“Palestine” is an important topic for most liberals. As such, there is no reason to think that it is any different for liberal Jews. Perhaps even more so, and that is why an item in the latest edition of the American Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) newsletter, piqued my interest. “Celebrates 85 Years of Magnificent Music!” blared the headline, referring to the IPO.
My brain saw “85” and spat out “pre-state,” meaning
“pre-state Israel.” “If the IPO was founded in pre-state Israel,” I mused,
“then it would have been called something like the ‘Palestine Philharmonic
Orchestra.’”
The newsletter said nothing about a name change and I was
curious. Not just about the name, but about the history of the IPO. Anything
pre-state is my gig. Besides, I remembered something about the Philharmonic
being founded by Bronislaw Huberman to save Jewish musicians from the
Holocaust. Cool stuff. I wanted to refresh my memory.
Sure enough, when I clicked on the newsletter to navigate to
the website, I found a timeline with a
short introductory paragraph headlined: “Marching To A New Drum: The IPO Origin
Story.”
The paragraph begins:
The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1936 by Bronislaw Huberman to save the lives of Europe’s Jewish musicians from the Holocaust.
“Hmmm,” I thought. “Well, it wouldn’t have been called
‘Israel’ in 1936, so the orchestra could not have been founded under that
name.”
More properly, that sentence should have read, “The Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra was founded as the [original name here] in 1936 . . .”
and etc.
But maybe I was being too sensitive, too picayune. Tempest
in a teapot and all that.
I finished the intro and moved on to the timeline. In 1934, the IPO is referred to only as the “Orchestra.” But in 1936, the reader is informed that:
Albert Einstein hosted the IPO’s first fundraiser at the Waldorf Astoria New York.
‘Okay,’ I thought. ‘This is now officially ridiculous. It’s
supposed to be a history!’
The name change should have been documented, even in a
simple timeline. I scanned the rest of the timeline, and it wasn’t there. I
scanned the rest of the website, and it wasn’t there. The website had been scrubbed
clean of any reference to “Palestine.”
After some research, I figured it out. The newsletter and
the website it led me to, were products of the American Friends of the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra, an organization based in America that raises funds on
behalf of the IPO. It is this fundraising arm’s website that refuses to say the
“P” word.
The regular IPO
website, on the other hand, said it in the very first sentence under “Our History”:
On 26 December 1936, The Palestine Orchestra was born.
It didn’t feel like an oversight that the American Friends
of the IPO had left out the original name, which as it turns out, was not
“Palestine Philharmonic Orchestra,” but “The Palestine Orchestra.” The omission
had to be intentional. It had to be about not wanting to cause offense. The
AFIPO was taking great care not to use the word “Palestine” in a Jewish
context. It might affect their funding. Because their liberal Jewish donor
base, they must have thought, would have apoplexy. “Palestine” must be thought
of as something that belongs by rights to Arabs, the past erased.
Think of it this way: if one is a liberal, giving a state to
“Palestinians” within Israel’s borders is part of one’s froufrou social justice
credo and absolutely essential. All the more so the liberal Jew who feels an
overwhelming need, almost a pathology, to bring about an Arab state of
Palestine on Jewish land. They are impelled to draw a moral equivalence where
none exists: “We have a state. They deserve to have one, too,” they will
insist, happy to sacrifice Jewish land to make kosher their image in the eyes
of the goyim.
 |
| The first concert, December 26, 1936. Conductor Arturo Toscanini shakes the hand of Bronislaw Huberman (photo from the Central Zionist Archives). |
Perhaps they think that if they only seem fair-minded about
the division of their/our land, the world will know that they are good Jews. It
would come to them as a relief, for they feel this heavy burden, a yoke that
makes them slaves to public opinion. They are always weighing things: how much
do we need to protest against Israel—to give whatever we have—to get that yoke removed—in
order to belong to normative, non-Jewish society?
Their agonized deliberation is, however, an empty exercise.
The yoke will always be there, sitting heavy on their shoulders, the yoke that
ties them to their identity as Jews. It will never be lifted. If they forget
the yoke is there, the goyim will remind them.
And as long as the yoke is there, tying them to their
history from the center of their being, they will peddle the idea of Palestinian
statehood like it is candy for children, or drugs for addicts. They hold it out
on a platter, even though the decision is not theirs to make, even though they
have no right to give away what God gave the Sons of Israel for all time. Even
though they have no right to demean what is the sovereign State of Israel. Some
of them, deep down, still know this. But they just want to be liked and
accepted (poor things). Even if it means omitting or erasing the truth.
Because everyone knows that pre-state Israel was called
“Palestine,” and that all its institutions were referred to as Palestine this,
and Palestine that. The British Mandate-issued identity card of my cousin who
served in the Palmach listed his nationality as “Palestinian.” Another cousin
worked for the Anglo-Palestine Bank. The Jerusalem
Post was formerly called the “Palestine”
Post.
Today, however, it is forbidden for the liberal Jew to say
these things, or as in the case of the AFIPO web content, to read them. Making
use of the word “Palestine” in a Jewish, pre-state context, might (God forbid)
lend legitimacy to the idea that Palestine never belonged to the Arabs, was never
a state, and certainly never an Arab state.
This is not something that liberal Jews will countenance and if you try to show
them the facts, they will show you the hand. They will not be confronted with
the truth.
The façade is everything. The thin veneer of social
acceptance overlaid on Jewish blood is all they seek, though that blood is more
and more diluted and diversified with other bloodlines untainted by thousands
of years of tormented history.
They want to be free. They believe they are free.
They can almost taste it.
(It makes a great condiment for pork.)
