Booing Eric Yoffie

[oberliner]

The last time I covered a speech by Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who heads the Union for Reform Judaism, he was preaching the merits of gay unions at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University deep in Virginia. It got him booed.

Apparently, he's inured to it. He barely raised an eyebrow today when he got booed at the first J Street conference, when he said Richard Goldstone should be "ashamed of himself" for agreeing to probe alleged Israeli war crimes during last year's Gaza war under the auspices of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Yoffie, of course, has the rabbinical fondness for afflicting the comfortable, but his equanimity also has to do with the fact that in both cases, the boos were isolated and scattered, his hosts chastised the interlopers -- and because he also earned healthy applause.

Yoffie and J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami were joined in a town hall debate on what it means to be pro-Israel. He and Ben-Ami agreed on much -- most pronouncedly, on how national Jewish groups have their "head in the sand" when it comes to making clear to Israel what they said were the perils of its settlement policy.

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Yoffie rejected a question that suggested that Israel's prewar siege of Gaza was in itself an act of war; he said Israel complied with international law in allowing in the requisite supplies. Some in the audience cried out in protest ("Not true!") and they were rebuked by Jane Eisner, the Forward editor and moderator, who advised them that if they were unhappy with the format, they coud leave. During a slightly fraught pause, someone shouted out "You liar!" and Yoffie (and the hall) burst into laughter at the allusion to President Obama's congressional encounter with heckler Rep. Joe Wilson (R-N.C.).

http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/10/26/1008749/booing-eric-yoffie

[ProgressiveMuslim]

1. See Mondoweiss for interesting J Street conference commentary.

www.mondoweiss.org