Friday December 2, 2022
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Meeting Both In-Person and by Zoom
Dampeer Room, Second Floor of Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
On November 1, Israel held its fifth election in four years. The Likud Party, led by Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu, regained power by winning 32 of 120 seats in the Knesset (parliament), eight more than outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party. Netanyahu’s alliance, when negotiations over which parties will control which ministries are completed, will consist of parties that hold 64 seats – by recent Israeli standards, a relatively strong majority.
At one level this might seem, to quote a Talking Heads song, “same as it ever was.” Netanyahu served as Prime Minister from 2009-2021, and previously from 1996-1999. He is Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister, having passed the founding leader David Ben Gurion. Many people, particularly on the more liberal end of the American Jewish community, do not like his record. But how much worse can the veteran and extremely clever Bibi be than before?
A lot of commentary about the most recent election suggests that Bibi’s sixth government could be quite different from the others. The reason is that it will not include any more centrist parties. Thus “for the first time in Israel’s history,” as longtime U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller puts it, the governing coalition “includes parties that are openly and proudly Jewish supremacist, anti-democratic, anti-Arab” and the key part here is “openly and proudly.” Other parties (including Likud) may have followed policies that were functionally anti-Arab in particular, but some members of this coalition are at a different level. As the New York Times’ Jerusalem correspondent explains, one key figure, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has gone from in his youth being a member of a party so extreme that both the Israeli and U.S. governments called it a terrorist organization, “considered so extreme himself that, in the early 1990s, the Israeli army refused to accept him as a conscript,” and later on living with a poster of mass murderer Baruch Goldstein on his wall, to a central role as a party leader. He “wants to grant legal immunity to Israeli soldiers who shoot at Palestinians, deport rivals he accuses of terrorism, and end Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied West Bank.”
Perhaps even more fundamentally, the election’s main topic, in many voters’ minds, appears to have been, in the words of the leader of another party in the winning coalition, “the fight between a Jewish state or an Israeli state.” And a “Jewish state” does not only mean little room for Arabs; it also means little room for many Jews who are not “Jewish” enough. That is why “Netanyahu’s Comeback Widens Divide Over Israel Among American Jews,” with the leading organizations of Reform Judaism expressing deep alarm over the election results.
How did this happen, is the change as serious as I’m making it sound, and what does it portend for the future of Israel, its citizens, all those who live on the West Bank and Israel’s relationships with the rest of the world? The first part of an answer is that what was left of the Israeli left totally collapsed, even compared to its previous vestigial state. But that itself deserves explanation. For many years, when something happened in Israel that required explanation, we have brought in Peter Haas to make some sense of it. It’s necessary again, and I’m glad and grateful that he will be joining us.
In-Person and Virtual Attendance
In order to make it easy for people to protect themselves and still participate, the meetings are accessible on Zoom. Participants can register for each meeting in the same way they did for the past two years. The link is posted below.
This “dual delivery” remains a work in progress. Please be patient with any glitches. The ways we can set up video and audio to work for both people in the room and on Zoom are not perfect.
The discussion begins at 12:30 p.m., but the room should be open no later than Noon. We try to have beverages and refreshments set up soon after that. Participants should be able to sign on to Zoom also by Noon. But please remember not much will be happening online until the talk begins at 12:30 pm. Please also remember to show identification when entering Kelvin Smith Library.
Zoom participants should speak up when asked for questions or comments, or submit thoughts through Zoom’s chat function. Please keep yourself muted until you are choosing to speak.
Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. When you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. If you do not get the newsletter, you should also be able to get the information each Monday by checking http://fridaylunch.case.edu/. Then if you choose you can use the contact form on that website to request the registration link.
This week’s Zoom link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAvcuiurDksG9eIincvBxyivu8ETGjuXX0V
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about how the Zoom version of the Friday Lunch will work or any other suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
Dr. Peter Haas received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 after which he attended Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, receiving ordination as a Reform rabbi in 1974. He served as an active U.S. Army chaplain for three years, remaining in the Army National Guard chaplain corp. for another 19 years. Upon completion of active duty, Rabbi Haas enrolled in the graduate program in religion at Brown University, earning a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies in 1980. He joined the faculty at Vanderbilt University in 1980, where he taught courses in Judaism, Jewish ethics, the Holocaust, Western religion, and the Middle East Conflict.
Dr. Haas moved to Case Western Reserve University in 2000 and was appointed chair of the Department or Religious Studies in 2003. He also served as a visiting professor at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, IL.
Dr. Haas has published several books and articles dealing with moral discourse and with Jewish and Christian thought after the Holocaust and has lectured in the United States, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Israel. His most recent book is on human rights in Judaism.
Dr. Haas stepped down as chair of the Department of Religious Studies in the summer of 2015 and fully retired in the summer of 2016. He is currently doing part-time volunteer work for the pastoral care department of South Pointe Hospital, as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court and as a discussion leader for Books@Work for which he has lead short story discussion groups in the VA and the veterans pod in Cuyahoga County jail.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
December 9: Social Media and Politics. With Girma Parris, Ph.D., Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science. |
