William Mehlman

Angst-ridden liberal American Jewry, obsessed with tikun olam as defined by the Anti-Defamation League’s Abe Foxman and the Dixie Chicks, is in a lather over Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s charge that the so-called Save Darfur Coalition (SDC), sponsor of rallies earlier this year in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, is nothing other than a platform for conspicuous consumers of Jewish guilt to strut their stuff.. “If we return to the last demonstrations in the United States and the groups that organized the demonstrations,” al-Bashir intoned, “we find that they are all Jewish organizations.”

While that might be something of an overstatement in view of the “130 diverse faith, humanitarian and human rights organizations” claimed by the SDC, the key role played by Jewish groups in organizing the demonstrations is hardly debatable. Mr. Foxman calls it “a badge of honor for the Jewish community.” At this writing, the bearers of that badge, sensitive to al-Bashir’s accusation, were pondering the appropriate level of Jewish presence at a second round of Save Darfur Coalition demonstrations scheduled to kick off with a September 17th rally in New York. The American Jewish World Service is believed to be leaning toward “nuancing” the Jewish imprint on the affair, leaving more room on the Big Apple stage for leaders of “other religious and ethnic communities.” Martin Raffel thinks “deep, sustained and powerful” is the only acceptable Jewish reaction to Darfur. “Jews don’t need to tone down their level of involvement,” asserts the senior associate executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “Are we over-participating? The answer to that is no.”

One needn’t question the merits or objectives of the Save Darfur Coalition to be troubled by the glaring contrast between the buckets of concern and outrage poured out over to this issue by the American Jewish Establishment and that same Establishment’s dry-well response to the suffering of 10,000 of its co-religionists, rendered homeless, penniless. futureless by Israeli bulldozers in Gaza and northern Samaria ten months ago. No problem with the American Jewish footprint being too visible at this scene. It would take a team of bloodhounds to find it.

For all the inexcusable brutality and irrationality of uprooting these communities, Gush Katif-northern Samaria is no longer a political issue. The awful deed having been done, to accolades from the secular Jewish left and barely a murmur from the rabbis, one might have expected some tangible expression of charity to the vanquished from the victors. In fact, their silence has been deafening. “With few exceptions, we have received almost no help from the mainstream Jewish American groups which grant billions of dollars,” avers Dror Vanunu, International Coordinator, Friends of Gush Katif, himself a former Gaza resident.

Vanunu’s charge is generally confirmed by leaders of the 22 former Gush Katif communities. Despite a 51 percent unemployment rate among their residents (compared to 1 percent prior to the August 2005 dispossession), despite the lack of permanent housing for all but 2 percent of the dispossessed, despite the non-provision of compensation for 72 percent of the businesses lost as a result of the evacuation (including 95 percent of the farms), despite the cutoff since March of funding for expellee youth programs, petition after petition to Jewish philanthropic organizations in America for help in coping with a humanitarian crisis have gone unanswered. Compounding its 10-month silence -- informed and directed by the Sharon-Olmert government’s vilification of Gush Katif and its inhabitants as “obstacles to peace,” fully worthy of the condign punishment visited upon them – was American mainline Jewry’s eagerness to embrace the Israeli government-inspired fiction that the benighted evacuees were receiving the tenderest of loving care.

“That was a lie,” Rachel Saperstein, chair of Israel/ U.S.- based Operation Dignity and former resident of Neve Dekalim, declared in a June 17th address to the World Betar Convention in Jerusalem. “Farmers with once thriving businesses sit and stare at television [Israel’s Agricultural Ministry is currently offering these growers and managers of a now-vanished $80 million a year produce and cut-flowers export business “retraining” as goat shepherds], promises of land are just that -- promises. Our small amounts of compensation are eaten up each day, mortgages on destroyed homes are still being paid to the banks. Private people come to give us handouts. Supermarkets donate food for the Sabbath meals. Donations are given so that infants can receive formula and diapers, brides receive household gifts from caring strangers. Today,” Saperstein continued, “our children cannot concentrate on their studies, our people still weep, for we are all traumatized. Many of our men have died of heart attacks. Within 24 hours our vital people were turned into the homeless and unemployed… This is what the government of Israel… did to its people. We were betrayed. You were betrayed.”

While consciousness of this betrayal and their passive participation in it has yet to surface among the Darfur savers, a glimmer of belated embarrassment has begun to peep through the cracks of mainline American Jewry’s organizational structure. Just a glimmer. The United Jewish Communities’ “Israel Emergency Committee” has announced it is allocating $400,000 for “trauma relief” for the dispossessed of Gush Katif and northern Samaria. If that sounds munificent, it works out to approximately $1 per week for each of the 10,000 evacuees. Some of the Federations in UJC (the Jewish Federation network in North America) are also beginning to step up to the plate. The Jewish Federation/Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago has raised $300,000 for “social services” for Gaza evacuees. The UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey and United Jewish Communities of Metrowest, N.J. have also kicked in with some funds. The cash register hasn’t yet tingled at national UJC, but President Howard Rieger reports it is in the process of gathering some $2 million “to make a difference for Israelis who have suffered.”

Too little and a year late. As Bud Macy, who severed his Federation ties in protest against its refusal to aid the dispossessed points out, this is the same UJC/Federation conglomerate that managed to raise $360 million in record time for Israel during the intifada. Moreover, one’s faith in coincidence would have to be particularly strong to believe there was no connection between these belated expressions of mainline Jewish philanthropic concern for the victims of realignment and Macy’s inauguration, with Friends of Gush Katif, of a grassroots fundraising campaign exclusively devoted to meeting their needs.

Nothing so stirs the juices of mainline organizational Jewry as the specter of fundraising competition. If that’s what it takes to begin even these minor repairs on the vast human and national damage to which it acquiesced, so be it. Could it perhaps presage a wider awakening to the disaster inherent in Mr. Olmert’s plan to create another 80,000 Jewish dispossessed in the Jewish State as he converts 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem into a Hamas playground? The Tikunai Olam might give that a moment’s thought, if saving Darfur allows any time.

William Mehlman, a frequent contributor, is chairman of AFSI in Israel.