‘What comes next?’ - The Jewish Standard

Nadav Tamir has long, impressive resume.

He was born on a kibbutz — Manara, in the upper Galilee, near Kiryat Shmona and the Lebanese border — and he’s an IDF veteran who fought in the first Lebanon war, including the battle of Jezzine, in 1982, and he’s held many other positions in the Israeli military. Now, he’s a major in the reserves.

He went from the IDF to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, held a number of posts there, and became Israel’s Boston-based consul general to New England. He worked with Israeli foreign affairs ministers, including then-future prime ministers Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, and was a senior advisor to Perez as prime minister. He’s earned a master’s degree in public administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

He clearly and proudly defines himself as a Zionist.

Now, in what he sees as a seamless move, driven by his love of Israel and his decades-long understanding of the relationship between Israel and the United States, he’s become the president of J Street Israel.

As part of his speaking tour of the United States, he’ll be in Bloomfield on Monday, May 11. (See box.)

Mr. Tamir explained why he’s at J Street.

“As an Israeli Zionist who served my country in the IDF and in the diplomatic corps as an advisor to the president, I chose to work for J Street because I believe that American foreign policy is critical to bringing peace to the Middle East, and that American foreign policy will never do the right thing if it is not pushed politically by the majority of American Jews,” he said. “American Jews who care about Israel, but who don’t think that caring about Israel means not caring about Palestinians, and who don’t think that caring about Israel means agreeing with the right-wing government we have in Israel now.

Mr. Tamir is touring the United States right now. “My presentation brings my expertise, my knowledge of what’s happening on the ground, and my long years serving the Israel-U.S. relationship,” he said. “But I tell audiences, ‘Listen, if you read the Declaration of Independence of Israel, you see that it says that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, and it is the homeland of every Jew or non-Jew who lives there.”

That means that “you have a voice. Because you cannot vote in Israel, your obligation is to use your voice in American politics to help save Israel from the occupation, which is the biggest danger to the Zionist vision.

“American foreign policy helped Israel achieve peace with Egypt and with Jordan. I tell American Jews that even though most Israelis are traumatized by October 7, and most Palestinians are traumatized by the aftermath of October 7 and the violence in the West Bank, I see a huge opportunity, because of the sense of urgency around the world, and because the regional players understand that the best way to create stability in the region is to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Mr. Tamir acknowledges that the American Jewish world is split, both sides believe that the other side is completely wrong and probably blind, and that the tension is both real and rising.

“Research shoes that right-wing Jews are in the minority,” he said, although that’s probably less true in northern New Jersey and MetroWest than elsewhere in the country. “Most American Jews care about Israel but think that Netanyahu and Trump are leading it in the wrong direction.

“They see the rising antisemitism, but they don’t always understand that this is not only the old antisemitism, which was always there, but some of it is fueled by what people see in Israel now. They think that Zionism is Jewish supremacy, because of what they see from people like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.” (Bezalel Smotrich is Israel’s finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir is the minister of national security. Both are proudly right wing, and both provide necessary political support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)

“People don’t always know that Zionism actually was a progressive movement, and Israel’s Declaration of Independence is a progressive document. That’s because they see a completely different picture of what Israel is, and they see its government as more in line with people like Trump, Orban in Hungary, and other populists.

“The relationship between the United States and Israel used to be based on the shared values of liberal democracies, which now are moving in a very dangerous direction.”

Mr. Tamir knows that there are some people whose beliefs are so firm that they are unshakeable, but he says that some of those beliefs, while understandable, are incorrect. “There is the narrative that says that all the Arabs want to kill us,” he said. “That is not the case. I’m talking from knowledge. The narrative is that we have no partner, and any Palestinian state is a threat to Israel. I have very strong arguments to show that this is not the case.”

What are the arguments?

“For years, we thought that we could solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bilaterally, just us and the Palestinians, and we were wrong,” Mr. Tamir said. “We did not want them to be empowered by the Arab countries. But that was a huge mistake, because no Palestinian leader could make compromises on Jerusalem or refugees, for provide security assurances to Israel.” The situation involves more of the Arab world than just the Palestinians, and they all will have to contribute to the solution.

“But we came to the conclusion that we either have to do it unilaterally, as Sharon did in Gaza, or bypass the Palestinians entirely, as we did in the Abraham Accords. But that exploded in our faces on October 7.

“Now, though, we have a huge opportunity to solve the conflict with the Palestinians as part of a new regional architecture — what we at J Street call the 23-state solution. That is all the Arab countries, plus Israel, plus Palestine, working together to bring stability to the Middle East, and marginalizing the jihadist Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and its proxies.

“It is a huge opportunity.

“Research shows that whenever there is hope, Palestinians support democracy. And whenever there is despair, most Palestinians support terrorism.

“We could support help. And that’s the role of Zionism, to take the initiative, to know that we have agency, and not to get stuck in the blame game, which in my view is very anti-Zionist.”

What about the war with Iran? Mr. Tamir says that “the war, unfortunately, was very popular in Israel, because many Israelis bought the narrative that if Israel and the United States go together, we could get rid of this regime on the first day. But that was impossible.”

And despite the indisputable awfulness of the Iranian regime, simply getting rid of it, had that been possible, probably would have exposed Israel to more dangers, Mr. Tamir suggested. “I saw what happened in Iraq, when we took down Saddam Hussein and we got ISIS,” he said. “And in Lebanon, eventually we only legitimized Hezbollah.

“After October 7, Israelis tend to believe that we have to react strongly to every threat. But what they don’t realize is that the military is only one tool in the national security arsenal. If it’s not part of a strategy, then you get nothing.

“It seems that instead of defeating the Iranian regime, we only made it stronger, in the sense that it has more leverage. Now it controls the world economy. And we might have created a situation in which Iran can become North Korea, in terms of its nuclear capabilities.

“I’m not a pacifist,” Mr. Tamir said. “I was an officer in the IDF. I belief that we need — that we always will need — a strong military. But we have to find the tools of diplomacy, and we have huge opportunities in Lebanon. Its government also wants to marginalize Hezbollah and the Iranian influence. And Syria is becoming anti-Iranian. But we keep on thinking that the only way to solve problems is with the military.

“I believe that at some point Trump will realize that he has to declare victory, even if it’s not victory, and stop it.

“I think that will be the moment for him to go back to his campaign promise, that he is a peacemaker, and to bring all the players together to create this 23-state solution that we’re talking about at J Street.

“And I believe that it’s possible because the Democrats are going to play a stronger role in the midterm elections.”

But the Democrats seem to have turned against Israel. Haven’t they?

“No,” Mr. Tamir aid. “That’s a big, big generalization, and I don’t accept it. There are people in the margins of the Democratic party who are anti-Israel. The majority of the party, the mainstream of the party, is very pro-Israel. But it is not pro-Netanyahu, and it is not pro-occupation. We have to make that distinction. All the candidates who I see as potential candidates to become the Democratic nominee all care about Israel, and about Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Mr. Tamir also believes that Netanyahu will lose the next election, although “that won’t happen on its own,” he said. “But it can if the opposition parties work together.”

Who: Nadav Tamir, executive director of J Street Israel

What: Will speak about the political situation in Israel; his talk is called What Comes Next

Where: At Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield

When: On Monday, May 11, at 8 p.m.

To learn more and to register: Go to nertamid.org