We Jews are an impressive people. Lots of Nobel Prizes, the most successful of the post-World War II countries, high scores on personal income and education, and the Hebrew Bible. Jesus was also one of ours, along with Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and--by a slight stretch--Karl Marx.
Among our strengths is a capacity to organize for the sake of admirable goals. Jews were in the thick of movements for the rights of African Americans, an end to the Vietnam war, the perpetuation of the Roosevelt coalition (except for Southern conservatives), and protests for justice in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile.
Other Jewish campaigns have been explicitly concerned with Jewish interests. Remember the Soviet Jews (Let My People Go). Jews have sent their money and come as volunteers whenever Israel has been attacked. Four hundred thousand Israelis demonstrated in the central square of Tel Aviv in 1982 when it appeared that their country had something to do with the massacre of Palestinians in the Beirut neighborhoods of Sabra and Shatilla.
More recently there have been international demonstrations about the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, the freedoms of Jonathan Pollard (imprisoned in the United States on a charge of treason), and Gilad Shalit (held somewhere in Gaza).
We are great users of the internet. One organization translates Muslim media into Hebrew, English, Russian, French, and Spanish; others report anti-Israel and anti-Semitic events on university campuses, and the anti-Israel biases of movements claiming to be humanitarian. Jews have passed on reports that Barack Obama and his colleagues are a threat (or a blessing) for Israel, and that the United Kingdom and the University of Kentucky have stopped teaching about the Holocaust on account of Muslim pressure.
Not all of these efforts have been successful. Indeed, there is a role for Jewish skepticism in this survey of our capacities.
People have told me their personal stories about working for Soviet Jews: attending rallies, signing petitions, traveling to Russia with prayer books, matzoh, and medicines for Jews denied them. However, my antennae start quivering when they claim credit for the enactment of the Jackson-Vanik legislation (denying commercial benefits to countries that do not permit free emigration) and the mass exodus of Jews from 1989 onward.
The immediate impact of Jackson-Vanik was to anger the Russians and to reduce the incidence of exit permits. Almost 35,000 Jews left the Soviet Union in 1973 (the year before Jackson-Vanik), but less than 14,000 in 1975. By the mid-1980s, the annual numbers had dwindled to less than a thousand. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/fsuemig.html
The great migration began with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Since 1988 more than one million Jews and their relatives have moved to Israel, and others to the United States, Germany, and elsewhere. Regime change due to chronic economic problems, and the desire of non-Jews as well as Jews for greener pastures seem more credible as explanations than any external efforts in behalf of freedom.
Campaigns for the sake of Jonathan Pollard and Gilad Shalit have routinized into periodic demonstrations without results. Americans authorities dug in their heels on the Pollard case, perhaps to demonstrate that there should be a limit to American Jewish enthusiasm for Jewish causes. Currently there is a campaign to persuade George W. Bush to free Pollard as a gesture to Israel at the end of his term. There was a similar campaign at the end of the Clinton administration.
Gilad Shalit had the bad luck to fall into the hands of a large and well-armed family not responsive to the authority of Hamas. Negotiations for his freedom have been sporadic. The stubborn demands of Hamas for the freedom of prisoners that Israel is not willing to let go may say as much about insoluble problems within Gaza as the desires of Hamas.
Repeated e-mails about the end of Holocaust studies in the United Kingdom reflect more about Jewish enthusiasm than Jewish intelligence. Even more so the people who misread UK for the University of Kentucky, and pass on reports that the academics of Lexington have stopped teaching about the Holocaust due to Muslim protests. Both stories collapse in the face of material easily located on Google, as well as sites devoted to "urban legends." (e.g., www.snopes.com; http://urbanlegendsonline.com/)
Iran is the most serious issue waiting the test of Jewish publicists and others concerned about Iranian fanatics. Many are convinced that the capacity of Israel and others to threaten Iran will not neutralize its nuclear capacity, in the way that "Mutually Assured Destruction" (MAD) worked during the Cold War and so far between India and Pakistan.
Israel, and more certainly the United States, can destroy or delay Iran's nuclear program. However, an attack may not occur without destructive responses from Iran and its allies, and further complications spreading outward from the Middle East. It is not an issue likely to retreat before another internet campaign, petitions, or demonstrations in public squares.
Due to spam, I prevent comments on the blog. However, I invite responses to my e-mail address below.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Home tel: 972-2-532-2725
Cell phone: 054-683-5325
Fax: 972-2-582-9144
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il