John R. Cohn: Healthy Skepticism’s Still the Best Response to Annapolis

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http://www.jewishexponent.com/article/14947/

The recently completed Annapolis conference provoked a vigorous debate in the American Jewish community, as it did in Israel.

Finding the right mix of inducements to produce a genuine and secure peace with the Palestinian Arabs, while avoiding futile concessions to an enemy that often seems impossible to satisfy under any circumstances, is a thorny dilemma for those committed to a durable peace and Israel’s survival as the world’s only Jewish state.

Founded in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily newspaper, the English-language version of the Forward has covered matters important to American Jews for over 100 years.

It was encouraging to read the Forward’s optimistic take on the recent conference in Annapolis.

Many thoughtful but more skeptical observers did not share the paper’s positive spin in believing Palestinian pronouncements, since they elect leaders who say they will never accept a Jewish Israel.

But what was most striking about the Forward’s optimism was their harsh condemnation of fellow Jews who do not share their confidence and priorities.

The Forward declared, “There’s never been an Israeli diplomatic initiative that’s drawn so much noisy opposition from so many American Jews who fancy themselves Israel’s best friends. Something profound has changed in the meaning of Zionism. It used to mean solidarity with the people and nation of Israel.”

Currently, the people and nation of Israel have no defined policy behind which American Jews could be expected to fall in line, and support within Israel for the current leadership is uncertain.

Recent polls give Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Kadima Party between 15 and 18 seats in the 120-seat parliament — if elections were held now, this would represent a substantial drop from the current total and, undoubtedly, a minority of the Knesset in either case.

Israel’s position under multiple governments from right to left has been that violence must stop before progress can be made, and that Palestinians must recognize the essential nature of Israel as a Jewish state, an indispensable part of the original 1947 U.N. partition plan.

This last point was recently repeated by Olmert, but rejected by the very Palestinian leaders with whom the cheerleaders for Annapolis expect to help create a durable peace.

Yet the newspaper went on to provide fuel for the fires of those currently repackaging and peddling millennia old anti-Semitic canards alleging outsized Jewish power and intolerance.

The Forward charged: “For 40 years, the major Jewish organizations have… placed a taboo on questioning Israel’s actions publicly, and those who do raise questions have been taken to task, publicly humiliated, hounded from jobs and community positions.”

Should the Arabs Be Trusted?
This editorial pondered an American Jewish community that wondered “what to make of the topsy-turvy turn of events; they’d always been told that Arabs can’t be trusted and the Palestine Liberation Organization are murderers.”

That is a belief with a solid foundation, as Israelis — and even non-Israelis — have suffered through decades of violence at the hands of Arab terrorists.

In the last election, Palestinians voted into office a Hamas government that repeatedly declares it will never accept Israel’s existence. In addition, more than 68 percent of Palestinians in a recent poll stated they would insist on the so-called “right of return,” which would, if carried out, effectively destroy Israel as a Jewish homeland.

When the facts demonstrate that Palestinians have forsaken violence and accepted Israel as a permanent Jewish state, American and Israeli Jews will have no trouble knowing what to do.

In the meantime, responsible media should not seek to stifle debate among Israel’s friends nor provide rhetorical fodder to those who exaggerate Jewish power in order to help foster the Jewish homeland’s destruction.

John R. Cohn: Healthy Skepticism’s Still the Best Response to Annapolis

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AUTHOR

John R. Cohn

John R. Cohn, Thomas Jefferson University, SPME Board of Directors

John R. Cohn, M.D., is a physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH), in Philadelphia, PA, where he is the chief of the adult allergy and immunology section and Professor of Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the medical staff at TJUH.

In his Israel advocacy work he is a prolific letter writer whose letters and columns have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Haaretz, the Jewish Exponent, Lancet (an international medical journal based in the UK), and others. He was CAMERA’s “Letter Writer of the year” in 2003. He maintains a large email distribution of the original essays which he authors on various Israel-related topics.

He has spoken for numerous Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, the Philadelphia Jewish Federation and to a student group at Oxford University (UK). He and his wife were honored by Israel Bonds.

He wrote the monograph: “Advocating for Israel: A Resource Guide” for the 2010 CAMERA conference. It is valuable resource for all interested in maximizing their effectiveness in correcting the endless errors of fact and omission in our mainstream media. One piece of very valuable advice that he offers to other letter writers is: “Journalists and media are not our enemies, even those we don't agree with". Particularly for those of us in the academic community he urges a respectful and educational approach to journalists who have taken a wayward course.

In addition to the SPME board, Dr. Cohn is a member of a variety of professional and Jewish organizations, including serving on the boards of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, the CAMERA regional advisory board, and Allergists for Israel (American allergists helping the Israeli allergist community). In the past he served on the board of the Philadelphia ADL. He participated in the 2010 CAMERA conference (“War by Other Means,” Boston University) where he led a panel with students on “Getting the Message Out,” and a break-out session called “Getting Published in the Mainstream Media.”

He is married, has three children and one grandchild. He belongs to two synagogues--he says with a chuckle, "So I always have one not to go to". He has been to Israel many times, including as a visiting professor at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. His first trip was at age 10, when Jerusalem was still a divided city; and he remembers vividly standing before the Mandelbaum Gate, wondering why he could not go through it to the Old City on the other side.

He adroitly balances his wide-ranging volunteer activities on behalf of Israel with his broad and complex medical and teaching practice (including authoring numerous professional publications) while successfully maintaining good relations with a broad spectrum of Jewish community leaders and organizations -- no small feat.

Regarding his involvement with SPME, Dr. Cohn acknowledged first and foremost SPME’s Immediate Past President, Professor Ed Beck. Dr. Cohn has long perceived that under Professor Beck’s guidance, SPME has been doing an essential job on college campuses; so he was honored when Professor Beck invited him to join the board.

He finds it easy to support and be active in SPME because being a Jewish American and a supporter of Israel presents no conflict due to the congruence of both countries’ interests, policies and priorities. It is clear that Israel’s cause is not a parochial issue. It is a just cause and its advocacy is advocacy for justice.

For Dr. Cohn, the need for SPME is clear. The resources of those who speak out on behalf of Israel are dwarfed by the funding sources available to those who seek to denigrate Israel. Israel's supporters don’t have large oil fields to underwrite their work. And the campus is a critical arena for work today on behalf of Israel, because this generation’s students are next generation’s leaders.

For advancing SPME’s work in the future, he would like to see the continued development of academically sound analyses to counter the prevailing anti-Israel ideology of all too much academic research and teaching on campuses and in professional fields today. He points to Lancet’s creation of a “Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance,” which asserts that Israel is to blame for poor health care for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The documented reality, however, is that life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of health are better for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza than in many of the countries so critical of Israel This is in large part thanks to Israel.

Dr. Cohn asserts that we need more research, analysis and publications to counteract such misleading allegations.


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