THE "FEH" CAMPAIGN! "Fie, Extremist Herskovites...and Friends". FEH- also a Yiddish expression of disgust and contempt.

WHAT IS FEH?

A multi-faceted effort to combat the so-called Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends. This group is led by Ann Arbor antisemite Henry Herskovitz, (and, yes, Jews can themselves be antisemites! .. and in any case JWPF prominently, and ominously, includes Muslims and other non-Jews). Every Saturday since 2003 JWPF has been picketing an Ann Arbor synagogue, Beth Israel Congregation, with inflammatory and libelous signage and rhetoric calling for the abolition of Israel, and nonsensically demanding that the congregation repudiate support for the Jewish state. The genesis of JWPF is Herskovitz's petulance and "snit" at not being given an uncontested forum by the synagogue to hector them with his extremist views, as he himself has stated in various of his screeds to his minions.

Not content with mere synagogue harassment, in the past Herskovites have attempted multiple (although ludicrously unsuccessful) boycotts of the venerable community market, The Peoples Food Coop, for it's unspeakable (but tasty) "crime" of carrying Israeli cous-cous. Currently the Herskovites support the most flamboyantly obnoxious of their group, Blaine Coleman (see Herskovite page), in his effort to place antisemitic ads on Ann Arbor's busses -- an effort supported by the ACLU in an act of self-contradiction as absurd as the old Onion headline: "ACLU Supports Right of Nazis To Burn Down ACLU Headquarters".

"Herskovite" self-designations as advocates for "peace" in the Arab/Israeli conflict are totally belied by their relentless and indiscriminate harassment of Beth Israel, many of whom are outspoken advocates of a peaceful two-state solution, and by their posters and rhetoric. Likewise their self-described role as advocates for the Palestinians is belied by the anti-Arab racism implicit in the group's willfully ahistorical and anti-factual patronizing view of Arabs as idiot-children, devoid of any accountability or responsibility for their inarguably sorry condition in the region.

Thus far Beth Israel and its leader, Rabbi Robert Dobrusin, have followed a principled and high-minded policy of forbearance toward, and non-engagement with, the protestors, policies similar to those of the larger community including the city council and police. Yet the harassment continues.

With due respect to the Rabbi, we in FEH (which includes Beth Israel members and others, Jew and Gentile, concerned with the quality of life in our community, that is being degraded by the "Herskovites") disagree. We believe it is time to explore other, more effective (and of course non-violent) options. After all, even when "turning your cheek" to an enemy, one only has four cheeks...and they've long since been turned.

CAN ONE BE CRITICAL OF ISRAEL AND ZIONISM WITHOUT BEING AN ANTISEMITE?

As to the first, of course! Israelis and their supporters abroad regularly engage in often heated debate as to the policies and goals of particular regimes, and on no topics more than those bearing on the wisdom and morality of the post-1967 settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. But the blanket, un-nuanced anti-Zionist rhetoric of the "Herskovites" is virtually identical to that of Islamic radicals like Iran's president Ahmadinajad, who advocates simply "wiping Israel from the map". Since such a process would likely involve the destruction of one third of world Jewry, that's Hitlerian antisemitism, pure and simple. Likewise so are the "Zionist-free, one Palestine from river- to-sea" aims and signage of the "Herskovites".

Given the tenderness with which today's Jihadist Muslims seem to treat each other (in Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine itself, ravaged as it is by a lethal Hamas-Fatah civil war), and given the relentless demonization of all Jews in fundamentalist schools and Madrassahs, the goals of the "Herskovites" seem as lethal to Israeli Jews, and thus as antisemitic, as Ahmadineajad's should their theoretical "one Palestine" become a reality in an era when the likes of Hamas and its patrons in Hizbollah and Iran are powerful and rising forces in the Middle East and beyond.