http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/mitch_simmons/2007/02/mitch_simmons.html

The repeated, increasingly desperate reinvention of dissenting Jewish groups, this time in the guise of Independent Jewish Voices, which is invariably accompanied by the admiring cooing of the left-liberal press, throws up the obvious question: why not engage productively with the democratic structures within the Jewish community?

Of course, the debate will be robust. Israel inevitably raises passionate opinions but to characterise fervent opposition to anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views as vilification is simply cant. Setting up a self-congratulatory group and reinforcing your isolation is unproductive. Playing the perpetual victim, an accusation often flung at Israel by its critics, is now being used by these critics out of frustration at their marginality.

There are opportunities to take part in the democratic processes of the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Labour Movement or the Union of Jewish Students. If Brian Klug and IJV want to make an impact on the debate then they must engage and expect heated disputation.

Last July I attended a rally of over 7000 Jews and non-Jews in solidarity with Israel during its war with Hizbullah. The counter-demonstration by Jews for Justice for Palestine numbered only five.

Last October I sat on a panel at an open meeting hosted by the Union of Jewish Students in north-west London with Yuli Tamir, the Israeli education minister. We discussed and debated the boycott of Israeli academia and the issues facing Israel and Jews on campus. The event was advertised on the Jews for Justice for Palestine website and in the Jewish press. In an audience of 100, only two provided an “independent” voice.

The “suppressed” voice of IJV has dominated the Guardian website but has failed to take up the debate with the community’s dedicated activists, in their synagogues and charities. If any Jew, left or right, wants to make an impact they need only turn up to a meeting and put their point across. They could even have attended last year’s campus tour of One Voice, a dialogue group between Israeli Zionists and Palestinian nationalists supported by Jewish students. When we helped organise this tour we received nothing but support from the Jewish establishment that IJV imagines would suppress exactly this kind of activity.

Jewish students will not disagree with much of IJV’s core principles. We all want to see a viable peace, end to death and an elimination of all forms of racism and anti-semitism. However when it comes to the issue of human rights IJV seem oblivious to political realities.

Sadly, in the current situation, human rights do conflict with one another. A Palestinian worker’s right to freedom of movement may easily conflict with an Israeli worker’s right not to be blown up. It is naïve to pronounce high-minded abstractions about the inviolability of human rights but fail to provide practical suggestions for accommodating both Israeli and Palestinian interests. The Israeli government has to make difficult moral choices and, as with all such choices, there are no rights, just greater and lesser wrongs. It is irresponsible of IJV to represent the choices Israeli governments have had to make as obvious and simple.

It is a shame that IJV should enact what they most deplore: the debasement of the word “anti-semitism”. The Union of Jewish Students, and other Jewish organisations, vigorously defend Israel but are always careful not to label our interlocutors “anti-semitic”, especially in the case of Jews with varying opinions.

By insinuating that a resort to accusations of anti-semitism is the default response by the Jewish community within the Israel/Palestine debate, Klug and his followers sidestep the fight against anti-semitism, especially when it appears tarted up in anti-Israel garb.