Bradley Burston : Sorry, Children of Israel. No Exodus for you.

Imagine this: You're a Hebrew slave in Egypt. Moses issues a call, summoning you and all the members of your household to prepare your livestock and a few belongings and some substandard baked goods, and join the Exodus. Many are hesitant, others apathetic, even hostile. He cajoles, he begs, he beseeches. You're convinced.
Imagine this: You're standing there with the multitudes, ready to go. A man in a black suit, one of your fellow Hebrews, but with a better hat, looks you over and tells you that you can't. Maybe it's because you're not going to want to expel everyone from Canaan. Maybe it's some other issue.
In any case, it's the first Celebrate Israel parade in our recorded history, and you can't go. Sorry, no Exodus for you.
Now imagine this: You're at the Passover seder table next week. Look around the table. Which of you would have been allowed to go, and who would not?
Imagine that, if you had been forced to stay behind, you wouldn't be here now, at this table …
A few hours from now, a group of rabbis and followers will gather outside the Manhattan offices of the New York Jewish Federation, to demand that other Jews be barred from taking part in the 50th annual Fifth Avenue Celebrate Israel parade.
Why? Because the demonstrators, led by at least two prominent rabbis, don't like what the Other Jews think.
Imagine if those rabbis had been put in charge of the Exodus?
The Other Jews, the Lesser Jews - the Jews whom this group wants to boycott – care deeply about Israel and its future. That's why they want to be in the parade. That's why they want to celebrate Israel.
However, according to the protesters, loving Israel is no longer a good enough reason "to be permitted" to march in the parade.
In their view, in order to Celebrate Israel, you have to celebrate the settlements as well. Or, at the very least, shut the hell up about them.
“There is no difference between Israel and the settlements,” said one of the protest movement's spearheads, Rabbi Elie Abadie, spiritual leader of the Upper East Side’s Edmond J. Safra Synagogue, the Moise Safra Community Center, the Magen David Congregation of Manhattan and the Sephardic Academy of Manhattan. “To single out Israel or even those communities in Judea and Samaria is discriminatory and immoral."
The Lesser Jews to be banned are members of organizations which support a two-state solution and oppose the movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. They include the New Israel Fund and J Street. One of the groups on the protest's blacklist, Partners for Progressive Israel, also supports a boycott of products made in settlements - as does the leader of Meretz, the Israeli political party that was the group's parent.
Abadie wrote the heads of the community groups sponsoring and organizing the parade, UJA-Federation of New York and the New York Jewish Community Relations Council, denouncing the Lesser Jews as "enemies of the state of Israel" whose “sole mission is to delegitimize and demonize the State of Israel until its extinction.”
“As a friend and admirer of your selfless devotion and dedication to Israel and the Jewish People," Abadie wrote, citing J Street, the New Israel Fund, and others on the Enemy of Israel list, "I urge you to disqualify these groups from ever marching in the Celebrate Israel Parade. Nothing less is acceptable.”
Other American pro-settlement activists went directly to the Holocaust in condemning the progressive Zionist groups, even though the same organizations have also come under attack from the hard left for opposing BDS.
"Back before the deathly Final Solution was implemented, Nazism defined itself through its boycotting of Jewish merchants, products, and professionals," wrote Rabbi Aryeh Spero in the algemeiner. "Nazi leaders understood that boycotting was the ultimate act of stigmatization and de-legitimization; it was anti-Jewish to the core."
To underscore the point the web page announcing the protest bears the following headline in boldface font:
Jews Do Not Call Upon Jews to Boycott Jews
Oddly enough, the protesters see no contradiction between their revulsion to boycotts, and a direct threat by Rabbi Abadie to the the JCRC and UJA-Federation: “Unless and until you assure me that the BDS supporting groups will not be marching in the Parade, I will pull our support from marching and will not be renewing our contract for a float this year.”
“Furthermore, I will be urging every rabbi and leader of every Sephardic organization (as well as many others) in our community including Yeshivah of Flatbush, Magen David Yeshiva, Hillel Yeshiva, Barkai Yeshiva, Gesher Yehuda and several others to pull their support from the Parade as well.”
One further note: Though the parade is not until June 1, the demonstration was called as Jews begin preparations for Pesach.
That is, less than a week before Jews worldwide commemorate freedom and coming-together. The JCRC and the New York Federation, who have accepted the participation of the progressive Zionists, deserve commendation for taking a stand in favor of both.
If it were up to the likes of Abadie and Spero, the Zionist Organization of America and others, when the enslaved Children of Israel were about to leave for the Exodus to the Promised Land, there would have been a battery of well-paid mashgihim, political kosher-stamp commissars, waiting on the near bank of the Red Sea to decide who may go and who may not.
The fact is, it's not like all of the Jews of America are lining up to express their support of, and feeling for, Israel. But these progressive Jews are. And all those supposedly pro-Israel, fervently pro-settlement rabbis and professional Jewish activists, want to do, is kick them in the teeth.
That's their message for progressive Jews in America. Right out loud. Settlements or nothing. Sorry. No Israel for you.  
http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.584547
New York's Celebrate Israel Parade.

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