Critical voices aren't fooling anyone with silence and backhanded compliments - opinion

It’s not such a big deal when somebody forgets your birthday. Unless it’s somebody who constantly claims how much they love you and how they’re looking out for your best interests. In which case, their silence makes you wonder.

There are a number of Jewish organizations that tend to be quite critical of Israel. They insist, however, that they are not anti-Zionist. Yet when Israelis were celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut - Independence Day - this week, some of those groups were surprisingly silent, or worse.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) and J Street used the occasion of Israel’s birthday to take a few shots at the Jewish state.

APN tweeted: “On this 76th anniversary of Israel’s independence, we’re thinking particularly hard about what freedom means: freedom for those held hostage by Hamas. Freedom for those living under Occupation.”

Tweeting about “Occupation” (note the obnoxious capital “O”) on Israel’s Independence Day is kind of like saying, “Happy birthday, you ogres.” Not very nice.

J Street was slightly more sophisticated. It tweeted: “On this Independence Day, we must channel our love for Israel into meaningful action - a land that secures safety and dignity for all people and lives up to its founding values of independence, freedom and justice for all.”

Critical tweets

Demanding that Israel “live up to its values” is a not-very-subtle way of saying that right now, Israel isn’t living up to them. In other words, another “Happy birthday, you jerks” kind of message.

Partners for Progressive Israel (PPI), the US wing of the far-Left Meretz Party in Israel, tweeted about both a Independence Day celebration and a “Nakba Remembrance Ceremony.” They don’t seem to understand that to the Arabs, it is the very creation of Israel that was a nakba, a catastrophe. Or maybe the staffers at PPI do understand but prefer to pretend otherwise.

T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights tweeted nothing original about Independence Day, but they did find time to retweet their CEO talking about Israelis who are “protesting their disastrous government & calling for a deal to end the war.” Does T’ruah does not regard the right of the Jewish people to a sovereign state to be a legitimate human right? It should be pointed out that the day after Independence Day, they bragged in a tweet that “T’ruah is co-sponsoring the Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony.”

Jewish Women International (formerly B’nai B’rith Women) had a colorful tweet about Mother’s Day. But nothing about Independence Day. It is sad that Israeli mothers were not “top of mind” at JWI this week.

It was disappointing that some prominent individuals in the Jewish world likewise couldn’t bring themselves to offer even superficial greetings to the Jewish state on its 76th birthday.

Maybe it was too optimistic of me to think that Jewish ex-State Department officials like Martin Indyk, Aaron Miller, or Daniel Kurtzer would bother to wish Israel a happy birthday. They didn’t.

Neither did Bernie Sanders or Thomas Friedman, for that matter.

But the silence of Deborah Lipstadt was puzzling. She’s the US ambassador for fighting against antisemitism, and right now, the Jewish state is under international assault by antisemites of every type. So, you would think the United States Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism would want to remind the world where she stands.

If nothing else, Lipstadt could have retweeted the perfunctory messages of congratulations that were issued by the White House or Ambassador Jack Lew, the US ambassador in Jerusalem. Strange that she didn’t!

Let’s not jump to reading too much into that, but it’s not exactly encouraging.

The writer is a past board member of the American Zionist Movement and was a delegate to the most recent World Zionist Congress.