Protests of Bibi's Government Continue in Bellevue

Plus: a guy walks into Seattle, criticizes the Lenin statue, gets sent to the Gulag.

For months, Israelis in Greater Seattle have been staging weekly protests against the direction of Netanyahu’s government. On July 24, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government passed the first law that protesters argue strikes a blow to Israeli democracy and takes the first step toward an autocratic or theocratic government. What does this mean?

I interviewed local activists back in February. This week we catch up with leaders of the local movement to understand where it stands now.

Here’s the original post:

“There is a place to be sad, to be angry, and to be hopeful.”

This week was a harsh blow to the pro-democracy Israeli protest movement. How are you feeling, and what’s next?

Lior Caspi: The short answer is this is a long struggle. It’s not something short. There is a lot of hope that is generated by this movement. I’ve never voted for Bibi, but I do respect him as a prime minister. He is not the same prime minister as he used to be. He had a stature about him about the good of Israel. All these leaders are coming out and saying this is wrong, this weakens defense. Bibi doesn’t hold that clout [anymore]. He failed the government, he failed the Israelis, and I think he has failed the Jewish people.

Offir Gutelzon: We are now in a new territory. We tried to make sure the legislation was not happening in such a way that is a narrow majority of the Knesset. It’s being created piecemeal—we call it the salami way. Every day there are more things that can come up, we’re talking the free press, inequality laws, like Orthodox not going to the army. We’re seeing that the [Biden] Administration doesn’t know how to deal with it. Now that we know [Netanyahu] wants a dictatorship, we can move forward.

Ayelet Shalev: I think it’s important for Jewish Americans to know that we’re in a different situation now. It took quite a while for Jews to wake up.

Offir: The definition of who is Jewish, the definition of who can do the law of return, this is now all on the table. In the beginning, in the coalition, they tried to bring everything together. Now they moved to a piecemeal way. Autocratic is when you change democracy to autocracy by changing laws that no one really understands. That’s what happened in Hungary and Poland and Venezuela and Russia. That’s why we need to work together with the Jewish community here so we can be more alert and vigilant.

How have the demonstrations here in the Seattle area evolved over the past few months?

Lior: In Seattle, we are proud of what we have accomplished. We really quickly in the beginning changed the demonstration from Hebrew to an all-inclusive demonstration. We were able to bring to our weekly demonstrations community figures, like Rabbi Danny Weiner and Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum. This Yom Ha’atzmaut we did an event that was a celebration of the Declaration of Independence, and the Federation and JCRC were part of it and supporting in person. We had a Federation professional on stage. I know it’s not easy for them. This is beyond right and left in Israel and it should be beyond right and left — in denominations — in America. At the same time, we’re asking ourselves, why only 60 demonstrators and not 1,000? Why did American Jews not get it yet?

Offir: Protesting or rallying Israel is not unpatriotic. It’s hard for us too. This is a special crisis. The ability for us as well as the Jewish leadership is hard. It’s not easy for us or for Jewish Americans. The idea that people in the community in Seattle are standing up for policy, it’s about the idea that there is a crisis for the Jewish homeland. When one person speaks up, more people speak up.

Ayelet: I think it’s more hopeful. I want to thank them because it makes a difference here and over there. It’s a collapse of the democracy of Israel. We are calling for the other congregations to join us.

Something we talked about last time was the need American Jews might feel to protect Israel at all costs. I think Americans see Israel as more of an idea, and an ideal, than an actual place sometimes. We also try to stay out of politics. We’ll say, we’re not weighing in on Bibi, because we’re not citizens. And on an ideological level, more religious Jews are perhaps not so much in favor of so-called liberal policies, either secular or Jewish. These all seem like barriers to getting more Americans involved.

Lior: The liberal infrastructure is something that will serve liberal voices for months and years to come. I think what Ayelet and I are talking about is how to take this approach and leverage it within our community. Chabad is very supportive of Israel. All the way on the left, Israel is really not something they are so focused on or have a strong positive relationship with. I think we can take this movement and change that. Putting together Israelis and Americans as one group. How do we create a new relationship with Israel?

Offir: The definition of left and right, it’s changing. Being pro-democracy is not about the two states, or if you are secular or orthodox. You can see in the protest movement in Israel people who are religious. People in settlements are protesting within settlements: “Even behind the green line we have a red line.” If there is no equality there will be no democracy. Democracy and values should not be a question. Everyone should be able to practice Judaism how they want. Jewish Americans are coming in because they are not thinking of it as just criticizing occupation. Anti-Semitism will rise if Israel will become an undemocratic state.

Ayelet: If you are Jewish, people all over the world will find you and hate you. They don’t detach you from Israel. All the Jews of the world will suffer. This is the time to stop it.

