I am prepared to make a 6 figure donation to J Street and/or Peter Beinart. My $100,000 gift comes with a simple condition – they have to speak to Arabs as they do to the Jewish community. Among my objections to these misguided peace-seekers is that they preach almost exclusively to the Jewish community and Western audiences about peace in the Middle East – and are ignoring the need to address Arab communities in their countries, whose participation is of course necessary to achieve the peace that they so clamor for. I was inspired to make this offer after reading Peter Beinart’s ‘Open Zion’ blog introduction that speaks of “official Jewish discourse” but says nothing of “official Arab discourse.”
For the challenge, they must pick three Middle Eastern Arab countries as well as Gaza, and speak in open advertised forums including Mosques and Universities. They must also travel without security as they do in Israel and Jewish communities. Upon completion of this tour I will sign the check, which I am prepared to place in escrow today with attorneys. J Street President Mr. Jeremy Ben Ami and Mr. Peter Beinart simply need to preach their message of co-existence in the Arab world.
While these American Jewish left-wing extremists have made a lot of noise in the United States about the danger of the “settlements” and the Netanyahu government, some even calling for the boycott of Jewish goods made in the West Bank, they seem to have completely ignored the other parties of the Arab Israeli conflict – and that doesn’t seem right. So I offer a dare to these so-called pro-Israel activists to proclaim their Zionism in Arab countries, speak of their “Jewish values,” deliver the same talks as they would in front of Jewish audiences. I believe they won’t – because they likely would not make it home alive. Beinart has foolishly said: “Prime Minister Netanyahu distrusts Obama because Obama reminds him of leftist Jews − the Jews that Netanyahu detests, the kind of Jews that Netanyahu once famously told an Israeli rabbi ‘have forgotten what it is to be Jews.’” So I encourage Mr. Beinart to travel the Arab countries – whose hostility Israel’s Prime Minister faces daily – and explain “what it is to be a Jew.”
“What really struck me when I read his writings and that of his father Benzion, and then about the Revisionist tradition, is this belief that the world is a very nasty place, and the Jews are in danger because they don’t recognize its nastiness….We’ve got to become like everybody else,” wrote Beinart. I am a proud product of the Zionist Revisionist movement – formerly serving as National President of the Betar Movement, which was founded by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and it saddens me to see people like Beinart and Ben-Ami neglect to notice the unfortunate nastiness that does exist in the world, especially the desire of many in the Middle East to destroy the Jewish people.
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