I first met Dani Dayan my very first week on the ground when I became Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times in 2012. He was then the head of the Yesha Council, the lead lobbying group for West Bank settlers. Dayan -- a secular, worldly, high-tech millionaire who collected wine and art at his spacious home in Maale Shomron -- defied stereotypes of gun-toting or Haredi settlers. The profile I wrote of him a few months later was emblematic of something I strived to do throughout my tenure in Jerusalem, and still seek now as editor of the Forward: to dimensionalize the caricatures of the conflict, to help readers empathize with all players in every drama. Dayan, of course, became Israel's Consul General in New York, arriving shortly after my own return in 2016. Now he is heading home again, and on Wednesday he joined me and Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the Jewish Week, for an "exit interview" of sorts. (Check out the video here.) Dayan leaves at what many of us see as a challenging moment in the relationship between American Jews and Israel, as the prospect of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unilaterally annexing parts of the occupied West Bank make the two-state solution seem ever-more elusive. He declined to say what he would do if he were prime minister -- "I don't advise my government through Zoom" -- but painted annexation as, essentially, a negotiation tactic: "It doesn't mean that it precludes any other thing." (Dayan put annexation in finger-quotes, as he prefers "the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria" -- negotiating peace, or even territory, is tough when people cannot even agree on terminology.) He said the peace process was stalled not because of disagreements over Jerusalem, borders, refugees or any other specific issue, but "because in a patch of land the size of New Jersey, there are two indigenous peoples, Jews and Palestinians, and the Palestinians believe there is only one and the Jews are colonialists." "You have to internalize that Jews also have rights," he added. "The moment the Palestinians come to that understanding, the peace process will start." (Speaking of "indigenous," a New York rabbi' had a viral moment this week saying Jews are not.)
I put to Dayan a great question an audience member had posted at a prior Zoominar I hosted about annexation (video of that one here). How can a liberal Zionist continue to oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement if annexation creates an apartheid-like system of starkly different treatment of Palestinians and Jews living next to each other in the West Bank? Unsurprisingly, Dayan said boycotts, and opposing military aid for Israel, are red lines for him, but I thought his framing was intriguing. "You can be a supporter of Israel, be defined as a Zionist, and oppose virtually every single step that the government of Israel does," he said. "If you boycott your brother because you, he or she, opposes what your brother did, the bond is broken, there is no more bond." He said he is equally opposed to Haredim who boycott or vilify liberal Jews. "It's like that bigoted father who throws out of his home the son that went out of the closet." Dayan also talked movingly about his visit to Selma and Montgomery, Ala., with his daughter, a student at Columbia University; his experience of shiva week after the Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh; and his cultivation of Latino politicians and communities, which led to the Bronx Borough President declaring Tuesday Dani Dayan Day: here's that video link again if you want more. As I mentioned, this event was part of a budding partnership between the Forward and the Jewish Week, which announced Tuesday that it will be suspending print operations. That news is part of the economic crisis facing Jewish and local journalism nationally (you can watch video of our Zoom on that topic here), but I'm confident that, as at the Forward, Silow-Carroll will find that being digital-only can allow for more independent, original reporting and better service to our communities. For those who still crave an offline Shabbat read, we've collected some of the week's best stories for you to download and print via the blue button below. You'll find in there Talya Zax's moving essay about the JCC Theatre Camp director who inspired her; Rob Eshman's analysis of Peter Beinart's abandonment of the two-state solution; the Secret Jewish History of Ringo Starr; a look at Israel's controversial contact-tracing efforts to control its huge spike in coronavirus cases; and stories about anti-Semitic symbols in a N.J. high-school yearbook, on the U.S.C. campus, and on a young woman's shoulder.
We also learned this week that the Forward won two awards from the Society of Features Journalism: Jackson Arn's story about Alec Guinness (also about anti-Semitism) and Talya's (scathing) review of "Find Me" by Andre Aciman. These join the Forward's four first prizes and nine overall honors at the American Jewish Press Association's Simon Rockower Awards last week, so plenty of great journalism for you to marinate in. I hope you'll join us on Monday for not one but two special virtual events: At 2 p.m. ET, Rukhl Schaechter will host "Five Yiddish comedians walk into a Zoom...." and at 8:30 p.m. ET I'll be interviewing Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey about how Jews should engage with Black Lives Matter, the prospects for police reform in Congress, presidential politics and more (if those times don't work for you, sign up anyhow so we can send you the video). And for something completely different, check out our new Yiddish yoga video series. If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else who might. Shabbat Shalom,
