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02/16/2007

Response to the New Jersey Jewish News Editorial

Letter to the Editor

We too noticed that Alvin Rosenfeld's paper (Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism) glossed over the good work being done by progressive Zionist organizations to support, defend, and improve Israel. Meretz USA and Ameinu have long had a multi-tiered approach to Israel advocacy working simultaneously to improve the shortcomings of Israeli society through our Israeli counterparts in the Knesset (Meretz and the Labor Party) as well as strenuously defending Israel's right to exist as a Jewish democratic state amongst the progressive American community. To this end we work in communities across the United States and on campus through our college arm, the Union of Progressive Zionists.

Our motivating force is to see Israel as a "light unto nations", a country, at peace with its neighbors, where citizens are free from coercion, economic hardship and enjoy the promise of the third Jewish Commonwealth as envisioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence: Israel will "foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations."

But Rosenfeld does remind us of a troubling trend on the left: the ugly resurgence of Anti-Semitism. To this end, Ameinu and Meretz have set up a joint taskforce to explore how best to confront the issue. Our plans include a multi-part discussion series with prominent Jewish and non-Jewish influentials on how to speak honestly and critically about Israel without passing red-lines.

We at Ameinu and Meretz think that speaking honestly about Israel is the best policy, both to improve Israeli society and to curb the resurgence of anti-Semitism on the left.

Nomi Colton-Max
Larry Lerner