From the pages of Al Jazeera

For May 28, 2010
From the Old Olivetti
By Josh Stein

There are those Jews, of which I am not one, who see in President Obama a crypto-Muslim or at least a crypto-enemy of Israel driving it to make suicidal concessions, and who feel those Jews who support him are dupes (or maybe dopes). There are other Jews of which I am not one, who are urging the president to force Israel, for its own good, to conciliate its policies towards the Palestinians so that a two-state solution can happen in our time.

Then there’s As’ad AbuKhalil.

He’s an articulate Lebanese-American professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus who describes himself in his blog as an “Angry Arab” (http://angryarab.blogspot.com/). I first ran across him in an Al Jazeera posting (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/05/201051664435120219.html).

The central thesis of AbuKhalil’s piece is that President Obama is a tool of the Zionists and that Arabs have betrayed Palestinians by urging compromise, not war. (This seems to fly in the face of those Jews who see Obama as a tool of the Arabs as well as those who see Palestinians as desirous of peace.) How typical is he? It’s hard to tell but his blog is filled with complimentary posts.

He begins with:

“Every year, Arabs around the world commemorate al-Nakba ... But poems and speeches are now too embarrassing to recite and Arab governments barely seem interested in remembering - so busy are they trying to win Israel's approval for direct or indirect negotiations. While in the past, Arab governments spent money combating Zionist propaganda, last year, the Arab League - with Saudi funding - purchased advertisements in Western newspapers with the aim of convincing Israel that Arab governments are, in fact, eager to make peace and normalize relations.”

I remember those ads and wonder why AbuKhalil thinks they reflect reality, not subterfuge, but it’s his piece. I don’t write for Al Jazeera. As to the Palestinians themselves, AbuKhalil sees evidence of betrayal.

“As far as the Palestinian Authority (PA) is concerned, revolutionaries belong in museums and [traditional Palestinian foods] are celebrated as the only elements of the rich tapestry of Palestinian national identity.”

Palestinian politicians are excoriated as though they were Zionists:
“Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has become the new darling of the West. The Western press has, accordingly, produced an unending supply of laudatory and fawning pieces about the leadership of the man who …did not receive more than two per cent of the support of the Palestinian people in the last legislative elections.”
He sums up with, “The reality is that Arab regimes washed their hands of the Palestinian struggle long ago.”

The alternative to this cowardly behavior? Armed struggle.

“Armed struggle was responsible for bringing the Palestinian cause to the attention of the world….It delivered the Palestinian people from a time when their very status and identity was denied to a time when the UN had to recognize the fruits of Palestinian self-determination. Armed struggle also unified the Palestinian people under one umbrella and generated Arab support; PLO military operations inside Israel often featured Arabs from across the region. It also instilled a sense of pride among Palestinians and put an end to the sense of despair that prevailed in the wake of al-Nakba.”

I believe he’s right. Nobody was paying attention to Palestinians until they started hijacking airplanes in the 1960s, but oddly enough, Yasser Arafat, the man who authorized the hijacking of planes, the leader of the Intifada, was as bad as the rest. He is responsible for the weak Palestinian government in Ramallah “which operates at the discretion of Israel and its Western allies, protecting Israel from legitimate Palestinian armed struggle.” (I’m reminded when I read this of attacks made by some J Streeters who excoriate Elie Wiesel, Abe Foxman and Alan Dershowitz. Nobody, it turns out is a prophet in his own homeland.)

In a televised debate which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 23, 2010 AbuKhalil stated that President Obama “has given free rein to the Zionist lobby to do whatever it likes, both in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy.” Domestic policy, too? I’m a Zionist but I wait in vain to see Republicans proven right—that Obama will bring about a European-style Social Democracy.

As I asked, earlier, is AbuKhalil typical? He’s certainly articulate, if somewhat inconsistent. He cannot be ignored by the proponents of a two state solution.

Jewish Delis Finally in Israel

Tired of reading yet again about narrowly beating back divestment proposals in California Universities, (Berkeley and San Diego) by student government, I turned to the Forward for escapist folderol. Amidst the discussion of the serious and the portentous I found an article that surprised, yet rekindled memories of my Brooklyn youth.

I lived on Avenue M, just off East 27th Street which, when cars were not intruding, was also our stickball and sewer-to-sewer touch football playground. Farther down Avenue M was a shopping district including a couple of bakeries (Ebinger’s and the Elm), a movie theater (also called the Elm), a pizzeria, a Chinese restaurant and an Italian one, a toy store, grocery stores, an appetizer store, and two kosher delis, these latter a veritable foretaste of the world to come. One was the Palace, the other must have had a name, but I can’t recall it. In the delis everyone knew what everyone else had ordered as the waiters would shout to the kitchen, “Two salamis on rye, one tongue, two corn beefs and a side of fries.” The official drinks were Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray or root beer. In the summers, walking home from the elevated subway stop on East 16th Street, from whatever my summer job in the City was (we called Manhattan “The City”) I’d stop at the deli whose name I can’t remember and buy a knish or a hotdog mustard and sour kraut on a roll and eat it on the way home.

Such a street scene was duplicated on Avenues J and U and on Kings Highway so I assumed this was the norm in the Jewish world. You can then imagine my shock when I read in the Forward that a kosher deli in Tel Aviv called Ruben, was the first of its kind in the country! How could that be? Surely there are Ashkenazi Jews in Israel who would have brought the recipes and the skills to make corned beef, pastrami, tongue, knishes etc. from Eastern Europe.

Turns out, according to Gil Shefler who wrote the piece under review, that yes, there are Ashkenazi Jews in Tel Aviv but deli fare was not Eastern European in origin; it was American! Who knew? The idea wasn’t brought over to New York from the old countries; it was invented by immigrants from the old countries. Those who skipped the opportunity of coming to the land where the streets were paved with gold (AKA the Lower East Side) going instead straight to Palestine couldn’t bring what they didn’t have, so yes there are plenty of falafel joints, and humus is not unknown but only recently has the deli arrived.

So the question is how good is Ruben the delicatessen? Shefler (I picture him in my mind as munching on a knish) conducted an unscientific survey:
A recent immigrant from Washington, DC, who grew up on cold cuts from Katz’s Kosher Supermarket in Rockville, Md., gave it a measured seal of approval.
“The atmosphere’s a bit odd: It’s like a chic, scaled-down version of a deli. Where are the sweaty old Jews?” he said. “But for Israel it’s not bad. It’s what you’d expect a satisfactory Tel Aviv take on the food would be. I’ll be back because the meat tastes fine and I love my pastrami.” An immigrant from London, was even less enthusiastic (if you can imagine). While acknowledging that some guys from Long Island liked the place, “For me,” he said, “the sandwich here pales in comparison to the salt beef sandwiches served at Bloom’s in Golders Green, mostly on account of the bread.”

So a mixed reception ranging from “Not so great” to “Poor”—from the mavens who grew up with deli. To compound the negativity, food critic Janna Gur doubts the business plan. “Ruben is a fun place which serves good food, but I find it hard to believe deli foods will gain widespread popularity in Israel—it just doesn’t fit the mentality.” Maybe, but maybe Israelis are not the prime audience. You and I, Jews from America (especially refugees from New York or Chicago or Montreal) who, on a visit to the Holy Land hunger for corned beef on rye with a glezel Dr. Brown’s are, I imagine, the real sought after market.

OK; next week back to serious discussion of the world and its Jews.