the [Bill]
Clinton administration.
"Obama has framed these
differences in a much more
categorical way than the previ-
ous administrations," he said,
emphasizing the plural.
He said the level of coop-
eration is high, but areas of
tension remain. But, "both
sides are making efforts, and I
think we're headed in the right
direction," he said.
While many Americans —
Jewish and Christian — were
worried by Obama's outreach
to Muslim countries dur-
ing his June trip to the Arab
world, especially in his June
4 speech in Cairo that served
as the centerpiece of that trip,
Harris said that wasn't his is-
sue with the speech.
"I wasn't concerned about
the outreach to Muslim coun-
tries," he said. "I was con-
cerned about some elements
of the Cairo speech, and I ex-
pressed them to the Senate."
Harris, in a July 22 meeting
with the Senate Democratic
Steering and Outreach Com-
mittee, attended by about 20
Democratic senators and or-
ganized by Majority Leader
Harry Reid (D-Nev.), dis-
cussed three issues. Two of
them concerned topics on
which Harris thought Obama
did not properly understand
the subjects, and the other was
his singling out of Israel.
"First, in his Cairo speech,
the President implied that the
Holocaust was the primary
see HARRIS, p.9
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 63, No. 36, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 3, 2009, newspaper, September 3, 2009; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188256/m1/2/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .