All about Israel boycotts and the anti-Israelism of the left

The problem of Israel boycotts is not new. This piece by Amos Kenan originally appeared in the Israel daily newspaper Yediot Achronot shortly after the Six-Day Way and was widely circulated among American Jewish students in North America looking for an answer to the anti-Israel New Left. Please keep in mind the context of the late-Sixties as you read these words.

Seek Peace and Pursue It

08/10/2009

A Letter to all Good People

By Amos Kenan

I am for Cuba. I love Cuba. I am opposed to the genocide perpetrated by the Americans in Vietnam. But I am an Israeli, therefore I am forbidden to take all these stands. Cuba does not want me to love her. Someone has decided that I am permitted to love only the Americans. I don't mind so much that someone, especially the good people everywhere, have decided to outlaw me. I shall be able to get along without their help. But I do mind that I am not permitted any longer to love and hate according to my feelings, and according to my political and moral inclinations, and that I am refused invitation or even admittance to parties held by the good people. I am not permitted any longer to toast justice with a glass of champagne. I am not permitted to eat caviar and denounce the Americans. I am not permitted to stroll in the sun-drenched streets of Havana, arm-in-arm with my erstwhile good friends from St. Germain, Via Veneto and Chelsea, and celebrate the memory of Che Guevara, casting a threatening look at imperialism. I am also finally and absolutely forbidden to sign petitions of all sorts for human rights.

This situation drives me slightly out of my mind. Therefore I wish to relate a few confused, disconnected stories. Perhaps some good man will find the connection. One day an Israeli submarine sank in the Mediterranean with its 69 crew members. Its SOS was answered, among others, by the British, Turkish and Greek fleets. The Russian navy, which cruised very close to the location, did not join in the search. Moscow radio, in its Arab broadcasts, took the trouble to denounce the countries whose ships rushed to help the lost submarine. It is a sacred principle of seamen of all nations to hasten to the aid of distressed vessels. The Israeli submarine was not on a war mission, and Israel is not in a state of war with the Soviet Union.

I am not so naive as to believe that this is anti-Semitism, Soviet style. I have never believed that the Russians are guided, in their calculations, by such powerful and sincere emotions as anti-Semitism, which is common to both progressive and reactionary camps. I know that the Russians conduct a cool and considered pragmatic policy, and are guided by clear political considerations. This was a political move, carried out as a part of a political game. The meaning of this move can only be: Israel must be isolated from the civilised human community. The rules that apply to the civilised community, rules of honour, consideration and mutual aid, do not apply to me. I am out. There is only one more step to the conclusion: the shedding of my blood is no crime.

Forgive my brutal way of putting things. I cannot conceive of it otherwise. If this was a move in a game, the game must have an object. The object is the penetration of the Middle East, and let us assume, for the sake of arguments, that this is for the purpose of advancing world revolution and the overthrow of imperialism. The Middle East contains 100m. Arabs and 2.5m. Israelis. But it is not so easy, in our enlightened world, to wipe out 2.5m. people. A reason, and a justification, are needed. You cannot wipe out just like that. First of all you must outlaw. Therefore you must not invite an Israeli communist party to a convention of communist parties. Therefore you must not invite a leftist Israeli author to a conference of leftist authors in Havana. There are no more class distinctions. There are only national distinctions. Even an Israeli leftist is an imperialist. And an oil sheikh is a socialist. Therefore it is permissible to compare me to the Nazis. It is permissible to call me a Gauleiter. It is permissible to mobilize all of the world's conscientious people against me—and without them you cannot do it—and all this because there is an object looming beyond the horizon, an object for the sake of which this tactic is justifiable and useful.

Until quite recently, I also belonged to the Good People. Meaning that not only did I sit in cafes and sign petitions for the release of political prisoners in countries not my own, not only did I join proclamations, after sipping my aperitif, for the release of the downtrodden from the yoke of imperialism in places I shall never reach; I also did something against what seemed to me to be oppression and injustice in my own country. During the 20 years of the existence of the State of Israel I helped with my pen, in my regular newspaper column, the fight against the injustices committed against the Arab minority. And not by the pen only, but also in demonstrations, and also when arraigned before a military tribunal. I am used to being called a traitor by local patriots. During the Six Day War, in June 1967, the battalion I served in was ordered to supervise the demolition of four Arab villages: I considered it my duty to desert from my unit, to write a report of this action, and to send the copies to the General Staff of the army, to members of the government and to Knesset members. This report has been translated and circulated in the world as a proof of Israel's crimes.

But permit me to conclude the story. The action I undertook was in flagrant violation of any military law. I have no idea what would have happened to a Red Army soldier were he to violate national and military discipline in such a manner. After returning to my unit, I was ordered to present myself—I, in rank a private—before the general commanding all the divisions on that front. He told me that he had read my report, and considered it his duty to inform me that what had occurred was a regrettable error, which will not recur. Deep in my heart I disbelieved his statement that this was only a mistake. I was convinced that whoever ordered such an action did not expect such resistance from within—the men of my battalion refused to carry out the order—and was alarmed at the impression such an action might create abroad. But I was glad that he found it necessary to announce that this was only an error. I asked him how he intended to ensure that the 'error' will never recur. On the spot he signed an order permitting me free movement in all occupied territories, so that I could see with my own eyes that such an action had not recurred.

But since then, in all the peace-papers in the world, my report about the destruction of villages has been reprinted over and over again, as if it happened only yesterday, as if it is happening all the time. And this is a lie. It is like writing that witches have been burnt at the stake in England—omitting the date. I hereby request all those who believed me when I reported a criminal act, to believe me now too. And those who do not believe me now, I hereby request to disbelieve my former report too, and not to believe me selectively, according to their convenience. I should also add that the town of Kalkiliya, which began to be demolished during the writing of my report, is now in the process of being rebuilt, after the expelled inhabitants have been brought back.

This does not mean that other injustices are not perpetrated now. The less you fight me, the more you would help me fight them. Even the most leftist of men will not consent to be slaughtered when a sword is pointed at his throat. Even when the sword is a progressive one, it does not make it any the pleasanter. The trouble is that not a single serious person in the world believes today that Israel was really in danger of being annihilated. This is the optical illusion of 1968. The gigantic Goliath is threatening little David. The fact that Goliath is a giant, and that David is small, is only an optical illusion. If Goliath triumphs and tramples David under his feet, it is a sign that he really is a giant. But if little David beats the giant, people say: the giant David has trampled poor little Goliath in the dust. I claim that Israel played the role of David. And I claim that even now, after the stunning victory, it still is little David who has indeed beaten the stunned Goliath, but Goliath still is a menacing giant. Today, no less than in June 1967, Israel is in danger of annihilation. Unless the enlightened world mobilises now, immediately, perhaps it will be too late. But I am afraid that there are not many people in the world today who will be sorry if victorious David is destroyed. A bitter suspicion rises in me that even the most enlightened among the most progressive people still adhere to the Christian tradition that they imbibed with their mothers' milk: Jew, stay on the cross. Never get off it. The day you get off the cross and hurl it at the heads of your crucifiers, we shall cease to love you. Today the Arabs boast of waging a revolutionary guerrilla warfare. They claim to have copied the Viet Cong method of warfare and to apply it in the Middle East. They march with Che Guevara's picture. This makes me laugh. Just as Che Guevara's picture hanging in the luxurious salons of Montparnasse made me laugh. I have always wondered whether Che Guevara had a picture of Che Guevara hanging in his salon. What is a Viet Cong? The Viet Cong is not white flags on buildings. The Viet Cong means fighting to the last man. The Viet Cong of the Middle East, whether those who demonstrate with Che Guevara's picture like it or not, are we. We are prepared, at any moment to wage the battle to the death. After the death camps, we are left with only one supreme value: existence.

Our existence today, is inconvenient for those who work at the global balance of power. It is more convenient that there should be two camps, one white, the other black. We number, as I said before, only 2.5m. people. On the global map, what is the value of a few hundred thousand leftists, opposing the Eshkol government policy and striving for a genuine peace with the Arabs, who strive to liberate themselves from the one-way dependence on American power? Somebody has already decided to sacrifice us. The history of revolution is full of such sacrifices since the days of the Spanish War. At one time world revolution had been sacrificed on the altar of the revolution in one country. Today the calculation is somewhat subtler. Today they try to explain to us that there is an Arab socialism. That there is an Egyptian socialism, and an Algerian socialism. There is a socialism of slave-traders, and a socialism of oil magnates. There are all kinds of socialism, all aiming really at one and the same thing—the overthrow of imperialism, which happens to be one and indivisible. Once there was only a single kind of socialsm, which fed on principles, some of them moral. On the day that morality died there was born the
particular, conventional socialism, changing from place to place and from time to time, for which I have no other name but National Socialism.

I want to live. What can I do if Russia, China, Vietnam, India, Yugoslavia, Sartre, Russell, Castro, have all decided that I am made all of a piece? It is inconvenient for them to admit that there is an opposition in Israel too. Why should there be an opposition in Israel if in the Popular Democracies in Cuba or Algeria, there is only one party? And perhaps they do have pangs of conscience, but they have made their calculation, and found out that I am only one, only 10, only 100,000; and on the other side there are tens of millions, all led like a single man, in a single party, towards the light, towards the sun. And if so, who am I? I will tell you who I am: I am the man who will confuse and confound your progressive calculations. I have too much love for this vain world, a world of caviar, television, sunny beaches, sex and good wine. You go ahead and toast the revolution with champagne. I shall toast myself, my own life, bottle in one hand, rifle in the other. You send Soviet arms to Egypt. You isolate me. And in order to make it easier to isolate me, you change my name. My flesh, which you eat, you call fish. You don't want to protect me— neither against the Arabs, nor against the Russians, nor against Dayan or Johnson.

Moreover, when I try to call on you and tell you that I am against Dayan, against Eshkol, against Ben-Gurion, and ask for your help, you laugh at me and demand that I should return to the 4 June borders, unconditionally. Hold it! I refuse to play this game. If you give me back the pistol with which I tried to kill you, I won't kill you. Because I am a nice fellow. But if you don't give it back to me, I shall kill you, because you are a bad fellow. Why were the 4 June borders not peace borders on 4 June but will become peace borders now? Why were not the U.N. partition plan borders of 1947 peace borders then but will become so now? Why should I return the bandit his gun as a reward for having failed to kill me? I want peace peace peace peace peace peace peace. I am ready to give everything back in exchange for peace. And I shall give nothing back without peace. I am ready to solve the refugee problem. I am ready to accept an independent Palestinian state. I am ready to sit and talk. About everything, all at the same time. Direct talks, indirect talks, all this is immaterial. But peace. Until you agree to have peace, I shall give back nothing. And if you force me to become a conqueror, I shall become a conqueror. And if you force me to become an oppressor, I shall become an oppressor. And if you force me into the same camp with all the forces of darkness in the world, there I shall be.

There is no lack in Israel of rabid militarists. Their number is steadily increasing, the more our isolation becomes apparent. Nasser helps Dayan, Kosygin helps Eshkol. Fidel Castro helps the Jewish chauvinists. Who of the world's giants cares how many more Jews, how many more Arabs, bleed to death in the Sinai sands? There is no lack here of mad hysterical militarists. All those quiet citizens who went out to war with K.L.M. handgrips and in laundry trucks, who scribbled on their tanks: 'We want Home' . All those who fought without anger, without hatred, only for their lives, are becoming militaristic, convinced that only Israeli power, and nothing else in the world, will ever help us.

The only ones who are prepared to defend me, for reasons I don' t like at all, are the Americans. It is convenient for them, for the time being. You are flinging me towards America, the bastion of democracy and the murderer of Vietnam, who tramples the downtrodden peoples and spares my life, who oppresses the Negroes and supplies me with arms to save myself. You leave me no other alternative. You don' t even offer me humiliating terms, to be admitted through the rear door into the progressive orgy. You don' t even want me to overthrow my government. You only want me to surrender, unconditionally, and to believe the spokesmen of the revolution that henceforth no Jewish doctors will be murdered, and that they will limit themselves to the declaration that Zionism is responsible for the riots in Warsaw.

Very funny. The truth is that I and Sartre, two people with the same vision, more or less, with the same ideal, more or less, and if I may be permitted to impertinence, with the same moral level, more or less, are now at the two sides of the barricade. We have been pushed to both sides by the cold calculations of the people who sent us, or abandoned us. But the fact remains—these are not Americans shooting Russians, or capitalists shooting socialists, or freedom-fighters shooting the oppressors. It is I, shooting Sartre. I see him in my gun sights; he sees me in his gun sights. I still don' t know which of us is faster, more skilled, or more determined to kill or be killed. Neither do I know who shall be more lucky—the one who has no other alternative, or the one who acts out of choice. One thing is clear to me; if I survive, I shall mourn Sartre's death more than he would mourn mine. And if that happens, I shall never be consoled until I wipe from under the heavens both the capitalists and the communists. Or they me. Or each the other. Or all destroy all. And if I survive even that, without a god but without prophets either, my life will have no sense whatsoever. I shall have nothing else to do but walk on the banks of streams, or on the top of the rocks, watch the wonders of nature, and console myself with words of Ecclesiastes, the wisest of men: "For the light is sweet, and it is good for the eyes to see the sun

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UCC Israel Boycott initiative failed, but they'll be back:

A boycott initiative failed, but they'll be back:

Hijacking Interrupted: United Church of Canada Says No to Anti-Israel Boycott

Despite a plea by an activist from the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, the General Council of United Church of Canada has voted down two proposals to boycott Israel, and denied approval to a third that was originally accompanied by background material that obliquely accused un-named Jewish members of the Canadian Parliament of being disloyal to Canada because of their support for Israel. The vote took place on Thursday, Aug. 14, 2009, shortly after the commission voted to repudiate the background material associated with these resolutions

The Council's decision does not prohibit local churches from boycotting Israel and leaves open possibility that the denomination will re-consider the issue at its next meeting in 2012. United Church of Canada Spokesman Rev. Bruce Gregersen, reported that the commission dealing with the issue took the following action:

What the commission did finally is say that the United Church has not begun or approved a boycott at a national level. However, it has stated its encouragement and recommendation to its member bodies, to conferences and presbyteries and congregations across the church that they are free to study, to discern, and to pray on how to undertake their own initiatives which may include an economic boycott as a means of ending the occupation.

The General Council has also instructed the General Secretary of the General Council to "begin a process of study discernment and prayer around the use of a number of means to end the occupation which may include also further consideration of an economy boycott and come back to the 41^st council for a recommendation," Gregersen said.

Before the council rejected the boycott proposals they heard testimony from Rabbi Reuven Bulka, immediate past co-president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and Nora Carmi from Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. Carmi began her testimony with the following exhortation:

Sisters and brothers, do not fear little flock and bravely follow our Savior Jesus Christ who came to proclaim the release to the captives, good news to the poor and let the oppressed be free. Discipleship means risk and risk is costly. But stand firm.

Carmi then called on delegates to approve the two boycott resolutions and a third which invoked the Fourth Geneva Convention and notions of anti-racism in an effort to portray Israel as an apartheid state while remaining silent about the war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated by Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The resolutions, Carmi said would not only "contribute to ending the suffering of and the injustice against my people the Palestinians, but will honestly help the rulers of Israel to do justice, to love mercy and walk humbly with God as the teachings and morality of Judaism dictate."

Continued - Hijacking Interrupted: United Church of Canada Says No to Anti-Israel Boycott

Continued (Permanent Link)

Naim Ateek: An Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity

Naim Ateek and his Sabeel group are leaders in Christian Israel bashing efforts of mainline Protestant churches in the USA. Ateek and Sabell do not believe in a two state solution and is therefore sabotaging the peace process. If they were Jews with the same ideas, they would be called "ultranationalist" and obstacles to peace. But their one state solution is an Arab state in which the Jews will have no right to self determination. For what reason are they given a platform to legitimize their noxious views at countless churches in the USA?

In his article e Anglican priest disgraces authentic Christianity, Dexter Van Zile asks what type of god inheres in the so-called peacemaking ministry of Anglican Priest Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, notes that Naim Ateek is drumming up support for his latest book, A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation (Orbis, 2008), in which he falsely accuses Israel of perpetrating a "slow and creeping genocide" against Palestinians — who have one of the fastest growing populations in the world.

Ateek has long been a fixture at "Christian" events of a certain kind. The book gives him an excuse to peddle a vile that repeats Christian anti-Semitic accusations and repackages them as "theology." As Van Zile points out:

Apparently, leveling false accusations at the Jewish people and their homeland is not enough to get one barred from polite society in 21st century America.

He concludes:

The story Naim Ateek tells about the Arab-Israeli conflict, cloaked as it is in the language of Christian peacemaking, attests to the existence of a deaf, dumb and blind god who would use Muslim and Arab violence against Israel as a scourge against the Jewish people.

Such a god is not worthy of worship.

Ami Isseroff

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Sports: Inspiration and Zionist experiences at Maccabiah games

The most touching testimony of the Maccabiah games was the competition of Josh Small, son of Greg Small, one of the victims of the terrible bridge accident twelve years ago at an earlier Maccabiah. He came to Israel all the way from Australia despite the tragic death of his father, or because of it:

 

"He only started the journey, he never finished it so I want to finish what he began," Josh Small told Australian Associated Press on Thursday. "It's what has inspired me and driven me."

Australia has competed at the Games since 1953 and will field a 400-person team this year for the 10-day games.

Josh Small, who was only seven when his father died, took up bowling at the age of 14. He'll wear his dad's uniform when he begins competing in the Maccabiah event.

"It's something I can't explain," he said. "When I bowl it feels like I have a bond with my father which drives me."

His mother, Suzanne, who suffered serious injuries in the bridge collapse, arranged a coach for Josh -- the same person who coached Greg Small.

"My mom rang him up. He usually doesn't take people under 16 but because of his relationship with dad he took me on when I was 14," Josh Small said.

Even without such tragedies, the Zionist endeavor requires dedication and devotion. Zionist experiences are often physically unpleasant and not objectively rewarding.

Daily News executive Brad Weiss visited Israel for the first time in his life (he's 35) as a participant in the Maccabiah games. He didn't win any medals. He was greeted by the infernal summer heat of Israel,  but he nonetheless found the trip inspiring. The experience you have, and how you or you  or anyone views Israel depends on what you bring with you. This is his story:

Brad Weiss would like to have won a medal at the Maccabiah Games Tuesday in Israel. Unfortunately for the Senior Account Executive-New Business Development for the Daily News, Weiss did not win any hardware. Still, the runner didn't come away empty-handed.

 

"The way I viewed this race coming in was that it was basically 'the cherry on top of the sundae' in terms of the whole Maccabiah experience," Weiss said in an e-mail last night. "I've made friends for a lifetime and would wholeheartedly recommend the experience to anyone that is given the opportunity to visit Israel."

 

Weiss finished sixth overall (fourth for men under 40) in the open division for the half marathon at the Maccabiah Games yesterday. He was one of five men running for the United States in the open division and ran a team-best time of 1:21:27. The Maccabiah Games is an international competition for Jewish and Israeli athletes.

 

"What an amazing experience to be here in Israel for the first time," Weiss said. "The race was one of the most difficult in terms of weather conditions that I've ever run in, not to mention the extremely hilly course."

 

Weiss, 35, left for Israel July 2 and had a pre-camp workout in Shefayim for before heading to Jerusalem for more training. The half marathon was run in Netanya, Israel at 11:30 a.m. yesterday in temperatures that Weiss said were about 90 degrees.

 

"Despite the difficulty of the race, I was able to turn to my teammate and good friend (seven miles into the race) to point out the amazing view that was straight ahead of us as the sun was setting over the sea," Weiss said. "It was a surreal moment that I just wanted to take in to soak it all up as I was realizing how lucky I am to have been blessed to be part of this whole experience."

 

Perhaps Weiss did not win the race, but oerhaps Weiss and the Jewish won something much more important.

 

Israel and Zionists all over the world need to say thank you to all the athletes who came here to participate and show their faith in Israel and the Zionist endeavor, and especially to the Australian contingent, who kept faith with Israel despite the tragedy of the bridge collapse.

 

Ami Isseroff

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Peruvian Jews of forgotten jungle town leave for Israel

It took so long for them to remember that they are Jews, even though the town has been decaying for a long time. The reason was no doubt the ideal conditions and affluence, which made people to leave this paradise for the wilds of impoverished Tel Aviv and Savyon. The article explains:

The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and downriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews...

Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the vestiges of Judaism here. Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.

And of course, such a paradise attracts Jews from all over the world:

By the start of this decade, the Jews here were gathering to observe Shabbat each Friday and during the High Holy Days at the home of the patriarch, Mr. Edery. After he died, they met on Próspero Street at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose father, a Polish Jew, moved here long after the collapse of the rubber boom.

And the Jews who come to Israel may be unhappy:

Mr. Reátegui Levy, the oil field inspector, moved in 2005 with his wife and six children to Ramla, a dusty city southeast of Tel Aviv. But despite dreaming for decades of such a move, he said he had trouble adjusting to Israeli life.

He said he missed his house with cacao and passion fruit trees, and the status of being a manager at PetroPerú. He murmured something, just audible over the din of this city's thousands of motorcycle rickshaws, about losing the spark of love with his wife.

So, unlike nearly all the Iquiteños who moved to Israel, Mr. Reátegui Levy moved back, alone.

Be it ever so malaria, cholera and snake infested, there's no place like home.

Still, cynicism aside, it is good that some people are remembering they are Jewish. All over the world, there are many communities and families like the people in Iquitos. There are many more who have forgotten, whose ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity or Islam. Judaism, it seems to me, should extend a welcoming hand to those who wish to return. Hopefully, not only those who are poverty stricken and desperate will remember their roots.

Ami Isseroff

Adopting Forebears' Faith and Leaving Peru for Israel
By SIMON ROMERO

IQUITOS, Peru — If Ronald Reátegui Levy someday finds that he is the last Jew of Iquitos, it may well be of his own doing.

His dream, which he has vigorously pursued, is to persuade the descendants of Sephardic merchants who settled in this remote corner of the Amazon basin more than a century ago to reaffirm their ties to Judaism and emigrate to Israel.

"It is getting very lonely here," said Mr. Reátegui Levy, 52, an inspector at Peru's national oil company, referring to the more than 400 descendants of Jewish pioneers who have formally converted to Judaism this decade, including about 160 members of his immediate and extended family. Nearly all of them now live in Israel.

Until recently, such a rebirth of Judaism here seemed unlikely. The history of Jews in Iquitos, dating from the late-19th-century rubber boom that transformed this far-flung Amazonian outpost into a once thriving city of imported Italian marble and a theater designed by Gustave Eiffel, was almost forgotten.

But Mr. Reátegui Levy and a handful of others began organizing the descendants of dozens of Jews from places as varied as Morocco, Gibraltar, Malta, England and France who had settled here and deeper in the jungle, opening trading houses and following their star in search of riches and adventure.

The rubber trade collapsed, and fortunes here and downriver in the Brazilian city of Manaus vanished. Some Jewish immigrants perished young, succumbing to diseases like cholera. A few stayed, marrying local women and raising families. Others returned home, leaving behind descendants who clung to a belief that they were Jews.

"It was astounding to discover that in Iquitos there existed this group of people who were desperate to reconnect to their roots and re-establish ties to the broader Jewish world," said Lorry Salcedo Mitrani, the director of a new documentary, "The Fire Within," about the Jews of the Peruvian Amazon.

Scholars compare the Jews here with groups like the Hispanic crypto-Jews of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico, the Lemba of southern Africa or the Bene Israel of India, who in varying ways have sought to reclaim a Jewish identity that had seemingly been weakened through time.

"We were isolated for so many decades, living on the jungle's edge in a Catholic society without rabbis or a synagogue, in which all we had were some vague notions of what it meant to be Jewish," Mr. Reátegui Levy said.

"But when I was a child, my mother told me something that forever burned into my mind," he said. "She told me, 'You are a Jew, and you are never to forget that.' "

Iquitos lies four degrees south of the Equator, reachable only by boat or plane. Isolation, intermarriage and assimilation nearly wiped out the vestiges of Judaism here. Storefronts chiseled with Jewish surnames like Foinquinos and Cohen, and a cemetery ravaged by vandals, served as some of the few reminders of the community that once thrived here.

But by the end of the 1990s, some of these descendants, including Mr. Reátegui Levy, were brought together by Víctor Edery, a patriarchal figure who organized religious ceremonies in his own home, keeping a few customs alive even if it was done by blending Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Still, the existence of the Jews of Iquitos posed some philosophical challenges to some Jews elsewhere. Since nearly all the Jews who originally settled here were men, their descendants could not attest to having Jewish mothers, ruling them out as being Jewish according to strict interpretations of Jewish law.

Moreover, the Jewish community of about 3,000 people in Lima, the capital, largely preferred to ignore the Jews of Iquitos, some scholars say, in part because of the thorny issues that the Jews here posed about race and origins. This is, after all, a country where a small light-skinned elite still wields considerable economic and political power — and Lima's Jews are often seen as an elite within that elite.

"The notion of a Jew who looks like an Indian and lives in a poor house in a small city in the middle of the jungle is, at best, an exotic footnote to the official history of Peru's Jewry as Lima sees it," said Ariel Segal, a Venezuelan-born Israeli historian whose arrival here in the 1990s to study the community also helped serve as a catalyst for the Iquitos Jews to organize.

By the start of this decade, the Jews here were gathering to observe Shabbat each Friday and during the High Holy Days at the home of the patriarch, Mr. Edery. After he died, they met on Próspero Street at the home of Jorge Abramovitz, 60, whose father, a Polish Jew, moved here long after the collapse of the rubber boom.

While they lacked a rabbi, they conducted services in Hebrew they learned from cassette tapes. They cleaned their cemetery and began burying their dead there again. They persisted in their campaign to be recognized as Jews and to be allowed to emigrate to Israel.

Finally, they persuaded Guillermo Bronstein, the chief rabbi of Lima's largest Ashkenazi synagogue, to oversee two large conversions, easing the way for hundreds to move to Israel. The exodus included nearly the entire Levy clan, descended from Joseph Levy, an adventurer who put down stakes here in the 19th century.

Mr. Reátegui Levy, the oil field inspector, moved in 2005 with his wife and six children to Ramla, a dusty city southeast of Tel Aviv. But despite dreaming for decades of such a move, he said he had trouble adjusting to Israeli life.

He said he missed his house with cacao and passion fruit trees, and the status of being a manager at PetroPerú. He murmured something, just audible over the din of this city's thousands of motorcycle rickshaws, about losing the spark of love with his wife.

So, unlike nearly all the Iquiteños who moved to Israel, Mr. Reátegui Levy moved back, alone.

He still attends Shabbat at Mr. Abramovitz's home each week, along with 40 or so other regulars who dream of formally converting and moving to Israel. While their numbers have dwindled, he encourages them and regales them with tales of fertile land in the Golan Heights and the bravery of his eldest son, Uri, who is in the Israeli Army.

But something keeps Mr. Reátegui Levy here in Iquitos, the same decaying jungle city that attracted his great-grandfather from Tangier so many decades ago. "My family, my heart and soul, all that I hold dear are in Israel," he said. "Maybe I am back here for a reason."

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Conspiracy theory Gem: Iranian opposition leader Mousavi is a Jew

It was inevitable that someone would claim that Mousavi is a Jew. That explains everything. Now we know who is responsible for all the problems in Iran. International Zionism.

Update: This was a hoax. The origin of it is here. I've been had. But there are evidently people arguing that the Iran unrest is the work of the CIA.

MOUSAVI (of Moses) is a Jew

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Giti from India sends me this conspiracy gem;

It is well known Mousavi (of Moses) is a Jew and the demonstrations in Iran are the work of Mossad agent provocateurs. The ordinary people of Iran are peace loving and would not wish to threaten the Islamic revolution. The agitators are funded by international zionism and the Jew owned international media, in thrall to the zionist oppressors, are running alongside.

Cross posted: Israel News Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Taking down fake Zionists and "pro-Israel" groups

I am glad that someone has had the courage to speak out about fake "pro-Israel" groups. I too got the e-mails that urged Jews to "stand up for Obama" and bombard congress to vote down the initiative to give President Obama the legal power to impose energy sanctions on Iran, as noted in the article. It was amusing to try to puzzle out how voting down a bill that would give a president power could be "support" for that president. I thought supporting a president was done by giving him more power, not less. It was even more amusing to read In Time magazine that the order for this initiative came directly from the White House and that it is part of Obama's strategy. These groups are more "pro-Obama" than Obama. They are so "pro-Obama' that they are against Obama's policies.

I think that their support of negotiations with Hamas. and M.J. Rosenberg's support, which ran to an obsession, for Charles Freeman, are far worse than their "support" of Obama, and much harder to justify. Obama is the President and Americans are going to tend to agree with his policies. But Freeman is the head of a large Arab lobby group and is outspokenly anti-Israel, pretty much to the point of anti-Semtism. As for Jews who support the genocidal Hamas, that is totally beyond comprehension.

Ami Isseroff

Candidly Speaking: Bogus 'Zionist' Israel-bashers

Jun. 9, 2009
Isi Leibler , THE JERUSALEM POST

It is ironic that many of the disconcerting themes relating to Israel in US President Barack Obama's Cairo speech replicated those widely promoted for months by a noisy minority of radical American Jews. These "Israel bashers" now proudly proclaim that the new language being employed by Obama "echoes the vocabulary we use."

On the eve of Binyamin Netanyahu's arrival in Washington, a full page advertisement inserted by the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) appeared in The New York Times. Instead of the customary welcome message to a visiting prime minister or expressions of solidarity, it urged Obama to press Israel to make further unilateral concessions to the Palestinians, assuring him that in the event of a confrontation, he would enjoy the backing of most American Jews because "they are not Israelis living in exile." IPF's Washington director, M.J Rosenberg, issued a call to neutralize "the minority of Jews falsely" purporting to present the Jewish community as "blind supporters" of the Israeli government.

ISRAEL POLICY FORUM is only one of a cluster of radical left-wing organizations that have the chutzpa to describe themselves as lovers of Israel and even "Zionists," while actively lobbying the Obama administration to pressure Israel. They deviously sugarcoat their anti-Israeli campaigns by comparing themselves to parents whose children are drug addicts requiring "tough love" to force them to change their dangerous habits.These sentiments were effectively replicated in Obama's Cairo speech.

They were joined in April last year by J Street, a new group initially funded by the Jewish tycoon George Soros who had achieved notoriety for demonizing successive Israeli governments irrespective of their political leanings.

J Street and another radical group, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, proudly announced that they had succeeded in persuading 11,000 of their members to bombard the White House with e-mails urging Obama to stand firm against Netanyahu.

During the Gaza offensive, J Street condemned the action against Hamas as "disproportionate." Refusing to "pick a side" and identify "who was right and who was wrong," it applied moral equivalency to both parties proclaiming that "we recognize that neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right and wrong... While there is nothing 'right' in raining rockets on Israeli families or dispatching suicide bombers, there is nothing 'right' in punishing a million and a half already suffering Gazans for the actions of the extremists amongst them."

J Street also opposes Israel's efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Despite the fact that Israelis of all political opinions are united on this issue, J Street members were e-mailed and urged to actively lobby against a bipartisan congressional resolution calling for tougher sanctions to be applied against Iran.

The radical groups also resurrected the bogus anti-Semitic charge of "dual loyalties," warning Jews that by continued "blind" support of Israel, they risked alienating the American public and would be condemned for displaying greater loyalty toward Israel than the US. They were almost hysterical in their condemnation of Jews who exercised their rights to protest against the proposed appointment of the fiercely anti-Israel Charles Freeman to head the National Security Agency. IPF spokesmen went so far as to explicitly state that being an anti-Israeli fanatic was insufficient grounds for barring a person from assuming a senior administration role.

If there was any doubt about J Street, its endorsement of the British anti-Semitic play Seven Jewish Children, effectively a contemporary blood libel, placed it squarely in the camp of those seeking to demonize the Jewish state. It justified its support on the grounds that the play would promote "rigorous intellectual engagement and civil debate on which our community prides itself."

J Street and IPF also seek to slander and undermine AIPAC, the highly effective pro-Israel lobby group, depicting it as an extreme right-wing and hawkish body although it has consistently promoted the policies of all Israeli governments, including the dovish administrations preceding Netanyahu.

IN AN ENVIRONMENT in which global anti-Semitism and demonization of Israel are beginning to make inroads into the United States, the potential of such radical groups to destabilize the standing of Israel should not be underestimated.

Never before has the Jewish community faced a situation in which organizations presenting themselves as Zionists shamelessly lobby their president to pressure the democratically elected government of the Jewish state to make concessions which could have life and death implications for its citizens.

Not that anti-Jewish Jews are a new phenomenon. Jewish communists were bitterly opposed to the campaign to liberate Soviet Jewry and defended state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. But they were marginalized and regarded as pariahs by the Jewish community.

The problem in the US is that the established Jewish leaders decided to ignore these organizations, mistakenly believing that confrontations would be construed as attempts to restrict freedom of expression and would transform the radicals into martyrs.

But the issue of freedom of expression is a red herring. Any Jew is entitled to express his beliefs, no matter how nauseating or deviant such views may appear to the majority. That certainly applies to those arguing in favor or in opposition to settlements. Surely the red lines are being crossed when, as distinct from expressing views, American based organizations claiming to "love" Israel aggressively lobby the US government to pressure it to make concessions that could place lives at risk. To tolerate such groups within the framework of the Jewish community provides them with an aura of respectability to which they are not entitled. Alas, today some of these groups already attend administration briefings on a par with the recognized mainstream organizations.

Furthermore, failure to confront these Israel bashers has already provided the general media with grounds to suggest that American Jewish support of Israel is collapsing. That has certainly encouraged the Obama administration to intensify its pressure on the Netanyahu government. It may also cause some weak-kneed Jews to distance themselves from Israel to avoid confronting a popular American president.

There are even ominous mutterings predicting a possible replay of what transpired during World War II, when fearing a confrontation and bedazzled by president Franklin Roosevelt, Jewish leaders lacked the courage to protest against the indifference of the US government to the Nazi extermination of the Jews.

Now, as never before, when the beleaguered State of Israel confronts Iran, potentially one of the greatest existential threats since its creation, the support of American Jews is crucial.

A united Jewish community should marginalize the anti-Israeli radicals and urge Obama (who received 80 percent of its votes) to stand by commitments made to Israel by previous US administrations in the same manner as the Netanyahu government is obliged to adhere to undertakings made by previous Israeli governments. A strong Jewish stand in this direction could effectively tip the balance in averting a catastrophic major rift between the US and Israel.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Big choice at York University Israel debate

One state or one state, take your pick at the York University debate on "paths to peace." This is a wide and fair choice, really. You can have a secular Palestinian democracy like Syria or an Islamic Republic like Iran. Yes, "peace" can be achieved by destroying your enemy. It would not be the first time that peace was achieved through genocide.

Good thing Jeff Halper is invited. No hate-Israel gathering could be complete without Jeff Halper, who has done a monumental job of discrediting the cause of peace and Palestinian rights and turning it into an insane mockery. Halper is a veteran of the hatemongering fake "peace" movement.

The worst aspect of these activities is that the bad, fake peace makers inevitably drive out the good ones and make it impossible for them to work by delegitimizing the cause of peace. If the Palestinians do not want self-determination, it is their business, but they needn't try to foist this idea on the Jews.

It is really sad that York university has succumbed to this sort of cheap racism and Stalinist debating style. The terror groupies already tried to hold an "Israel Apartheid Week" at York University. You'll be glad to know that one of their speakers was scheduled to be "Sahabphan Jesuthasan. York Student, President, Tamil Students Association." The problem of the Tamil Tigers terrorists, one of the most notorious suicide terror groups, was since settled in a most satisfactory manner, by eliminating the group and killing their head, proving that it is possible to win an assymmetric war. Terrorists are not invincible. Nobody counted the civilian casualties. Sri Lanka declared a national holiday. If you will, it is no legend. Yes, peace can be achieved by wiping out your enemy. However, those who wish for that kind of "peace" should take into account that it is probably their side that will get wiped out.

YORK UNIVERSITY VS. ISRAEL:

"ACADEMIC FREEDOM" OR ACADEMIC FARCE?

Gerald M. Steinberg

Chair, Political Science, Bar Ilan University

and Executive Director, NGO Monitor

The President of York University in Toronto has issued a statement attempting to defend his university's sponsorship of an event headlined "Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace", scheduled for June 22 to 24. This response to intense criticism of the program attempts to portray serious criticism as an attack on academic freedom. However, in examining the details and the debate over this event, and in the context of vulgar anti-Israel activities and physical intimidation of Jewish students at York, these bland words are a diversion -- a straw man aimed at deflecting criticism, and blocking the important public debate over the role of university campuses as battlefields in the Arab-Israeli narrative wars that perpetuate the violent conflict.

York's defense seeks to answer the public statement issued by Hershell Ezrin, head of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA). This analysis was based on a careful examination of the speakers and their topics, which reveals that this conference "aims to explore a one-state, bi-national solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, the imposition of which would spell the end of Israel as a Jewish state. The conference will include a number of speakers who are recognizable for their roles as organizers and outspoken proponents of 'apartheid week' and the Israel boycott movement."

Far from an attack on academic freedom, such criticism highlights the very absence of the free exchange in a marketplace of ideas which is the indispensible foundation for academic freedom. The extremely complex history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and multiple dimensions of peace efforts contrast starkly with the narrowly constricted ideologies reflected in the list of 44 speakers. This information is readily available using the internet, and had the eleven sponsors -- six from York, four from Queen's university and a government funded research framework -- exercised "due diligence", they would have found that many of the speakers are virulent anti-Israeli activists, and are far removed from academic work to understand complex issues through research and debate. In other words, it is the conference that constitutes a brutal attack on academic freedom, rather than the analysts and critics.

For example, the first speaker on the list is Ali Abunimah, who runs a propaganda internet site known as the "Electronic Intifada", specializing in demonization of Israel through articles such as "Why Israel won't survive".. Abunimah is also affiliated with a political organization (PCHR) based in Gaza that systematically distorts and exploits the language of human rights – also to attack Israel. Abunimah's groups frequently condone Palestinian terrorism using the euphemism of "resistance" and terms like "apartheid" and "racist" in reference to Israel – the exact opposite of promoting compromise and a two state solution. Attempts to feature speakers like Abunimah under the banner of peace research is dishonest, and rather than attempting to prevent this criticism by pretending that academic freedom is at stake, York university officials should welcome the analysis

While the ideological bios and activist records of all 44 speakers would fill dozens of pages (a task that the sponsors at York University should undertake as a public service), a few more illustrations are useful. Jeff Halper is another veteran pro-Palestinian campaigner, far removed from any academic pursuits. He runs a small organization that claims to oppose the demolition of Palestinian houses, but most of his activities are aimed at generating support for the Palestinian narrative. He recently participated in sailing a few small boats from Cyprus to Hamas-controlled Gaza, hoping to engage in publicity-generating confrontations with the Israeli Navy. Halper often appears in support of Naim Ateek, whose speeches include classical antisemitic references, such as accusing Israel of "crucifying Palestinians". The context of Palestinian mass terror attacks, the mangled bodies, and the hatred against Israelis that promotes this inhuman behavior, is entirely erased.

An Israeli columnist recently witnessed Halper urging "his Muslim listeners in an American university to reject the Arab Peace Initiative, because it serves the Muslim tyrants. He told his listeners that Israel is actually a force that serves world capitalism, in the framework of the attempt to make enormous populations in the world disappear. The antisemites could not have said it better." To label such activities as promoting peace or remotely connected to university discourse is an insult to intelligent people. Recently, Halper's main benefactor, the European Union, rejected his application for renewed funding, but YorkUniversity – for reasons yet to be explained – is giving him the façade of academic legitimacy.

Amidst the long list of speakers, there are also few genuine academics – whom critics might dismiss as fig leaves for the hard-core propagandists -- but even here, the ideological range runs from strongly critical of Israel (but accepting the legitimacy of Jewish sovereign equality) to extremely critical (one-state promoters, tantamount to "wiping Israel off the map".) Although there are many academics whose research goes beyond one-dimensional Israel bashing, and examines the failures of Arab, Palestinian, and Moslem leaders to contribute to peace making, these dimensions are conspicuously absent from the program. In this Orwellian twist, the use of "academic freedom" is a mask for the crude censorship at York.

With so many obvious distortions, the defense offered by the President of York University is a farce. Without a free market of ideas, academic freedom, and even the concept of a university, is meaningless. Given a conference which fails to even hint at the complexity of the issues, the result is not censorship, but the transformation of the university into a macabre circus that sells hatred, martyrdom and murder.

In a free society, the circus, like the university, is open to all – as P.T. Barnum observed, "There's a sucker born every minute". But in the Middle East, such farces will only serve to fuel the vicious warfare and mass terror which has taken the lives of tens of thousands of Israelis, Palestinians, and others, and is escalating into nuclear confrontation. And York University has become an accomplice in this crime.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Illegal racist Zionist colonialist settler - Ehav Ever

Here is the sort of Zionist that right thinking (or left thinking) progressive people everywhere will love to exhibit as a racist colonialist western Zionist settler from America intruding on the rights of the oppressed Palestinian people -- the kind of Settler who in media canards is supposed to put on his Kippah and say a blessing before killing an Arab.

As a good right - thinking progressive would see it, Ehav Ever lives in the illegal colonialist Zionist settlement of Maaleh Edumim in the illegally occupied West Bank, next to the illegally occupied Arab city of Arab Jerusalem, which is where Suleiman the Arab Muslim built his temple, right? He is a rich and elitist Electrical Engineering graduate who works for an Israeli hi-tech firm, and he came on Aliya from the United States. The typical Christian Peace Teams stereotype of a male Jew settler. This is clearly the sort of racist colonialist Zionist guy Ken Loach and his friends would love to boycott, especially as Ehav Ever is opposed to a two state solution, which he thinks is besides the point. Go for it!

You can see Ehav Ever's Web log here: Hochma Umusar and you can see his video on Real Zionism too. In the video he explains why Israel belongs to Jewish people.

But in case you are too lazy to check it out (your loss), here's a hint about one fact about Ehav Ever that should be totally irrelevant, but that you might want to know. Here's his picture. When you write your articles and Web logs about the racist Zionist colonialist illegal settlers, be sure to include the picture, so everyone understands your point about racism.

"Zionism is racism" - right?

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

'Durban II' draft resolution drops Israel criticism

If this is factual, it is good news. The question remains, whether the meeting itself will be turned into a circus.

Draft for 'Durban II' meeting drops Israel criticism
Mar. 17, 2009
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Muslim-backed references to 'defamation of religion' and Israel have been dropped from a draft being prepared for next month's world racism meeting, United Nations officials said on Tuesday.

The draft now speaks only of concern about the "negative stereotyping of religions" and does not single out Israel for criticism.

Muslim countries had demanded free speech be limited to prevent criticism of Islam and other faiths. They also wanted to take Israel to task for its treatment of Palestinians.

Israel and Canada have said that they will boycott the April 20-25 meeting in Geneva. The United States and Italy said that they would not attend unless countries committed to a balanced declaration. The European Union warned it may stay away unless Muslim countries back down.

Continued (Permanent Link)

PROUD OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO AND HER SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

PROUD OF TRINIDAD & TOBAGO AND HER SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

Trinidad & Tobago is one of the most cosmopolitan countries in the world. Our population of 1.5 million is comprised of people of African, East Indian, Chinese, European, Mediterranean, Arab and Native American descent. We boast of the many churches, mosques and Hindu temples which dot the landscape of our tiny island. Racism, though ever so slightly present in politics, is not a true problem which plagues our society. Trinidad & Tobago a veritable paradise – a land of oil and money, Carnival and calypso, rum and calypso, beautiful beaches and sweeping skyscrapers, if only for one thing: Trinidad & Tobago seems to be under the "curious spell of anti-Semitism without Jews." For while our people adhere to the faiths of almost every major world religion, Jews and Judaism is largely unrepresented here. In total, the entire Trinidadian Jewish population accounts for only about 100 persons. Many of them are well-known figures, but their Jewishness is not something which they broadcast – and for good reason. Anti-Semitism is growing in Trinidad, in no small part thanks to the efforts of the approximately seventy thousand Muslims who call Trinidad & Tobago home.

Once there was a flourishing Jewish community in Trinidad – with over 5,000 Jews calling Trinidad home and terming themselves part of the "Calypso Shtetl". Unfortunately, the Black Power uprisings of the 1970's forced many of these Trinidadian Jews to migrate to Canada, Barbados and the United States. I was privileged to meet one of these Trinidadian Jews, a wonderful lady who, because of diplomatic reasons, returned to Trinidad to live for a few years. A true Trinidadian, born and bred on these very shores, this lady was the first to put into words the disturbing increase in anti-Semitism. She said in an e-mail to me: "In Trinidad, it is easily explained by 3 reasons: the Syrian population, the American black Nation of Islam influence, and the Muslim followers of Arabs. All of these groups are, by tradition, anti-Semitic." Truer words were never spoken, and it dismayed me to learn that anti-Semitism was rising in Trinidad.

On Sunday January 4th, 2009, the IBN (Islamic Broadcasting Network) Channel 8 in Trinidad & Tobago hosted a show discussing the current events unfolding between Israel and the terrorist group, Hamas, and it was here that I first learned of the anti-Semitism which exists in my country. Naturally, as was to be expected, many callers-in spouted venomous, hateful, anti-Israel sentiments - among which they called Israel "an aggressor", "prideful", "evil", and called for the boycott of Israeli products. Of course, since we live in a democratic state, they were most entitled to their opinion, but likewise, since it is a democratic state, I felt compelled to call in and offer my dissenting view.

While the other callers greeted the show hosts and the Trinidad & Tobago public with the proper Islamic greeting, I chose not to do so since I am not Muslim, and I simply said "Good night", before starting to say what I had to say. Perhaps that was my first mistake, for IBN is not known for being particularly open-minded with people whose views clash with their own. While they are greatly sympathetic to non-Muslims who call in to agree with their views, they aren't likely to be that understanding with non-Muslims who don't agree with them.

So I called in and said the following: "Good night, I'm calling in response to the last caller. Now we have to put things into perspective here: Israel has it's borders with the West Bank relatively open, because the West Bank isn't under the control of a terrorist group, and Hamas is a terrorist group in control of the Gaza Strip. Hamas quotes the hadith which speaks of Jews hiding behind trees and stones and those trees and stones calling for Muslims to kill the Jews. It's in their very charter which I've read, and -" at that point, my call was immediately disconnected and the show hosts went on a tirade to explain that the hadith I quoted didn't exist, and that Hamas was not a terrorist group, by any stretch of the imagination. I had obviously dreamed it up in my head that Hamas was a terrorist organization, because obviously I was deranged. Why would I think that? Hamas never called for an end to the state of Israel; Hamas' charter doesn't proclaim that all of "Palestine" is Islamic Waqf - land conquered exclusively for Muslim use, to be governed by Muslims; Hamas was not termed a terrorist organization by the EU, by the US, by Israel and many other countries; Hamas didn't say it would never negotiate with and/or recognize the Jewish state's right to exist, nor did Hamas ever say that it would rescind on all past agreements the PLO/PA made with Israel!

No sir-ee!

I was completely wrong on all these points!

What Hamas actually was, you see, was a peace-loving organization which was being treated unfairly by Western media and that aggressor country - ugh, Israel.

Doh! Get your facts straight, Mr. Jagdeo!

But just in case - in the mere chance that those presenters were wrong and I was right - I'd like them to know this: you can argue from now til thy kingdom come and you get your 72 virgins about why the sky is not blue - but that doesn't change the facts: the sky is blue, Hamas is a terrorist organization and the hadith does exist and it does say clearly that Muslims will get help from trees and stones in locating and killing those terrible, evil Jews. But if I'm wrong and Mr. Inshan Ishmael (the show's main presenter) is right - then slap me silly and call me Wakim, because I will head straight for the nearest mosque (I won't even bother to stop at "Go!" and collect my $200) and become a Muslim.

(Before we continue, may I stop here just to quote the hadith, which I was told did not exist. The hadith is as follows: "HADITH Sahih Bukhari [4:52:176] Narrated by Abdullah bin Umar: Allah's Apostle said, "You will indeed fight against the Jews and you will kill them to the point where the rock and the tree will say: 'O Muslim! O Abdullaah (slave of Allaah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.' Except for al-Gharqad for it is from the trees of the Jews.' " So there ya go. Either I am crazy, or Abdullah bin Umar was crazy, or maybe – just maybe – the shows presenters were the crazy ones. I'll leave it up to you to decide).

The point of my rambling here is not against IBN or against Islam. While I was very discomfited by the way I was treated that night, I didn't expect any better from that particular television station. After all, whenever they have a chance, they are ever-ready to make subtle anti-Israel and somewhat anti-Semitic remarks in their shows, and regularly broadcast subtle propaganda aimed against Jews and Israel. Subtle, because they are well-aware of the dangers of inciting people, and God knows they are somewhat wary of losing their broadcasting license in Trinidad & Tobago, so they resort to finding subtle means to dig at Israel, to dig at Jews and to further validate themselves (cause God forbid, Islam tries to exist without invalidating everyone else around it, especially Am Yisrael). For instance, they regularly broadcast a particular cartoon featuring a group of young Muslim-American scout-like boys who travel to Turkey and are caught up in the intrigue of fighting against "the Evil Star Organization" - a most devious, treacherous club, whose leader is pictured by a very pale, stooped-over gentleman, with a huge nose and the greediest, most money-grubbing personality you can imagine. You need not be any sort of Einstein to figure out what the Evil Star Organization represents and who the leader is a caricature of. And also, a couple weeks ago, on the weekly IBN show "Let the Quran Speak", the esteemed Islamic scholar Mr. Chote, was very clear in saying that the problems in the Middle East stem from not an Arab/Israeli conflict, but rather, a Muslim/Jewish one. Mr. Chote quoted the aforementioned hadith (which I was told, did not exist) to back up his argument and argue for a united Muslim front against Jews (though it must be said, Mr. Chote was very careful in choosing his words and did not exactly call for physical violence to be perpetrated against Jews or Jewish interests). Mr. Chote continued on to say that "Palestine" was a land belonging to all Muslims and not just Palestinians. Of course, I was mightily surprised by that statement. Apparently Mr. Chote seemed to think he had some sort of claim to the land of Israel as well, and only by the collective effort of the 1 billion Muslims in the world could the Jewish problem be solved. Oh well, just when I thought the only claimants to the land were the Jews and Palestinians, up comes Mr. Chote throwing his 2 cents in and staking his claim as well. Well, well - all I have to say is this: though the Moshiach may tarry - I believe in his coming. You just wait, Mr. Chote.

But as I was saying, I truly did not expect IBN to be open-minded, especially given its history of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric. What really disturbed me was the level of hate of the callers. It wasn't simply a "we don't agree with Israel" - it was a constant, never-ending supply of "Assalam u alaykum", followed by "we hate Israel etc., etc., etc." I've a somewhat morbid sense of humor, so I could not help but find the irony that callers would greet the show hosts in the most syrupy-sweet voices wishing them "Peace unto you" (which is what "assalam u alaykum" literally means), and then go on to proclaim their hate for Israel, the funniest thing in the world. But that's beside the point - after all, everyone is entitled to their opinion. What really got to me was the unfairness of the situation. It upset me to my core. I was frustrated that I had not been given the time to talk about Hamas' constant barrage of Qassam and Katuysha rockets (one of the show presenters called it "Falusha" rockets, "or something like that". No my friend, Falashas are a derogatory term for Ethiopian Jews. Like I said, they know what they're talking about. I don't - so Falusha rockets it is) into southern Israel - over 10,600 rockets, to be exact. I wanted to yell out that Israel didn't have to do a ground invasion - Israel could've just attacked from the air, bombing their targets from the safety of their planes, and not risk the lives of their soldiers, but they chose to go in, putting the lives of their soldiers in jeopardy, in order to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties.

I wanted to yell out many things, but I didn't... because I'd been disconnected, most unceremoniously, from the show. After all, I didn't know anything: Hamas is not a terrorist organization; there is no hadith which says trees and stones will help Muslims locate and kill Jews; and Falusha rockets were what the Hamas was hitting Israel with.

Ah - you learn something new everyday.

The many callers - all of whom who declared their united hate for Israel and her aggression on those innocent, peace-loving Hamas members - sickened me. The abundance of ignorance on the issue among the Trinidadian public sickened me to my core. And it wasn't just the callers-in to the IBN show who sickened me. My growing sense of nausea had begun to grow earlier that very day. On that particular Sunday, before I tuned in to IBN, I'd read some articles in the newspapers by local columnists who were only too quick in their leftist views to denounce Israel as the poster country for all things evil. You know how it goes – Israel drops a bomb and the entire left begins their tirade against Israel and Zionism. Blah blah blah. It's the same story every time and everywhere. It's no different here in Trinidad.

So I felt sick - down to my very core. The leftists, the extremist Muslims, the uninformed – just too many haters… all springing from my country. I was ashamed – it was not what I expected, especially from a people who are famous for not being racist…

Now I'm the biggest Zionist ever - and perhaps, a little right-wing in my views: yeah, I'm a Jerusalem-should-not-be-divided, Bibi-loving, don't-give-land-unless-you're-getting-a-sustainable-durable-permanent-peace, don't-negotiate-with-terrorists kind of guy (oops, Hamas aren't terrorists! Didn't they teach me that on Sunday? Silly Nick!), but I am willing to listen to other points of view - if you would let me voice mine as well. But right then, it seemed that no one wanted to listen. At that point, it seemed to me that everyone in Trinidad & Tobago was as stubborn as the most hardened donkey out there, unwilling to look beyond the scope of the present and superficial, unwilling to dig down into the history and the deeper, ideological problems that simmer below the surface.

The whole thing hurt me awfully - because the truth is, I take things personally - and everyone dissing Israel and not giving me any space to stand up for her frustrated me, hurt me and really made me ashamed of Trinidad. I hadn't expected Trinidad to be so full of leftists, so full of anti-Israel sentiment, so full of hate and ignorance and a refusal to learn the history of the situation before they jump the bandwagon and start calling for death to Israel. It just seemed to me that everyone was too quick to just look at the here and now, presented to them by CNN and the ever-anti-Semitic BBC and judge Israel unfairly.

But two things happened which changed my dissatisfaction with my country; two things which made me proud of my people, and reassured me that they aren't all leftists, or extreme Muslims. Those loud voices are drowned out by the majority – and the majority came out and spoke and reassured me that my Trinidadian people are a most intelligent people who aren't all anti-Israel and aren't all unaware of the truth of the situation.

On Monday January 5th 2009, a friend of mine in Jerusalem sent me a link to a site where one can contribute to assist IDF soldiers in the war against Hamas. The site (http://www.stogether.org/gaza) asked for a simple contribution of US$18 to equip individual soldiers with little necessities which the army couldn't afford to give to them. Knowing my Zionist ideologies, my friend sent me this link cause she knew that I would want to help in any way I could, since I am currently so far away from Israel. Naturally, I immediately went onto the site and did what I had to do there, but I wondered, "Hmm? I wonder if there's anyone in Trinidad who'd want to help out as well?", so I clicked the forward button, and with the Zionist fervor bubbling in me, I forwarded that son-of-a-bitch e-mail to every Tom, Dick and Harry I could think of.

And boy was I surprised by what happened.

I'm no official representative of Israel, but people wrote back to me saying how they wanted to help, but didn't know how to - and this was a good idea of mine to send this to them. They SUPPORTED Israel! My e-mail, which had been forwarded to people I don't even know, made a bit of a ripple, and my humble GMail inbox was somewhat inundated with e-mails from a wide variety of folks: Christian evangelicals, everyday citizens who were well-educated about what's going on and in full support of Israel, and even an lady who "couldn't bear the thought of those poor soldiers not having any comforts, even though I don't know head or tail about the situation over there."

It warmed my heart - honestly it did.

And then, to further compound this warming in my previously hurt little heart, I clicked on the Facebook group I'd joined, "I support the Israel Defense Force in preventing terror attacks from Gaza", and checked the list of friends I had in it who I'd invited to join - and to my pleasant, most heart-warming surprise realized that from only 3 friends yesterday, this number had grown to 25 - including a hijab-wearing acquaintance! It was the the best feeling ever. And that's the point of this note - I know it's been long, I know I've rambled alot, but here's the long-awaited point: I forgot that while there is opposition to Israel – opposition to Israel's current war against terror, and possibly, opposition to Israel's very right to exist, there is also support for Israel, from varied, surprising and not-so-surprising sources in my country. There are Muslims who are fair and rational in my country, there is a huge evangelical Christian population in Trinidad (approximately two hundred and fifty thousand by some sources) who support Israel almost to the point of absurdity, and there are members of the intelligentsia who aren't leftist and biased against Israel. My very own Prime Minister, the Honorable Patrick Manning, while I don't always agree with him, was courageous and bold enough to say to hell with Caribbean's silly neutrality on the Israel/Palestinian conflict, and he established official ties with Israel and broke ground by being the first head of government of a Caribbean country to visit Israel in an official capacity in November of 2005.

So thank you, my wonderful country of Trinidad & Tobago.

Thank you for being open enough and intelligent enough and educated enough and caring enough to give your support to a country which is only trying to do the right thing, but whose name is being dragged through the mud because the world is a harsh, unfair place. Thank you for not feeding in to extremist Muslim and Arab propaganda; thank you for throwing yourselves behind Israel so firmly, so faithfully and so steadfastly.

Thank you, Trinidad & Tobago for making me proud of you and reinstating in me a pride in my country... you've thrown your support behind my other country, Israel, and I'm proud to be a part of you both.

--
Nick

Continued (Permanent Link)

Amos Oz: ISRAEL MUST DEFEND ITS CITIZENS

(Evidently a translation of remarks made to "Bild" -- no original Web provenance can be found. This comment by Dovish Israeli author Amos Oz appears to have been penned just before Operation "Cast Lead")

ISRAEL MUST DEFEND ITS CITIZENS

Amos Oz

"The systematic bombing of the citizens in Israel's towns and cities is a war crime and a crime against humanity. The State of Israel must defend its citizens. It is obvious to everyone that the Israeli government does not wish to enter Gaza; the government would rather continue the ceasefire that Hamas violated and finally revoked. But the suffering of the citizens surrounding Gaza cannot go on.

The reluctance to enter Gaza stems not from indecisiveness but from well knowing that Hamas is actually eager to cause Israel to embark on a military operation: If dozens or even hundreds of Palestinian civilians, women and children are killed in an Israeli action, radicalism would gain strength in Gaza, Abu Mazen's rule in the West Bank might collapse, and Hamas extremists could replace him.

The Arab world will rally together around the atrocious sights that Al-Jazeera will air from Gaza, and the world court of public opinion will rush to accuse Israel of war crimes. This is the same court of public opinion that remains unmoved by the systematic bombing of population centers in Israel.

Massive pressure will be exerted on Israel to restrain itself. No such pressure will be placed on Hamas because there is no one to pressure them, and there is almost nothing left with which to pressure them. Israel is a country; Hamas is a gang.

What remains for us to do? The best thing for Israel is to achieve a total ceasefire in exchange for alleviating the blockade of Gaza. If Hamas insists on refusing the ceasefire and continues bombing Israeli citizens, we must take care lest the military action play into Hamas' hands. Hamas' calculation is simple, cynical and evil: If innocent Israelis are killed – good. If innocent Palestinians are killed – even better."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Progressive anti-Zionist protests against Zionists and the Zionist war

The Elders of Zion (yes the ones mentioned in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, us) have received the emails below. As critics of Israel have complained that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and that we are unfair in failing to publish their incisive comments, which are not racist at all and only directed at the crimes of the Zionists. These virtuous folks all support the progressive Hamas movement in its just struggle to wipe the JewsZionists off the face of the earth. I am publishing a sample herewith, so that the world will not be deprived of their wisdom. By all means contact these humanitarian paragons. Such deep thinking should not go unrewarded and unnoticed.

This first fellow has read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, so he knows all about us, you see.

---

From: David Briggs gonendunit@sbcglobal.net

To:

Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 8:55 PM

Subject: Terrorists!!

You people are FAR bigger terrorists than the Palestinians!! Because of our blind support, no matter what atrocities you commit, America is as hated worldwide as Israel. Your outrageous air strikes are killing hundreds of civilians. It's no wonder that, over the centuries, you've been expelled from every country in Europe. I"ve read the "Protocols"... I know how devious you are. Without our support Israel wouldn't even exist. Because of that support, Israel is the bully of the Middle East. You pick fights knowing your "big brother" (the US) will bail you out regardless of what atrocities you commit. You call the Palestinians terrorists. Well, I'm old enough to know that Israel coined the term.

I am a patriotic American. I deplore terrorism everywhere. We suffered through 9/11 because, and ONLY because, of our support of Israel. I hope and pray that the new administration (a Muslim) will turn our backs to Israel and force you to reap what you sow. On your own. There are worldwide protests about your slaughtering on innocent women and children. I truly hope that your days are numbered.

David Briggs

---

----- Original Message -----

From: stefan60 stefan60@pt.lu

Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 10:27 PM

Subject: blood and justice

Zionism is a racist murderous ideology.

The times of judgement will come!

There are in occupied Palastine ca.6 mio zionist elements,

the arab world contains a folk of 850 Mio. muslims.

Laugh and eat the few days which are left for you,the slaughter will invade the shores of the country of "Israel". Who will stop the flood of judgement?

Manuel Turmes Luxembourg

---

The following letter is abridged, but you can gather that the author has discovered a great Jewish plot that existed to grant equality to black people, to which we plead guilty as charged. Yep, you can blame Barack Obama on us Jew-Zionists. He got us fair and square on that one. And Brown vs Board of Education too. All the folks opposed to racial equality gotta be anti-Zionists too, and all the rest of you commies better join us Zionists.

You can also gather that the author thinks the Bush family and the Rockefellers are Jewish,.which is not true. He alludes to the anti-Semitic accusation that the Kol Nidre prayer was meant to absolve Jews from promises to gentiles. He has a fake Ariel Sharon quote there and probably some of the others are fake too. He then asserts that his criticism of "ZIonism" is not antisemitic. A Jew in the Rockefeller is worth two Bushes, right? It is not known if Rockeller was a Zionist

From: tommy.overkill overkill@yahoo.com

"Don't worry about congress. We can take care of that"

David Rothschild

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order. "

David Rockefeller

"Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs."

Henry Kissinger

We will have a world government whether you like it or not. The only question is whether that government will be achieved by conquest or consent."

Jewish Banker Paul Warburg

February 17, 1950, as he testified before the U.S. Senate

"If the American people knew what we had done, they would chase us down the street and lynch us"

George H.W. Bush

Let me issue and control a Nation's currency and I care not who makes its Laws

Amselm Meyer Rothschild

The difference between the Jewish soul ... and the soul of all the Gentiles ... is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man and the soul of an animal.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook (1865-1935)

"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, October 8th. [This quote is certainly a fabrication A.I.]

For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American Political and economic institutions.
Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as `internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.
David Rockefeller, from his autobiography "Memoirs"

"All vows, obligations, oaths or anthems, pledges of all names, which we
have vowed, sworn, devoted, or bound ourselves to, from this day of
atonement, until the next day of atonement (whose arrival we hope for in
happiness) we repent, aforehand, of them all, they shall all be deemed
absolved, forgiven, annulled, void and made of no effect; they shall not be
binding, nor have any power; the vows shall not be reckoned as vows, the
obligations shall not be obligatory, nor the oaths considered as oaths."
Yom Kippur - The Talmud

"We must realize that our party's most powerful weapon is racial tensions. By propounding into the consciousness of the dark races that for centuries they have been oppressed by whites, we can mold them to the program of the Communist Party. In America we will aim for subtle victory. While inflaming the Negro minority against the whites, we will endeavor to instill in the whites a guilt complex for their exploitation of the Negroes. We will aid the Negroes to rise in prominence in every walk of life, in the professions and in the world of sports and entertainment. With this prestige, the Negro will be able to intermarry with the whitesand begin a process which will deliver America to our cause. Israel Cohen, A Racial Program for the Twentieth Century, 1912

....

Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism

Normal human: What's anti-semitism? Zionist: Well, since Israel is a Jewish state, any criticism of Israel is anti-semitism. NH: Israel is a Jewish state and has acted despicably toward the Palestinians. It deserves criticism! Zio: Ooh! You anti-semite! How could you say such a thing! Are you a Nazi? Oh!oh!oh! Anti-semite! NH: Actually, Israel's despicable actions have made anti-semitism almost respectable. Zio: Oooohh!! [Faints rather than acknowledge facts evident to everyone else.]

Zionists are experts at propaganda, disinformation, denying facts and outright lying. Any criticism of Zionism or of Israel is labelled as "anti-semitism", where this is interpreted to mean "anti-Jewish". This is a slanderous falsehood. Criticism of Zionism is criticism of a particularly ugly political movement, not criticism of a religion or of the adherents of a religion. One may be critical of Zionism and of Zionists while at the same time being quite tolerant of, or well-disposed toward, or even an adherent of, the Jewish religion (as we see from the websites cited above).

Here's a clear case of criticism of the state of Israel being classified as "anti-Semitism". It's a cheap trick and should never be allowed to pass without refutation. Israel has as much right to exist as you have to give your neighbor's house to your relatives and force your neighbour to live in the street, but to assert this is not to cast aspersion upon Jews. Israel is an apartheid state because of the way the Israeli government (with the support of most Israelis) treats Arabs within its borders as second-class citizens and because of its attempts to destroy Palestinian society in the occupied territories so as to rid the land of Arabs and make it suitable for Israeli annexation, but to suggest this is not to make any criticism of Jews, but rather, of Israelis — and they richly deserve it.

Ken Livingstone: This is about Israel, not Anti-semitism

For 20 years Israeli governments have attempted to portray anyone who forcefully criticises the policies of Israel as anti-semitic. The truth is the opposite: the same universal human values that recognise the Holocaust as the greatest racist crime of the 20th century require condemnation of the policies of successive Israeli governments — not on the absurd grounds that they are Nazi or equivalent to the Holocaust, but because ethnic cleansing, discrimination and terror are immoral.

---

There is a lot more to this letter, which has quotes from anti-Zionists like Israel Shamir, Jimmy Carter and Professor Mearsheimer. The above should certainly convince everyone that Anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism, right? The Talmud, which was written about 1600 years before Zionism existed was a Zionist document, correct? And George H.W. Bush is a famous Zionist, right? And the civil rights movement, that is certainly a disgraceful Zionist plot too,

These gentleman are all waiting to get your emails in praise of their courageous and progressive humanitarian stance against the Zionist menace, George H.W. Bush and racial miscegnation.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israelis abroad make excuses

Roi Ben Yehuda is an Israeli, or ex-Israeli, who lives in Spain and writes frequently for Ha'aretz. He previously (see 'Epiphany in a Spanish neo-Nazi bookstore,' Haaretz June 15, 2008) alleged that a Neo-Nazi Book shop is selling anti-Semitic materials in Barcelona. He further alleged that "just about everywhere he looked" he saw swastikas and anti-Nazi graffit. These claims were made by no-one else to my knowledge. They made Barcelona sound like a description of Berlin in 1932. This assertion could not be verified by a friend living in Spain. She notes that the sale of such materials is forbidden by Spanish law and that she did not see much graffiti in or posters of the type described in Barcelona. Perhaps others can enlighten us. Roi's story about Nazi bookstores and graffiti in Spain is therefore dubious, to say the least.

Roi's latest article tells us that many people, including apparently himself, believe that you can be an Israeli living in Spain or the United States or some other country. (See "Why Jews can have more than one home," Haaretz August 26, 2008). As Roi notes, there are as many as 600,000 such "Israelis" living in the United States.

This concept of "Israeli Lite" is shared by many Israelis living abroad. But the truth is that most people can have only one home and are not happy with split identities. You can be an Israeli with Spanish or American citizenship or an American with ties to Israel, but you cannot really be both an American and an Israeli at the same time.

If you live and work in the United States or Spain, your children will learn Spanish or English, and not Hebrew, and they will be Spanish or American. It is not likely they will be Israeli. Sooner or later, they or their children or their grandchildren are going to decide they are not Israelis. Roi is going to find himself less and less Israeli the longer he lives in Spain.

Everyone must make their own choices, but I am fascinated by the phenomenon of Jews who insist on living in various European countries: Spain, Poland, Germany, and also insist on complaining about anti-Semitism in those countries. All those countries have a history of anti-Semitism of course. If you live in France, expect good wine. If you live in Spain or Poland, expect the characteristic specialties of those countries.

In my view, living in Spain and complaining about anti-Semitism is like eating ripe Camembert and complaining about the taste. Often, these claims are clearly exaggerated, as happened in a hoax letter circulated about French anti-Semitism. Is anti-Semitic persecution a part of the "Jewishness" of these folks?

Roi is entitled to his opinion. The question is, why Ha'aretz wants to publish it.

More interesting is the question of why Sara Miller of Ha'aretz, as well as Roi Ben Yehuda himself sent me letters trying to tell me what I can and cannot write about Roi Ben Yehuda and claiming that what I wrote was 'libelous.' Of course, Ha'aretz would be justifiably upset if someone tried to censor them. What I wrote can scarcely be libelous unless there is indeed a major Nazi revival in Barcelona, which no other journalist has reported. Nor did anyone else report that everywhere they looked in Barcelona there are Swastikas. And if it is "libelous," what are we to make of the writings of Gideon Levi, Amira Hass and Yitzhak Laor about Israelis and Zionists? Is Ha'aretz prepared to guarantee that every accusation they make is absolutely grounded in fact and provable in a court of law?

As I have no desire for legal problems with Ha'aretz, the article is duly altered, but the message is the same.
Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Left and Zionist

Reflections of a Sometime Israel Lobbyist speaks for many Jews, perhaps the silent majority, in expressing our attitudes toward Israel, anti-Zionism and the peace process. But in some ways Fein "doesn't get it." The big problem with Mearsheimer and Walt is not that they don't understand the "Jewish Massada Complex," but that much of their thesis is based on lies. Israel did not push the US into a war with Iraq, and Israel is a strategic asset to the U.S. Jimmy Carter, not a friend of Israel, did not ensure there would be a $3 billion annual aid package to Israel because of the "Israel Lobby." He did it to help ensure US presence and leverage in the Middle East. The "Israel Lobby" is not shutting up Walt and Mearsheimer or Jimmy Carter. Most Jews will not support groups that threaten the existence of Israel because they recognize that Israel is the best thing that happened to Jews in 2000 years, our single greatest achievement.

Still, it nice that at least some few of us still hope that the rightful place of Zionism is with progressivism, and that the rightful stance of the left is support for Israel. Not uncritical support, but certainly support for the right of the Jews to have a state of our own.

If right wing extremists have coopted Zionism, that is in large part the fault of the Zionist left, who largely deserted the arena of defense of Israel, and handed the leadership of the Zionist movement to the right on a silver platter. Fein's article, with all its faults, is therefore a welcome step in the right direction.

Ami Isseroff

---

Reflections of a Sometime Israel Lobbyist

By Leonard Fein

HERE'S A SECRET, the kind we hardly acknowledge to ourselves.

But first, you may be wondering who this "we" is, on whose behalf I am writing. In truth, I am not sure. Maybe it is the Jews. But the problem with "Jews" is—well, not all Jews are in on the secret. Or maybe it is the Zionists. But the problem with "Zionists" is that the word has come to seem musty, at best, and in these last several decades it has been appropriated by exclusivist fanatics. So let me spell it out: the "we" here means old-fashioned liberal Zionists, people who intuitively endorse the idea of a Jewish state, people who acknowledge that to secure the safety of that state and to ennoble its character are the compelling Jewish projects of our time, hence people who these days suffer considerable anxiety and are not strangers to disappointment. Things are not going very well, or even just average well.

And what is the secret we hardly acknowledge? We are all for a two-state solution, we are eager to call a halt to Israel's expansion, to put an end to the settlement movement, to restore Israel's good name, to make almost any compromise consistent with the preservation of Israel's character as a Jewish state and its commitment to democracy. We are, in a word, "doves." But we don't trust the Palestinians; we worry about Iran; we haven't a clue about how you get from here to peace; we don't take America's support for granted; and even if we did, we are not exactly proud to have to depend on that support. We worry that Israel has taken multiple wrong turns, not only on the big question, its peace policy, but on a range of domestic issues as well—most notably, its increasingly inegalitarian economy (where it now ranks with the United States on disparities in income distribution); its corrupting entanglement of religion and state; the decline in the quality of its educational system; its manner of dealing with the 20 percent of its citizens who are Palestinian. We are dismayed by the extent of public corruption. In short, we fear that Israel is at risk both domestically and internationally.

Now, none of that is secret. Psychic dissonance is hardly an unknown phenomenon. The secret is that because we are apprehensive, we are not entirely upset that "out there," in the public square, those who speak authoritatively on Israel's behalf—meaning, principally, AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations—are considerably more rigid, more hawkish, if you will, than we are.

Which brings me, of course, to the curious case of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who make a repeated point in their controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, of the discrepancy between "official" Jewish pronouncements regarding American policy toward Israel and the consistent finding of public opinion surveys, which show that American Jews are considerably more dovish than those who speak in their name.

Mearsheimer and Walt don't know the secret, meaning they don't know the Jews. They look at Israel and see the strongest military power in the region, a prosperous, high-tech economy, and they conclude that all the talk of Israel's vulnerability is merely hokum, clever propaganda intended to keep American aid at its (allegedly) wildly disproportionate level. The source of the propaganda, the explanation for the level of American aid? The Lobby. "The Lobby," in their view, is a social scientist's dream; it explains not only America's unconditional support for Israel, it explains everything. Two words, three syllables, and you have the key to the whole of the special relationship: you know why America invaded Iraq, you know why Camp David II failed, you know why both Congress and the administration are without spine in dealing with the chronic conflict between Israel and its neighbors. It's the lies the leaders of the Lobby have told and continue to tell us.

What Mearsheimer and Walt miss (among many other things) is any understanding of the depths of apprehension currently experienced by the Zionist left. On any given day, in connection with any given episode, Israeli officials and much (but not all) of the pro-Israel activist community in the United States may, indeed, repeat the tired slogans, the inflated claims, the whole of the familiar litany of rationalization and justification: Israel is the only democratic state in the region, it faces implacable enemies, it is America's ally in the war on terrorism, its values and America's are the same, its response to threats to its security is measured—all dismissed by Mearsheimer and Walt as false pleadings. That may be true, but it is essentially irrelevant. Whether true or false (and it is at least partly true), the dismissal doesn't speak to Jewish apprehensions, shared fully by liberal Zionists. Our leaders may inflate, exaggerate, even lie; the lies of Israel's enemies are vastly larger. But neither lies nor truths are assessed by a dispassionate lie-detecting machine. They are assessed by people riddled with apprehension, and if there is any one word that captures the substance of the apprehension that word is "abandonment."

For Jews, abandonment is an old, old story. The world may abandon Israel; Israel may abandon the Zionist dream. The project may fail. Look around, the portents are everywhere. There's a rush to disinvestment, a palpable abandonment. There are mainstream claims that Israel's own policies are the necessary and sufficient explanation of the conflict, that Israel is therefore the villain of the piece. And, for liberal Zionists especially, there's the growing fashion of Left alienation from Israel, sometimes (though not always) combined with romanticization of the Palestinians. Nathaniel Popper, a young journalist who works for the Forward, writes that when he reported to his friends on his recent visit to Israel, "they seized on my skepticism—of both the Palestinians and the Israelis—to rail against Zionism. Something snapped; I whipped to Israel's defense, summoning arguments I had heard at the pro-Israel conferences I attend for work." He does not add, but might well, that part of what snapped was his comfort with those friends, his ability to take for granted a roughly similar weltanschauung. Whiplash, and suddenly we are Israel's embattled defenders, perceived as imposters on the left, insufficiently dismissive of the parochial claims of the Jews. Where, then, do we belong?

As if empathy for the Israelis precludes sympathy for the Palestinians. As if this is all a zero-sum game, as if Mr. Bush's gross "You are either with us or against us" were a sober appraisal not only of the battle with terrorism but also of the war between Israel and its neighbors—as if there's no place for qualification, for ambiguity, for nuance. As if there's no appreciation for tragedy.

NADAV SAFRAN was a distinguished professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.

Born in Egypt, he'd lived in Israel (and fought in its War of Independence) before coming to the United States. His first major book, published in 1963, was The United States and Israel. In his preface to that book, Safran wrote, "I believe that fundamentally both Arabs and Jews have an unassailable moral argument. A person who cannot see how this is possible does not understand the essence of tragedy; much less does he realize that his position serves only to assure that the Palestine tragedy should have another sequel, and yet another."

Safran was prescient. Exclusivists on both sides of the conflict have indeed brought on sequel after sequel, by now an ongoing calamity. It matters not at all which set of exclusivists is the more to blame, which less. What matters is that together they've come to own the crowded stage.

There's Hamas, of course, in a class by itself. There are the settlers and their avid defenders. There are a handful of hard-line American Jewish organizations like the ZOA (Zionist Organization of America). And there are Nathaniel Popper's friends—presumably (I don't know Popper) people of the left—who have neither use for nor patience with the Jewish state. It's racist, it's militaristic, and it's an anachronism. Nationalism was never a good thing, and the Jews were supposed to know that.

AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are at most unwitting support personnel for the tedious drama. Nominally, they support a two-state solution, which—by definition—the exclusivists do not, and which by now has become the litmus test of a pro-peace (which means pro-Israel and pro-Palestine) stance. True, there are times when they and some right-leaning others set the bar so high that their endorsement of a two-state solution seems little more than lip service. But it is not helpful or accurate to lump them together as part of the exclusivist camp.

THERE'S A dynamic here, worth attending to: where the left has closed the door to Israel, gone beyond tough criticism all the way to demonization, we are left out in the cold; we will have no truck with exclusivists, whether of the right or the left. But while we cannot, do not, will not dance with those who believe that pro-Zionist passion requires the suspension of critical judgment, we prefer the company of those who wish Israel well to the company of those who wish it ill, even though the course endorsed by those who wish it well seems to us too often mistaken.

The left has a hard time with nationalism and is particularly irritated by Jewish nationalism. "Tribalism," they call it, and tribalism it sometimes is. Somehow, it is supposed that the Jews should know better, whether because we have so often in the past been victims of nationalism or because there's something awkward about people who have been comfortable living at the margins suddenly insisting that they have a fixed address and a fire in the fireplace or because nouveau powerful is no more attractive than nouveau riche or because statecraft is not a particular strength of a people of artists, scholars, merchants, a people with so pacific a history as ours. And look, they say, at what a mess the Zionists have made of things. Pacific? Only so long as they were not allowed to carry guns. Now, with guns, they become hunters.

Well, look: though pocked with imperfections, some no cosmetics can mask, the record's hardly one of unrelieved bungling. There are grace notes galore and much to admire: freedom of speech, the rule of law, distinguished science, and an ongoing effort to balance the twin imperatives of the Jewish understanding—on the one hand, the claims of the tribe; on the other the claims of the whole world; on the one hand, the particular; on the other, the universal.

And yet we know there's an urgency to boundaries; Esperanto doesn't work. Again and again, Hillel's questions are heard simultaneously, not sequentially, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" and "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Others may find contradiction here; we find enduring and productive tension.

Some of us get it wrong all the time, opting either for radical universalism or for stultifying particularism. And all of us get it wrong some of the time. But we are held together (when we are) by memories of the dreams we have dreamed, of what it is supposed to be like: the swords into plowshares, the spears into pruning hooks, all under their own fig tree and none shall make them afraid.

Is it necessarily the case that the moment you tie a rag to a branch and call it a flag, you become obsessed with your own narrowly defined interests and to hell with the others? There is that risk, as ample precedent makes clear. And Israel's destiny, in the end, may be to be a nation like all the other nations rather than the light unto the nations that the utopians imagined. In the Jewish tradition, there are two Jerusalems. In the heavenly Jerusalem, Moses teaches, David sings, Solomon dispenses wisdom; in the earthly Jerusalem, there are curses alongside the blessings, people shove in line and cheat on their income taxes, they laugh and hug and hate, grandeur and pettiness cohabit. The haunting question is how the two Jerusalems can be brought closer together.

And maybe they cannot be, neither here nor anywhere. Or maybe they can be, but we are still off course somewhere in the desert. All we have learned so far is that being Jewish does not immunize against the baser appetites and the evil inclinations. And that hurts; we were taught to expect more and better. We had it figured out, what Max Weber called "the theodicy of disprivilege." How does an oppressed people explain its persecuted status? By imagining that it is morally advantaged. That is what we were taught, quite often explicitly: the oppression, the advantage. Now both seem remote. And though we still proclaim our unbending commitment to justice, we also whine a lot.

Some of us have given up, dream dreams derived from other stories; others of us feel betrayed, thereby embittered; and there are those who take their cue from Anthony Burgess in his retelling of the Exodus story (Moses: A Narrative), when the people complained to Aaron: "And one said: 'I don't like this sort of talk at all. It's all blown up, like a sheep's stomach full of wind. Life is . . . life is what we see, smell, feel—the taste of a bit of bread, a mouthful of water, sitting at the door, watching the evening come on with the circling of the bats. The things you talk of are only in the mind. We are too old, I tell you, for this talk of common goals and purposes and journeys.'" Today life is no longer just the taste of a bit of bread or a mouthful of water; these days we have pastries and fine wines. These days, busy meeting with senior officials of the Defense Department to talk about Israel's pressing needs for this new weapons system or that, meeting over at State to make sure that Israel is not pressed too hard, meeting with Members of Congress to trade support for support—who has time or disposition for talk of purposes and journeys?

THE ISRAEL LOBBY includes all those who, because they take neither Israel nor America's support for Israel for granted, because they remain haunted, prowl the corridors of American power to press the case for "the special relationship." And yes, they are powerful, albeit not nearly so powerful as their critics contend. And yes, power, as Acton taught, corrupts. But we know that impotence is even more corrupting. And the strange truth is that we feel both powerful and powerless at the same time. That is how we see ourselves and that is how we see the Jewish state, and that is also how the Israelis see themselves and their nation. We were slaves unto Pharaoh in Egypt and we have known pharaohs ever since; underneath our designer costumes we wear a shroud.

FOR SOME OF US, that means that even with the Land, we still remain in Exile, Exile as an existential condition rather than a geographic space. All the pastries and the fine wines cannot erase our tortured wisdom; though rich, we are not comfortable. We are imprisoned both by our memories and by the world's disorder. Our only remedy is to remain prisoners of hope as well, to remember not only yesterday but also tomorrow, the promised tomorrow.

The world of the lobbyists, by and large, is less fragmented. They have learned to work the system; in some ways, they have become the system. If that were a crime, they would be guilty. But it is not a crime. The argument cannot be whether there should be a lobby or whether, once there is a lobby, it is entitled to be powerful. Those are the givens of the system.

So the argument is really about the means by which the lobby maintains its power and the ends to which it devotes that power. The broadest statement of the lobby's purpose is that it seeks to preserve and enhance the special relationship between Israel and the United States. That relationship has deep and diverse cultural and historical roots; it is not an artifact of which the lobby is the author. AIPAC (and the others) work within a hospitable context; the engine of its power is a vast and devoted grassroots constituency.

And what of the liberal Zionists? Chiefly Americans for Peace Now, the Israel Policy Forum, Brit Tzedek v'Shalom—we also lobby, and just as energetically, albeit with considerably more limited resources. Pound for pound, we may even be as effective, as powerful one might say, as the others, but we are welterweights. We do what we can to promote a genuine two-state solution and to reverse those policies of the Israeli government—settlements especially though not exclusively—that stand in its way, thereby evoking rebuke and sometimes condemnation from the mainstream. We insist that "pro-Israel" has many shades of meaning and cannot be a term reserved for the most hawkish of Israel's supporters. We persist in our love of Zion, thereby evoking rebuke and sometimes contempt from erstwhile and natural allies on the left. We believe that classical Jewish values and current Israeli interests are of a piece and, with Seamus Heaney, that one day "hope and history will rhyme."

Leonard Fein is a Boston-based writer and teacher, a regular columnist for the Forward, founding editor of Moment magazine, and a member of the board of Americans for Peace Now.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Is Israel a democracy?

Dr. Eugene J. Fisher Responds to America Magazine Editorial, "Israel at 60"

While I can sympathize with much of the America editorial, which quite rightly reminds readers
of the needs, plight, and rights of Palestinians, I can only say that the statement that Israel
is not a democracy in the Western sense is ill conceived and very misleading.  It seems to
presume that all Western democracies have never had any problems with minorities,
unlike Israel.  Say again?  The USA has not, ever (according to this editorial) ever in any sense
mistreated its native American or Black American or, currently its Hispanic American citizens? 
And the French and British and Germans are not, right now, having problems dealing with their
Arab/Muslim minorities, and none have ever, ever persecuted their minorities?

I'm sorry.  Israel may not be a better Western democracy than the USA, England, France, Germany,
Denmark, etc., but to say it is not one of us is to entirely miss the point of what defines Western
democracies, which for all our faults I will defend and, therefore, perforce, defend our friend Israel.

Dr. Eugene J. Fisher
Great Falls, VA. 22066

(Dr. Fisher is the Former Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB))

 ----------
www.christianfairwitness.com

Continued (Permanent Link)

Ahmadinejad predicts: Israel will disappear again - but Ha'aretz got it wrong

Ha'aretz's story Ahmadinejad predicts Israel will be 'swept away' by Palestinians is wrong. It states:

 

It is the second time within less than three years that the Iranian president predicted the eradication of Israel.

The first time was in 2005 when Ahmadinejad hoped that Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map.

 In the first place, Ahmadinejad didn't say in 2005 that he hoped Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map (or "wiped off"). What he said was that Imam Khomeini said there would be a world without Zionism and America, and Ahmadinejad believes this goal is feasible. This can be checked easily, though there is not really much difference between what he did say, and what he was widely reported as saying.

 

Secondly, Ahmadinejad has predicted the demise of Israel several times since then:

 

Jerusalem Post, Dec 2, 2006:

 

 

Ahmadinejad went on to say that, "Today scores of Western politicians are in doubt as to the future of this illegitimate regime and its existence has come under question.

 

"There is no doubt the Palestinian nation and Muslims as a whole will emerge victorious," the Iranian president told Haniyeh.

"The continued commission of crimes by the Zionist regime will speed up the collapse of this fictitious regime," said Ahmadinejad.

And Ynet, November 13, 2006:

 

 

Ahmadinejad: Israel's destruction near

Published:  11.13.06, 08:53 / Israel News

According to the Iranian media Monday, Iranian President Mahoud Ahmadinejad declared that Israel was destined to 'disappearance and destruction' at a council meeting with Iranian ministers.

"The western powers created the Zionist regime in order to expand their control of the area. This regime massacres Palestinians everyday, but since this regime is against nature, we will soon witness its disappearance and destruction," Ahmadinejad said. (AFP)

 

On June 3, 2007, Foxnews reported:

 

"God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution.

 

 

Compare the above with the current story:  

 

"This terrorist and criminal state is backed by foreign powers, but this regime would soon be swept away by the Palestinians," Ahmadinejad said in a press conference in Tehran.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Being pro-Israel on Campus

Ilana Diamond's complaint about Israel advocacy on campus is common to many of us. Progressive and Middle of the Road Zionist groups are conspicuous by their absence. Surely a large group like Arza should have some campus presence in the fight for Israeli legitimacy? Ilana writes:

It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.

Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.

Indeed, it is sad that what "works" among these "budding intellectuals" is blood, gore and sensation, "personal messages" and the like, rather than facts and rational argument. The cult of Rachel Corrie and Yasser Arafat is a much more effective advocacy tool than a dozen boring tracts about international law.

Ami Isseroff

---

It's lonely being pro-Israel on campus

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ilana Diamond , THE JERUSALEM POST Apr. 15, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many people put much faith into average college students, assuming that they are curious enough to explore every facet of information given them. But people who think this of college students are severely misguided.

The majority of college students are looking for something to believe in. So when pro-Palestinian on-campus groups wave around posters with pictures of "mutilated" Palestinian children, it's easy for students to fall into the "Israel is the aggressor" trap.

This is a widespread problem on numerous college campuses - not only in the United States, but Canada and European countries as well.

On the University of Texas at Austin campus, where I am a student, it's a daily problem. There are some five pro-Palestinian student groups currently active on campus. Guess how many pro-Israel student-run groups there are. One.

Well, maybe two. There is also the Union of Progressive Zionism, but I am not yet convinced that their main battle won't be fighting the "occupation."

Meanwhile, one could say there are about seven institutionalized forces working against Israel on the UT campus.

This year alone, these groups have brought in speakers such as John Mearsheimer, author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a book denouncing AIPAC; Alison Weir, journalist and the founder of If Americans Knew, a group that argues the US is sending too much money to Israel and that the Palestinian plight is underrepresented in American media; Neturei Karta Rabbi Dovid Weiss, who attended Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial conference and is a member of Jews United Against Zionism; and Anna Baltzer, a pro-Palestinian American Jew.

Needless to say, the Palestinian sympathizers at UT know how to make their events look credible, and the events are usually well attended. This is the part where putting too much faith in college students starts to go wrong.

STUDENTS ATTEND these lectures and hear how AIPAC is supposedly wasting taxpayer's money, how Israel is supposedly brutalizing and killing innocent Palestinian children, and so on. The organizers of these events know these issues are compelling, and that any Joe-shmoe is going to sympathize with their cause.

The average college student attending is likely to be hearing about the Arab-Israel conflict for the first time, and can end up believing that what they've just learned is the whole story, thus creating a large problem for pro-Israel activists.

It is especially undermining when some of these anti-Israel speakers are of Jewish heritage. Students interpret that to mean that if a Jew doesn't like Israel, then Israel must be really bad - so it's ok if I don't like Israel either.

In fact it is not uncommon to see scattered clueless middle-class kids schlepping to class with a keffiyeh around their neck because they sympathize with Palestine and believe they are wearing a "freedom scarf," as is called by the clothing store Urban Outfitters.

To combat anti-Zionism on campus, TFI (Texans for Israel) has brought in speakers such as Middle East expert and former Jerusalem Post editor David Makovsky, Nonie Darwish, the Muslim-born Christian who founded Arabs for Israel, and David Brog, the founder of Christians United for Israel.

However when speakers like these appear, Palestinian sympathizers come and make accusations against them. A member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee got up to ask Nonie Darwish a "question" which began: "You can't be serious. You are not a serious speaker. What are you trying to accomplish by speaking to a bunch of white American Jews?"

Nor can these relatively few speakers compete with the onslaught of weekly posters put up around campus with pictures of bloodied Palestinian children, body bags, and misquoted statements from Israeli officials seeming to suggest that Palestinians are asking for it. For some reason - perhaps the way the media covers the conflict - many college students seem to be more skeptical of pro-Israel speakers than anti-Israel ones.

SO FAR TFI has taken a non-confrontational stance when addressing the gory posters and signs claiming "Zionism equals racism." The Palestine Solidarity Committee even protested at an Israeli cultural event that had nothing to do with politics - proving that it is not aiming for peace or even dialogue.

However in response to the recent "Apartheid Week" (that actually went on for two weeks) and the Campus Anti-War Movement to End the Occupation which displays posters with cartoons comparing Gaza to Auschwitz, TFI is stepping up our game, and preparing exhibits on the current situation in Sderot, minus the overwhelming gore.

It is extremely hard to fight fire with fire and remain respectable. The images the pro-Palestinian groups put onto posters are deplorable. Texans for Israel will try to avoid the pity ploy, but on today's college campuses it seems that that's what it takes to gain support for a cause. A group has to be loud, crude, over the top, and gut wrenching for their message to be heard. Simply showing the positive side to a cause no longer captures attention.

Pro-Israel activists can talk up the positives of Israel until we are blue in the face, but until someone sees Israelis as victims, they will just ignore our message.

But is it right for pro-Israel groups to capture attention by exhibiting photos of suicide bombing victims? Or life under continuous rocket attack?

Israel prides itself on being able to quickly pick up the pieces and move on. By stooping to the level of showing bombed-out homes, are pro-Israel groups helping or hurting the country? I am not sure.

Luckily the semester is almost over, and we will have a whole summer to gear up for another 10-month-long war of words and rethink the tactics we are using.

The writer is a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin studying journalism and Middle Eastern studies. She was a Jerusalem Post intern last year.

Continued (Permanent Link)

To the people of Sderot and Ashkelon: Grim Restraint and Fierce determination

In these days, it is important to remember: Arab terror attacks are not new, and casualties are not new. We have seen much worse times in this country. This personal account of the Ben Yehuda Street Bombing of1948 reminds us of the essentials. In the bombing, over fifty people were buried in the wreckage and destruction wreaked by Arab terror.

The letter was not written by a spinmaster, a blowhard politico or a Zionist "Hasbara" master. It was written by an American young lady, a student in Jerusalem in 1948, who had joined the Haganah. She arrived on the scene of the bombing and set up a first aid station.

Zipporah Porath wrote:

I am becoming like the Jews who live here: every shock and sorrow nurtures you to grim restraint and fierce dedication.

That is something to think about for the frenzied op-ed writers, who tell us every day that the sky is falling. A 60 year old lesson in being an Israeli, 101, from a young student and new immigrant. This is what we do when the sky really does fall!

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Silver Platter - a Memoir of 1948

A memoir of Palestine 1948 - immigration and defense

This is a memoir of Aliya Bet Ha'apala (illegal immigration) and fighting in Israel's War of Independence. It is one man's story. Together with other such stories (Memoirs of a Palmach volunteer, 1948, Was there Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine in 1948? it tends to disprove the claims of Israeli superiority in the war, and other myths that were circulated about unwilling immigrants who were forced to come to Israel from the DP camps of Europe. It also counteracts the fabricated notion that the war was initiated by "Zionists" for the purpose of "ethnic cleansing" of Palestine. The author fought to defend a kibbutz that was attacked by the Egyptian army.

Israelis, like everyone else, were not perfect, and some of the mistakes and frictions of the early years are evident in this story. It might be much "nicer" to provide a prettified version of events, but we want to relate history, not to reinvent it, as some others are doing.

The title, The Silver Platter, is a reference to the famous poem, "The Silver Platter," written by Natan Alterman soon after the United Nations Partition decision in 1947, an advance tribute to the youth who would fall in the coming war.

Ami Isseroff

---

The Silver Platter

Shlomo Ramon

....

Where we came from

We were born 1928 and 1929, as Wenzelberg and Glaser, respectively. Greta`s family lived in the Polish city of Bielsko in Polish Silesia, but she was born in Vienna, so that her mother would get proper care after a fist stillborn child. I was born in the ski town of Zakopane in the Polish Tatra mountains.

We lived in our towns until the outbreak of WW2, when our parents had the sense to escape the invading Nazis by going to the east of Poland – each unaware of the existence of the other. This saved our lives, but it meant being exiled by the Soviets to the Urals or Siberia. We were forced to stay out there, in the frozen wastes, until almost the end of WW2.

The Soviets then restored our Polish citizenship, and we were allowed to go "where we pleased" within the Soviet Union. By some chance both our families selected a town placed on a major rail line, named Chu in central Kazakhstan By that time Greta was already a full orphan and I had lost my father. She had to work for survival. I went to school and worked part time. We became acquainted while I was working as cinema projector operator and could get her in to see a movie for free.

Back to "homeland"

By the end of 1945 we were allowed to return to our homeland –Poland. The trip was in a cargo train and lasted 5 weeks, as train had a very slow priority on the system. The cargo cars were equipped with large shelves for sleeping and even had a cooking stove- to heat up whatever food could be scavenged in the railway stops. Greta travelled as a part of a group organized to join a kibbutz in Palestine, and I was with a mother and young brother.

When the train crossed the border, it became very clear that the "homeland" did not want us back. People were yelling: " What? the Soviets take our coal in a train and use the same train to send us Jews! " Some people were pulled off the train and murdered. When we got back to Krakow, my mother decided to stay for a while – to try to sell some family real estate. I joined a "kibbutz group" intended to join kibbutz Neveh Eitan in Palestine.

I understood the hard way that I have no fatherland and had better look for a new one. Prior to that time, we were not a Zionist family and I had no idea that Jews are a nation and should have a state of their own too.

Long way to Palestine

After passing through Slovakia our group arrived at a temporary DP (Displaced Persons) camp in Salzburg. We registered as DPS under false names so as to receive the DP benefits: food and lodging. Our instructor (Madrich) who came from Neveh Eitan to prepare our group for kibbutz life, organized all aspects of our daily life. There were other temporary camps in Austria: Vienna, Innsbruck, and other places.

There were also permanent DP camps, mostly in Germany, where people grouped waiting for their immigration visas to other countries.

From Austria our group went (illegally of course) to Italy to wait for our clandestine ship. First we went to a very nice place called Bogliasco, on the Genoa seashore. It turned out that the British knew all about us and no ship would be allowed near the place by the British Navy. So we went to the south, to place called Metaponto near to Bari to wait for our Aliya Bet (illegal immigration) ship.

Eventually we did board the Hayim Arlozorov (ULUA - See SS Ulua -- the story of underground Aliyah, by Arie (Lova) Eliav, am Oved, 1977;
In Hebrew: Hasfina Ulua, Sipuro shel Arthur, Hotza`at Am Oved, Tel Aviv, 1977. (dedicated to Tanya)

Most of illegal immigrant ships were barely floating wooden vessels. Hayim Arlozorov was the first very solid steel ship, originally built as naval escort during WW1. Our group of immigrants to be ("maapilim") first boarded the Rosa, renamed "Shabtai Losinki" on 2/47 from the bay of Taranto in South of Italy. The ship had no luck. A couple of days after sailing, there was a hole in ship`s bottom and it barely returned to Taranto in danger of sinking. All the maapilim descended and began to wait on the shores of Matponto for another ship. Meanwhile, the Rosa was repaired and eventually discharged several hundred ma`apilim in Palestine, next to Nitzanim. One of the members of the Jewish crew was Moti Fein (later Hod) my future CO in the IAF.

The ship Uloa arrived a couple of weeks later and anchored a couple of miles from the shore. The water was shallow there –the only way to board was by sailing from the shore to the ship in rubber boats, which we did. The ship had come all the way from Sweden , where it took on 700 ma`apilim, mostly women survivors of Bergen Belsen who were allowed to enter Sweden after liberation.

The Uloa was in bad shape. It had survived a heavy storm in the Atlantic and had very little food and drinking water, not much room either. The crew commanded by Lyova Eliav (Arthur) loaded most of us plus some food and water. Lyova met his future wife Tanya among the ma`apilim.

In addition to the 700 or so and people from Sweden there were about 700 more boarded in Metaponto. The"Swedish" passengers threw most of their suitcases and belongings over the board to make some room for the "Italians". The ship had no passenger facilities at all, except for the crew, all maapilim were loaded into ship cargo holds. Holds were outfitted with 5 or six layers of wooden floors, separated by about 50 cm in height and leaving only a few passages. On the planks they put mattresses. We were told to get on a mattress, stay there and not move around except for going to toilet. Using toilets was another exercise in torture,, There was no flushing water and very long wait – queue arranged by special detail. We were fed, rarely, sandwiches that were brought to our mattresses. No one was allowed on the topside to prevent the Brits seeing us, but in retrospect it only prevented us from getting some fresh air and forced people to vomit on the mattresses or in passages – adding another horror. Women were separated from men.

The ship was jam packed and sailed east, towards Crete. It was soon intercepted by Royal Navy ships – five destroyers. The Brits were never able to board because of our active resistance. They forced the ship to sail in the direction of Haifa harbor, but the captain Arazi steered her toward Bat Galim and beached her on the ground rocks there. The crew tried to scuttle the ship by opening the scuttlecocks, but the Brits boarded and prevented the scuttling.

I shall never forget my first view of Mount Carmel and the beach crowded with locals from Bat Galim who tried to help us get down. Some people tried to swim ashore but were fished out by the Brits.

The ship was there for many years, part of the Bat Galim view, until dismantled for salvage.

The Brits took all us forciblu to their deportation ships to Cyprus anchored in Haifa harbor, such as Empire Rival.

Continued here

Continued (Permanent Link)

Right Wing Rabbis and anti-Israel extremists agree: Hang Olmert

For once, there is unanimous agreement on an issue. Attendees at a conference of Rabbis agreed enthusiastically to Rabbi Wolpe's call to hang Israeli leaders, including Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Haim Ramon and Ehud Barak. Anarchists have a similar idea it seems

 

In a discussion of the death penalty at the Al-Jazeera Web site, Minsa from Hampstead England wrote, "

. Yeah, right - so go hang Olmert for the terrorist murder of over 1000 innocent Lebanese civilians."

 

We were in this movie once before. We know how it ends...

 

Ami Isseroff

Right-wing rabbi calls for PM's death

JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST

Government leaders should be hanged for negotiating with the Palestinians, Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe told an audience of rabbis in Tel Aviv, according to a Channel 1 report aired Wednesday night.

"The terrible traitor, [Prime Minister] Ehud Olmert, who gives these Nazis weapons, who gives money, who frees their murderous terrorists, this man, like Ariel Sharon, collaborates with the Nazis," Wolpe told a conference of rabbis who oppose transferring parts of the West Bank or Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority.

"[Olmert's punishment], and the punishment of [Vice Premier] Haim Ramon, and the punishment of [Foreign Minister] Tzipi Livni, and all these people, like [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak, should be to hang from the gallows," Wolpe said to the cheering crowd.

The comment came after news circulated during the conference that one of the terrorists who killed two Israelis in the South Hebron Hills last Friday was a PA security officer.

Among those attending the conference were MK Arye Eldad (National Union/National Religious Party), MK Meir Porush (United Torah Judaism), Kiryat Arba-Hebron Chief Rabbi Dov Lior, Kise Rahamin Yeshiva head Rabbi Meir Mazuz, and former MK Elyakim Haeztni, who joined in the accusations that Olmert was responsible for the deaths of the two Israelis last Friday.

Ramon issued a statement condemning the speeches at the conference: "It is regretful and worrying that more than a decade after the murder of a prime minister in Israel, these people haven't learned a thing, and still continue down the path of incitement that endangers the foundations of democracy in Israel," he said.

Also according to Channel 1, an anarchist group recently uploaded pictures onto their Web site depicting Olmert with a picture of a grenade on his head and the words: "He deserves it."

There was no comment from the Prime Minister's Office.

Source

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Church's Witness on Issues in the Arab/Israeli Conflict

Introduction

This is a discussion of the witness of the American Churches with regard to the Arab/Israeli conflict.(1) Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East is concerned that a bias against the state of Israel has emerged within many of the mainstream Christian denominations. This prejudice is reflected in a troubling willingness to lay the blame for the conflict in the Middle East on Israel's shoulders while saying very little about any culpability the Palestinians or Arab nations might have. An example of this bias is found in the Divestment and other resolutions that have been passed by various Protestant denominations since 2004. In these resolutions, history seems to begin after the 1967 Six-day war ended, and the "occupation" and Israeli policies are focused on as the sole cause of the conflict. Some of the Christian commentary on the conflict has become quite extreme, with accusations of apartheid, Nazi-like behavior and attempts at ethnic cleansing, all aimed at Israel. This does not serve the cause of peace and justice.

In the past year there has been an increase in attacks on the fundamental legitimacy of a Jewish state. That begins to send out very serious warning signals.

While some of this we understand is rooted at least partly in a wholesome, righteous, gospel centered and legitimate concern for Palestinian suffering, it incorrectly assumes that the party suffering the most at a given moment is the most innocent party and it is flawed in its refusal to acknowledge the complexity of the situation.

Continued here: The Church's Witness on Issues in the Arab/Israeli Conflict

Continued (Permanent Link)

Are these people Zionists??

I found this on the "American Zionists" email list. Next time these sort of people tell you they had nothing to do with the murder of Yitzhak Rabin, don't believe them. They are murdering more than Rabin.

The grotesque perversion of this sort of message is monstrous, and the feelings of disgust it generates are hard to describe. "Last night's hate-filled TV eulogies" were beautiful tributes to a hero of Israel. "Rabin never apologized" indeed. The Altalena people never apologized for trying to break the law. If they have their way these people will turn Israel into something like Gaza. People who incite against the heros of the Zionist movement, people who incite against the democratically elected government of Israel are not Zionists.

$#%@%!*$!

Here is the email of the blogger who wrote what is below: shilohmuse@yahoo.com. Tell her what you think.

Ami Isseroff
shilohmusings.blogspot.com/2007/10/catching-tails.html
Catching Tails

.....


Israeli politicians are like cats trying to catch their tails. They are the antithesis, the exact opposite of what true leaders really are.

Last night's hate-filled TV eulogies of Yitzchak Rabin revealed more of his underlying rationale for Oslo. Believe me, Olmert's not the first tired Israeli politician. Yitzchak Rabin was also tired. One of his confidants, sorry, but I forget who was talking, explained that during the Gulf War of US President Bush The First, Rabin was depressed by the sight of cars streaming out of Tel Aviv. He looked at those Israelis fleeing their homes and knew that they were his kind of people, the ones whose votes he wanted. That's why he liked the Oslo Accords. It suited Israelis who had no problem fleeing their homes. Even better, those Israelis got to keep their homes, while the patriotic Land of Israel loving Israelis would, G-d forbid, be exiled from theirs.

Yes, instead of offering leadership and encouragement to the Israeli citizens, Rabin packaged a plan based on the worst and weakest of the Israeli psyche.

True to form, Rabin never apologized for his violence against fellow Jews during the Israeli War of Independence. He was a dedicated follower of Ben Gurion who feared competition for leadership and ordered Menachem Begin to be killed when the Altalena tried to dock to deliver fighters and arms to free the Old City of Jerusalem. Yitzchak Rabin was the commander of the Palmach unit which attacked the Altalena and killed their fellow Jews, Hashem Yikom Damom, May G-d Avenge Their Deaths.




Labels: Altalena, Yitzchak Rabin

Continued (Permanent Link)

A new approach for Zionism?

Headline:
Firing Up The Unaffiliated

Can this be the way to get young Jewish people interested in Israel and Judaism?


What it is about...

How a small Israel advocacy group is having a big impact on secular Jewish twenty-somethings.
Jewish Week

Gary Rosenblatt - Editor And Publisher

Alexa Silverman, a 20-year-old student at Hofstra University, describes herself as a secular Jew who "had a problem with the way Judaism was taught" when she was young.

Benjamin Turk, 27 and working in sales, was raised Reform and was a counselor at a Zionist summer camp, but says that even then he was "skeptical" about Israel and its actions.

Katherina (Katt) Guttman, 28, with a career in fitness management, grew up in Staten Island, where she was "always proud to be Jewish but didn't know why."

For the American Jewish community, the quest to reach people like Silverman, Turk and Guttman — young adults who are unaffiliated or on the margins when it comes to identifying with Israel, Judaism and communal activities — has become the modern-day Impossible Dream. Every synagogue, federation and Jewish organization wants them. But most young people just aren't interested — or worse.

