Video of J Street’s Daniel Levy saying that Israel’s Creation was an ‘Act That Was Wrong

…only if you quote Levy out of context. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he has to say (for instance, I think he is being naive about the Hamas position), but that’s really not what he is saying in this video clip.

He’s weighing a number of different viewpoints as part of a symposium and clearly not endorsing the one that the anti-J Street crowd is attempting to attribute to him.

he is sitting next to that genocidal human carcass Abd Al-Bari Atwan who said he would dance in Trafalgar Square if Iran nuked Israel

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/08/london-based-muslim-newspaper-editor-would-dance-in-trafalgar-square-if-iran-nukes-israel.html

Would a Zionist advocating nuclear war be allowed on a forum like this?

The full quote:

One can be a utilitarian two-stater, in other words think that the practical pragmatic way forward is two states. This is my understanding of the current Hamas position. One can be an ideological two-stater, someone who believes in exclusively the Palestinian self-determination and in Zionism; I don’t believe that it’s impossible to have a progressive Zionism. Or one can be a one-stater. But in either of those outcomes we’re going to live next door to each other or in a one state disposition. And that means wrapping one’s head around the humanity of both sides. I believe the way Jewish history was in 1948 excused – for me, it was good enough for me – an act that was wrong. I don’t expect Palestinians to think that. I have no reason – there’s no reason a Palestinian should think there was justice in the creation of Israel.

Observations:

a.) He is speaking off the cuff, so the prose is inelegant and elliptical. It amounts to thinking out-loud with lots of stops and starts– pay attention to how he interrupts himself mid-sentence in the video (in fact, it’s more clear in the video than in the transcript.) People do that in conversations.

b.) He is sketching out a number of different viewpoints.

c.) The idea that the Israel’s creation is “wrong” is clearly one that he is attributing to Palestinians, not to himself. The view he is representing as his own is “But in either of those outcomes we’re going to live next door to each other [in a two state] or in a one state disposition.”

Now I’m not sure if he really finds a “one state disposition” a credible option– I certainly don’t, and judging by the literature, neither does J Street.

“a.) He is speaking off the cuff, so the prose is inelegant and elliptical. It amounts to thinking out-loud with lots of stops and starts– pay attention to how he interrupts himself mid-sentence in the video (in fact, it’s more clear in the video than in the transcript.) People do that in conversations.”

Do you dissect Mel Gibson the same way ?

He knew what he was saying and who was listening. Especially that evil creep sitting next to him gloating at the site of the Jew who understands the genocidal maniacs out to get him.

Ian Thal:

You are wasting your breath with most of the crowd here. I agree with you that it is impossible to understand what Levy meant to say in that specific sentence – was it 1948 that was wrong or was it the “excusing”? is he stating his opinion or the Palestinian’s ? Adam Levick may be correct in his interpretation but I don’t understand how he can be so sure of his conclusion.

Levy is correct on one point – no one side can dictate their version of the historical narrative to the other side, i.e. even if there is a mutually acceptable settlement of the I/P conflict and both sides live happily-ever-after in peace and prosperity, the Palestinians will continue to regard 1948 as a disaster.

Finally, I have pointed out several times before that this criticism of J-Street misses the mark. This organisation attracted a large membership of young influential American Jews BEFORE the current revelations, i.e. the next generations of Jewish leaders identifies strongly with (what they thought were) the principles of J-Street. The issue is the self-defeating attitude of the current Israeli govt towards the organisation. Assume that J-Street disappears but someone then forms a new group called K-Street that has the same principles but is squeaky-clean. Will they also be denounced, ostracized and ignored ? It seems that nobody here wants to discuss the changes in American Jewish attitudes towards Israel.

An intellectual snob who sleeps in someone else’s bed.

armaros, that’s a beautiful sentence I’d like to steal.

Look at the body language of that fat Arab horror, He hates what Levy is saying or hates Levy or hates the audience and looks down on them. Or something. Hates being there? I’d never heard of him and shame on Britain for giving him a home.

Do you dissect Mel Gibson the same way ?

No, Armaros, because anyone who has followed Mel Gibson’s history knows that he is an ideological anti-Semite who funds a schismatic Catholic sect that still blames Jews for the crucifixion, and that the leader of this sect, his father, is a well-known Holocaust denier. Whatever he says when drunk is consistent with his beliefs when he is sober.

Ariadne-

I think you are correct, Bari Atwan is disgusted that he has to sit next to Levy and finds Levy’s outlining of a “utilitarian two-state” solution offensive. He certainly found nothing comforting in Levy’s words.

MindTheCrap-

J Street has made its share of errors– not surprising by such a new organization that has grown so quickly, but a lot of the hostility towards them has not been out of principles, but out of partisanship. In the U.S. the Democrats have held a solid 75%-80% of the Jewish vote for the last 20 years, and the Republicans have been trying to break that loyalty by playing partisan games with American-Israeli relations and misrepresenting J Street (i.e. the now debunked fake story that J Street facilitated Richard Goldstone’s U.S. visit) has been part of that agenda. What is the American right’s problem with J Street: not enough conservative white Christians in the leadership; it’s mostly liberal and centrist Jews and that makes them a target– and those 20% of American Jews who vote Republican eat this up.

What Levy is guilty of in this instance is not properly rehearsing his talking points, and then stumbling over his words– once the full statement is read, it’s pretty clear that he’s not advocating what some say he is advocating.

Gerald Kreeve:

“MTC your point is valid that there are members of Jstreet who were not aware who funded it and joined in all innocence.”

I would say that applies to the vast majority of the members, since the revelations are very recent. The question is why so many young Jewish people were attracted to this organisation. Revelations about questionable funding of a specific organization will not change a person’s basic political and social values. So we can assume that either another ideologically similar group will attract these people in the future or that there will be a graduate change in the attitudes of existing Jewish organisations as the current leadership moves on. Is the current Israeli govt burying its head in the sand by refusing to recognise, admit and deal with changing American Jewish attitudes towards Israel?

I think that the main reason that J Street was so attractive was that AIPAC was (perhaps unfairly) seen as too remote from the Jewish grassroots, too in league with the Bush administration (unfair because AIPAC’s mission is to foster good relations no matter who is in government in either Israel or the U.S.) and the prominence of conservative Christians caused AIPAC to have a different spin on what it meant to be “pro-Israeli” than mainstream American Jews.

That said, I think supporters both organizations actually exaggerate their policy differences.

As far as George Soros’ funding, he’s generally admired by American liberals, Jews included while he’s perceived as an arch-villain by conservatives, much as conservatives and liberals have vastly different opinions about Rupert Murdoch. So I don’t think the recent revelations of Soros’ financial support really hurts J Street in the eyes of its supporters.

“Is the current Israeli govt burying its head in the sand by refusing to recognise, admit and deal with changing American Jewish attitudes towards Israel?”

As to Israel refusing to deal with J Street– the Labor (part of the current government, remember) and Kadima Parties have both sent representatives to the last J Street conference. It was only Likud that snubbed them– though that seems to have been patched up.

Ian Thal, this twerp is imitating the slug Inayat Bunglawala who, when pushed into a corner at the other place about the legitimacy of the state of Israel and its right to exist, said that the creation of the Jewish state was “a bad idea.”

They seem to me to be like matching bookends, both windbags with little to say.

And Sarah Jane is right – Levy is a self-important prat who loves the sound of his own voice and who hasn’t the first idea of what he is talking about.

peterthehungarian, I hope that secret taping of “potentially delicate” conversations continues. It caught out slimy al-taqiyya merchant Tariq Ramadan when he said that murder of israeli children was “contextually explicable” and later denied that he had. Such a tape recorder should be standard issue whenever anyone interviews people of this type.

