When a Miami community organization first conceived of holding a Jewish summit to address the campaign to delegitimize Israel, it expected 400 people might show up.
What a wonderful idea. Let us counteract a boycott by engaging in a boycott of our own; let us boycott the boycotters who in turn can retaliate by boycotting the boycotters of the boycott.
The entire Jewish community should applaud the recently announced plan by The Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and several major Jewish federations to invest millions of dollars over the next few years to fight the delegitimization and demonization of Israel. These groups understand that if academic and cultural boycotts are legitimate when aimed at Jews in the West Bank today, they will soon become legitimate when aimed at Jews in Tel Aviv tomorrow; and, you can be sure that after that, the boycotters will set their sites on Jews in New York, Los Angeles, Peoria … and everywhere else that Jews live.
Comedian Jon Stewart’s recent selection as the most influential man in America in a poll by AskMen.com, a popular online magazine, is more than just an inane piece of trivia. It can help inform the international Jewish community of the approach we must take to confront the very serious and growing threat posed by Israel delegitimization.
In the opening book of his monumental code of Jewish law, Maimonides declared, \”We are bidden to walk in the middle paths which are the right and proper ways….\” The great medieval sage was articulating the golden mean, the principle that we should avoid extreme behavior, ethical or physical, at all times. The person who succeeds — indeed, who navigates between indulgence and self-denial — is, by Maimonides\’ standards, the wise one.
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