Lior: Today is Tisha b’Av. It’s a very eerie week. I’m not Orthodox, but I do believe Tisha b’Av is very symbolic. The pictures of Shacharit on the march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is one of the most moving pictures I have seen. Seeing Orthodox Jews marching with tallit and tefillin and doing that with respect, for me it was a moving sight. There is a place to be sad, to be angry, and to be hopeful. I think we can hold all three at the same time.

The next rally is August 2nd at 7:30 pm at Bellevue Downtown Park.

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Lenin’s Revenge

An odd story came out this week, and it goes like this: the Seattle Times hired a new editorial board member who used his first writing opportunity to wade into the Lenin-statue-in-Fremont debate, posted some thought crimes on Twitter, and got fired from the Times before he even knew what hit him.

Let’s back up.

David Volodzko is an experienced journalist whose grandfather, he claims, was a Nazi hunter and whose own work has exposed neo-Nazis. After years of reporting in Asia as well as in Ukraine, he resettled with his extended family in Georgia only to move again to take a job with the Seattle Times. (This is mistake number one—dude should’ve stayed put and started a Substack.)

His first (and only) piece in the newspaper is a call to rethink the statue of Vladimir Lenin that stands in the middle of Fremont. Mistake number two: never criticize anything about Fremont, especially Lenin!

Lenin statue in Fremont. Photo by Scarlet Sappho/Flickr

The story of how the 16-foot bronze statue of a dictator ended up on a Seattle sidewalk is an interesting one, but since then Lenin has become a beloved artifact of quirky Fremont. Still, former Seattle mayor Ed Murray tried to get it taken down in 2017. HB 2120 called for its removal in 2019. A venture capitalist got in the mix. Even during the frenzy of Confederate statue toppling, Lenin stayed put. Not only because he’s on private property, but because people like him there.

Volodzko, the poor schmuck, lands in Seattle and decides to start his career on this topic.

He writes:

People can say “it’s just a joke” if they like, but that works no better than it does to excuse wearing blackface for Halloween. Nor is Fremont’s freedom to be peculiar any more an excuse than it would be if we were talking about a statue of Joseph Goebbels.

An out-of-town liberal trying to own the libs? Not here. Volodzko’s opening line of the story will become a prophecy of what happens to him: “Karl Marx’s last words as a London-based correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune were to attack the hypocrisy of Westerners who defend sacred values only when it suits them.”

Volodzko, probably frustrated by the bizarre defense of a mass murderer by the good people of Seattle, took to Twitter to continue the conversation. This is mistake number 3: Don’t use Twitter. For anything.

In what he probably thought was a nuanced and compelling argument, Volodzko explained that Lenin was worse than Hitler:

“In fact, while Hitler has become the great symbol of evil in history books, he too was less evil than Lenin because Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself didn’t believe were harmful in any way.”

Herein lies mistake number 4: Don’t call anyone worse than Hitler, unless that person is Trump.

A week later, Volodzko was fired by the Seattle Times.

I found my brain running circles: We have a statue of Lenin in a city that is so leftwing that I wouldn’t be surprised if it voted in an actual communist, a city where people like David Volodzko lose their jobs at the supposedly free press for sharing unpopular ideas on their own social media accounts.

Moreover, it drives me crazy how Americans compare everything they don’t like to Nazi Germany, and how easily we let the former Soviet Union off the hook, especially its campaign to eradicate Jews by turning them against their own identities, something that’s happening again today. (Dara Horn’s work on Purim and Hanukkah anti-Semitism is essential reading on this topic.) To this end, I’ll entertain even a partially baked hypothesis about the precise evil of evil people. Does comparing Hitler and Lenin change the outcome of history? No it does not.

And yet, we sure like when people get punished for saying anything remotely inaccurate about the Holocaust. When Whoopi blurted out some bad education about the Holocaust we almost lost our damn minds. Who gets to decide who gets canceled? Who decides which statues come down, and which ones are funny? Sacred values are indeed subjective.

In the end, the whole affair is just stupid and sad. It’s just a series of mistakes that culminate in an eventuality that everyone here knows can happen to them. Hitler may be worse, but in Seattle, Lenin always wins.

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Community Announcements

Check out the Seattle Jewish community calendar and the virtual calendar.

This week’s parasha is Ve’etchanan.

Candlelighting in Seattle is at 8:30 p.m.

Shoutouts

Lisa Kranseler is thankful to the WSJHS Board and Staff for their best wishes on her upcoming sabbatical from August to November. See you all then or around town – keep making history!

Shout out Dan Strauss for serving up the salmon at Seafood Fest last Sunday—and for taking the political gamble to shirk "Defund the Police" politics in his campaign. Shout out to Emily Alhadeff for covering the Jewbelong billboards. She knows exactly what a random Seattle Jew is wondering about. I remember the catchy Manhattan Mini Storage billboards from living in NYC. Makes perfect sense it's the same brilliant advertising mind. —Greg Scruggs