It seems J Street can’t stop lying. The weekly standard reports that
“Now J Street has fired back in the “Myths and Facts” section of its website, arguing that Levy’s comments have been “misreported”:

Weekly standard reproduces J street’s modified version which avoids referring to the creation of the State of Israel being wrong. (They try to suggest it was the expulsion of the Palestinians which was the “wrong” referred to).
Weekly standard refers to the video clip which gives the lie to this version. Thanks to Ian Thal’s transcript we can clearly see he was referring to the creation of Israel.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/daniel-levys-israel-problem_508403.html

Ian
Naturally I can’t check the credibility of different media organs and I’m ready to believe your opinion – you are there and I’m not.
But I think that the story with J-street’s suport of Goldstone is pretty irrelevant anyway, they started with the wrong foot when at their inaguration meeting silenced and threw out people who questioned their intentions plus accepted in their ranks the most disgusting Israel haters like Richard Finklerstein (see Howard Jacobson’s awardwinning book) and Philipp Weiss.

mindthecrap: lets say you are right and Levy’s meaning is at least ambiguous: Why does J street partially reword the quote and in particular leave out the reference to the creation of Israel?

“In an answer to a question on a panel he appeared on in Doha, Qatar, Daniel argued in favor of progressive Zionism. He did not call Israel’s creation “an act that was wrong.” He believes that the events of the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem included acts that were wrong, but that could be excused for him by the particular and unique moment in Jewish history that we were living through in 1948:

“I believe that where Jewish history was in 1948 excused, for me – it was good enough for me – an act that was wrong.”

Daniel went on to say that he sees no reason why Palestinians would agree with his response to that history, “I don’t expect Palestinians to think that.”

It reads to me that he thinks the creation of Israel wrong in as much as it obliged Palestinian Arabs living on the land to accept in majority over them, a people, some of whom they thought of as foreign, which, by the terms of modern democratic institutions, might be thought unfair, but that for him, and for me too, the overwhelmingly just and imperative moral superiority of the Jewish claim had clear dominance.
The fact that it was a disaster for the Arabs is clear, for they failed in their attempt to prevent such an imposition, which they had a right to do, but only if innocent of motives that reach much further than resistance to unwelcome democratic domination to embrace ancient religious hatred, and a grim determination to repeat the experiment that had just failed, which was a principal determinate of the new State’s moral necessity.

I mean my challenge was legitimate, not her statement

epidermoid

The fact that it was a disaster for the Arabs is clear, for they failed in their attempt to prevent such an imposition, which they had a right to do, but only if innocent of motives that reach much further than resistance to unwelcome democratic domination to embrace ancient religious hatred, and a grim determination to repeat the experiment that had just failed, which was a principal determinate of the new State’s moral necessity.

Golly!

MTC you read the first lines of my posting above and not the rest.

The people joined JStreet in innocence. The leaders who accepted the money presented the agenda of those who funded them and not of the innocent dupes

Levy seemed to be saying that the creation of Israel was justified. He seems otherwise reasonable enough – but this website of course seizes the opportunity to smear him. It wouldn’t be because his views are unwelcome here, would it? Surely not.

And like other people above – what immediately disturbed me was the sight of Abd al-Bari Atwan next to him.

So much discussion has gone on here about Daniel Levy who is no inaccessible demi-god and a not very impressive personality. Perhaps someone who considers he is misinterpreted in the version given at the top of the page would care to write to him and get his response. I am sure that he would be glad to clear his name and reputation if that is the case.

Perhaps he is reading this page himself and might care to clear up things for us rather than allow an incorrect impression to remain.

I understand what Levy is trying to do. But he is going about it the wrong way, and expressing it badly. You could argue that, in absolute moral terms, Zionist Jewish ethnic cleansing was wrong. But it was no worse than Palestinian and other Arab Muslim threats (with arguably Arab Christian acquiescence) to do the same thing to Palestinian and other Jews, or worse. That is the position of, say, Benny Morris.

The way he expresses it would only be taken, I think, by a (n average) pro-Palestinian Arab Muslim/Christian nationalist as a sign of weaknesses, to be exploited.

I think this Haaretz article is worth reading:

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-core-of-the-conflict-1.318988

Gerald:
Methinks he has a point (in the 2nd part of his sentence).

benorr : “Perhaps it was Daniel Levi’s Creation that was an act that was wrong.”

This is the case with many children born in his era…

What does it matter what levy thinks or doesn’t think?

He’s a man of no consequence, who has an exaggerated view of his own importance.

Zkharya.
“Zionist Jewish ethnic cleansing”
Oh, for goodness sake! It was a war of extermination waged against the Jews—- things happen in war—- it’s often kill or be killed.

What’s wrong with you?