"In sharp contrast to their parents and grandparents, non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders," noted sociologists Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman in a new study called "Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and Their Alienation From Israel." What's more, the authors conclude that "mounting indifference to Israel" has grown into "genuine alienation" for many young Jews who "profess a near-total absence of any positive feelings about Israel."

More than half of those under 35 surveyed did not agree with the statement that "Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy."

All the more reason why our community should be paying more attention to a little-known success story, a low-budget, nonprofit group based in New York called Fuel For Truth (www.fuelfortruth.org), which has made impressive strides in making pro-Israel advocates and activists out of primarily secular, disaffected Jews between the ages of 18 and 34.

Among its most fervent volunteers are Silverman and Turk, who spend hours each week recruiting new members or planning events. And Guttman left her job last year to work full time as Fuel For Truth's director of operations.

What's the secret formula? No magic, say the group's leaders, but rather an emphasis on creating a strong social network built on volunteerism, seeking leadership types with good communication and organizational skills, and instilling in them a passion for the Zionist cause.

9/11 Impetus

Fuel For Truth was founded six years ago by Jonathan Loew, now 36, and about a dozen friends, all secular, who were upset at the negative media portrayal of Israel during the second intifada. They had been talking about starting a group to educate their peers about Israel, but the 9/11 attack gave them the sense of urgency to move forward.

"We realized the clear connection between the enemies of the U.S. and of Israel," said Loew, an investment banker with a background in media, "and we accelerated our planning."

Group members started visiting college campuses in the Northeast, looking for students who were popular socially, and asked them to help plan a social event on campus that mixed music and alcohol with small doses of "basic information" about the Mideast conflict, beginning with the notion that Israel is a democracy that has been rebuffed repeatedly in its efforts to make peace with its Arab neighbors.

The organizers were amazed at how little the Jewish students knew about Israel or Judaism.

"We asked them how many Jews there were in the world, where the word Jew comes from, where Israel is on the map," recalled Loew, "and they just didn't know. It was really sad when they would tell us, `I just learned more in 15 minutes about Israel and Judaism than what I've learned in my whole life.'"

Based on the campus response, Fuel For Truth expanded and started holding social events with 500 to 1,000 young people or more in popular Manhattan clubs once or twice a year, in addition to holding events at seven colleges in the Northeast.

Operating with a modest budget ($250,000, mostly from individual donors), the group now has two full-time employees, and its eight volunteer committees handle fundraising, recruitment and information for its 200 active members.

Several years ago Fuel For Truth added a "Boot Camp" program for 20 select volunteers — 10 consecutive Tuesday nights of three-hour educational sessions to train future leaders of the group, many of whose recruits have gone on birthright israel trips.

At a recent Boot Camp session, held on the second floor of a hip East Side restaurant, the participants heard from a young Mideast scholar at Harvard, who offered a 20-minute "crash course" on Israel's wars since 1948. Then a non-Jewish Green Beret veteran of recent combat in Iraq spoke passionately about the need for Israel and the U.S. to respond to their militant Islamic enemies pre-emptively.

"Stop sleeping," he warned. "The war is on, and they're out to get us."

The mood of the evening was a curious mix of relaxed informality, a macho emphasis on Jewish strength and Zionist indoctrination, with tips given by group leaders on how to organize fundraising events to support Fuel For Truth (a requirement) and how to make Israel advocacy points in conversations with peers while avoiding unpleasant confrontations or arguments. After the sessions, many of the participants go out for a beer together.

Zionism Lite?

"We teach them social advocacy first," says Joe Richards, 34, a former actor and friend of Loew's who is now the full-time executive director of Fuel For Truth. "You need to establish social relations with people before you can introduce political advocacy." His advice is part communications skills, part educational techniques — like smiling, making eye contact, being a good listener and avoiding confrontations.

"Always have a message triangle of three solid facts you want to get across," he told the Boot Campers. For example, Israel is a democracy, Arabs living in Israel have more rights than those living in Arab countries and the PLO was founded to "liberate Palestine" three years before Israel captured any Arab land in the 1967 war.

Richards also advised the group to spend five minutes in social settings presenting five facts about Israel to five people, and then change the subject. "Don't overdo it," he said.

Some critics point to the social aspects of Fuel For Truth and its bite-sized educational approach and dismiss it as Zionism Lite. But research analyst Frank Luntz, in a report for the group on its impact, found that "you are filling a void that no other Jewish organization has filled," most notably in attracting young people with little previous knowledge of or interest in Israel.

"You have engaged new people in new ways," he wrote, noting that most members don't attend synagogue. "You are clearly reconnecting disconnected Jews with Israel, and that may well be the first step to reconnecting them on other levels as well."

Such praise makes founder Loew all the more frustrated with the relative lack of financial support his group has received from major foundations. He wonders why those who are spending millions of dollars to verify that young Jews are feeling alienated toward Israel aren't recognizing Fuel For Truth's unique approach to dealing with the problem.

"We make them [young Jews] confront their own ignorance and their own self-doubts. We lead them in a direction, but they choose their own paths," he said, adding that unlike most Jewish groups, Fuel For Truth plays hard to get.

"When young people are begged to join a group, they won't do it. But if it's exclusive, they want to be in. We turn it around and say, `We have a great organization and we'd like to know what you'll bring to it.'"

Volunteers must work their way up the ranks through attending Boot Camp or showing other leadership skills. Loew is critical of organizations that "tell inexperienced 22-year-olds to join as Young Leaders."

"The volunteer aspect is key for us," said Guttman, who said she came to work for Fuel For Truth because she felt she could have a significant impact on people. "If we don't reach our members, then we're nothing."

While there is no one silver bullet for inspiring uninvolved Jewish young people, it's clear that Fuel For Truth is onto something. American Jewish organizations and foundations would do well to sit up and take notice.

© 2000 - 2002 The Jewish Week, Inc.

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Jewish Agency and immigration to Israel

Headline: PM: Jewish Agency still has key role in bringing Jews to Israel
OK - so let them bring Jews. What is it all about? Like everything else that is not about sex, it is about money and power. Groups like Nefesh benefesh and Nativ have succeeded in bringing many more Jews to Israel than the Jewish Agency, whose functionaries have not functioned very well in about forty years.

The Jewish Agency workers protested:

Following the decision, the Agency's workers union held a stormy meeting that resulted in a letter to Olmert accusing him of "breaking the old agreement between the Jewish Agency and the government of Israel over exclusivity in encouraging Aliyah and belittling the Agency's experience and its emissaries whose enormous efforts brought three million people from over the world to Israel."

The problem is that many of these people came to Israel in spite of the Jewish Agency rather than because of it.
Horrible regimes in Arab countries, as well as Nazi and Polish persecution, are among the factors whose "enormous efforts" brought those three million Jews to Israel. Nearly every immigrant has a tale of woe connected with the Jewish agency and its functionaries. Groups that were established to bring immigrants rather than to be the Jewish Agency have done much better in bringing immigrants from places like the North America, where nobody is chasing Jews out. Consequently, the government has made allocations of funds to these groups permanent. The Jewish agency meanwhile, has not been contributing its promised share to Nefesh benefesh, causing budgetary shortfalls.

A few modest suggestions -

1, The available funds should be allocated among the organizations in proportion to the number of immigrants they have brought to Israel, and the number they undertake to bring in the coming years.

2. A small number of jobs in these organizations - on the Israeli side - should be allocated to new immigrants. "Oleh mevi Olim" - an immigrant brings immigrants.

3. A special agency should be set up to bring back some of the estimated 800,000 Israelis living in North America.

4. The government should undertake to examine the reasons why Israelis leave, and to show yearly progress in stopping the "brain drain" of trained Israelis to North America and Europe.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Avram Burg: always interesting, not always right

A Chinese curse: "May you lead an interesting life." Avram Burg is always interesting, because he makes sure to be interesting. Let's face it, unless you make noisy and atrocious statements, you cannot attract much publicity for matters related to Judaism, Zionism, etc. B*O*R*I*N*G.

 

Therefore Burg tries not to bore us. Avram Burg is the P.T. Barnum of Jewish affairs, or he is trying to be. If he is not comparing Zionists to Nazis, he is comparing Ahmed Yassin to orthodox rabbis. In Time to attack he calls for war against fanatics essentially. "Death to all fanatics," quoth Burg, in particular orthodox fanatics of all different religions. He is willing to take a gratuitous swipe at evangelical Christians (or his idea of evangelical beliefs) as well as orthodox Jewish fanatics. The essence of his argument:

 

There is no theological difference between certain rabbis from Hebron, the former Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and the evangelical preacher hoping for Armageddon at the site of our Megiddo. Those who say that "God's law is first" are no different from one another, whether they wear a rabbi's skullcap, Hezbollah's turban or the cloak of a North American spiritual leader. They are all engaged in a cruel battle against me. They are the enemies of freedom and democracy, and are hostile to liberty, equality and the status of women.

It is remarkably like what I wrote in Soldiers who refuse orders. But Burg is also wrong. There are two or three differences between Ahmed Yassin and the hypothetical evangelical preacher hoping for Armageddon:

 

1- Ahmed Yassin was willing to use, and did use, violent methods to secure his goals. Thus far, only one or two deranged people tried to use violent methods to bring about the Christian Armageddon.

 

2- Yassin wanted to kill me. People like John Hagee want to defend me. From my subjective point of view, that is a very different goal.

 

2- Like many orthodox Jews, Burg has a stereotyped view of Christian supporters of Israel. He thinks, apparently, that all evangelicals are supporters of Israel, and he thinks that all people who believe in Armageddon want to bring it on actively by committing violent acts. These are all misconceptions about Christian Zionism.

 

Burg starts out to answer the same question that I answered in Soldiers who refuse orders:

 

The latest equation bridges between draft-dodgers and the soldiers who refuse to evacuate homes in Hebron. On the face of it, we have draft-dodgers - the left-wing bleeding hearts from greater Tel Aviv - and evacuation refuseniks - nationalistic and idealistic, but "a little" too extreme, too patriotic and too religious. And we are in the middle: We live outside Tel Aviv, but not in Hebron; we want peace but are not prepared to pay the Arabs the price. Instead of being flooded with concern over the fanatics and rabbis who have penetrated the fabric of Israeli statehood like cancerous cells, we have created an equation. We were furious for two days, we condemned them - and we went on our merry way. Everything is balanced, thank God.

But Burg has a different answer. He gives a free, blanket pass to all draft evaders, it seems, but a blanket condemnation of all right wing protest:

 

After the waves of demagoguery, spin and media opportunism have passed, it will become clear that this equation is extremely dangerous, because it releases us from dealing with this country's unruly elements. The more we ignore the cancer of rabbinical nationalism, the closer and more concrete the mortal danger is. The real equation is between the refuseniks of Hebron and their foundation in Torah - and Hamas, Hezbollah, Christian fundamentalists and their fanatic brethren.

And after that, he never mentions the leftist refuseniks again. I agree that protest that is not anchored in democracy is dangerous. But  protest that aims to destroy the state is equally dangerous, even if it claims to be "democratic." The Bilin protestors and the refuseniks (those who refuse to be drafted) are not against this or that policy of the Israeli government. They are against Israel as a state of the Jewish people. They are against the Zionist idea. They don't get a free pass under the rubric of "democratic protest." They should not pass Go. They don't collect $200 either.

 

On the other hand, the equally dangerous rabbis and refuseniks of the right do not get a free pass either. And neither do the anti-Zionist Haredi draft evaders. They should not pass "Go." But somehow, they manage to collect a great deal more than $200 from our tax money to finance activities that are subversive to democracy and to Zionism, and undermine the state as surely as the anti-Zionists of the left. Nobody should get a free pass just because we like their stand on a particular issue. That includes Burg and his immoral use of pensions and drivers granted him as ex-head of the Jewish Agency.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Another Zionist Crime: Palestinian wounds ten in gun attack

This one is too good to pass up.

 

First headline: Ten wounded in shooting attack in Old City of Jerusalem

Ten people were wounded, three moderately and seven lightly, during a shooting attack Friday morning in Jerusalem's Old City.

The assailant, who has yet to be identified, was shot and killed by a security guard.

The attack took place near the Old City's Ateret Cohanim yeshiva in the Christian Quarter.

The assailant was walking with a friend on Hanotsrim Street near Jaffa Gate, when he attacked a security guard, managing to take his gun. He then shot the guard, moderately wounding him in his shoulder.

The attacker then fled the scene, running down Avtimos Street. Another guard ran after the man, and nine bystanders were wounded, four from ricochets, in the ensuing gunfight. Five people were wounded by the attacker's gunfire, according to Israel Radio.

 

 

Everyone can judge the case on its merits. Here is the Palestinian reaction:

 

Mustafa Al Barghouthi, the secretary-general of the Palestinian national
initiative, condemned the killing, saying "This incident just confirms the
enormity of Israeli crimes perpetrated against the Palestinians."

 

So you see, the crimes of the Zionists are exposed. When you shoot at Zionists, they shoot back. Jews are not allowed to do that.

Ami Isseroff
 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Zionism is a lot more than the right of Israel to exist

The problem of defining Zionism keeps turning up like a bad penny. It is not an empty semantic argument. It is symptomatic of a deep malaise.

 

It is plain that when different people answer the question, What is Zionism? they are often giving definitions that reflect either carelessness, or ignorance or willful distortion of the meaning of Zionism to suit their own political program.  

 

In the Jerusalem Post, David Rubin had this to say about Zionism:

According to the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, there are now over 260,000 tax-paying Jewish residents in the region....Jews continue to arrive from all parts of Israel, as well as from abroad, seeking homes in places such as Shiloh, Bet El, and Hebron, and many of those who have grown up there continue stay on after they marry, in whatever housing is available, raising large families and building for the future in those disputed areas....

Yes, Zionism is alive and well in the Biblical heartland of Israel, both idealistically and demographically.

Something is indeed alive in the "Biblical Heartland of Israel," but it is not necessarily Zionism. It is one interpretation of Zionism, which would not necessarily meet with the approval of the founders of Zionism. The attempt to make a shotgun marriage of Zionism with the occupation will end in tragedy for Zionism, as the occupation must end, and when the occupation ends, that sort of Zionism will end, and all the avid "Zionists" who support the occupation will go about their business in America, just as they did before the 1967 Six Day War , before most orthodox Jews "discovered" Israel as an actual place to live in.  

On the hand, Doni Remba at Ameinu, attempts a shotgun marriage between Zionism and his version of progressive values. According to him: 

 "Zionism is the belief that Israel has a right to exist as a democratic Jewish state--nothing more, nothing less."

Nothing more? That is a fine definition of Zionism, which everyone from Mahmud Abbas to Mr. Feiglin can support. Of course, Abbas will have a different definition of "democratic" than Feiglin, and they will also differ in their idea of what is a "Jewish state." Feiglin will contend that Israel is not a "Jewish State" unless and until we all assume the 613 commandments of Judaism, not omitting one jot or tittle. Abbas will contend that Israel is not democratic unless we abolish the law of return. Even professors Walt and Mearsheimer content that they strongly support the right of Israel to exist. That right is anchored in international law. Of course, Zionism supports the right of Israel to exist, but so do many non-Zionists and even a few anti-Zionists.

When the Zionist movement was founded, it demanded a national home for the Jewish people, guaranteed in international law. It did not ask for a state. There was no Israel and no Jewish State. Could one then say, that since Herzl and others who attended the first Zionist congress did not assert the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish democratic state, they were not Zionist?

We may also ask, why is the Jewish people different from all other peoples? The Chinese, Saudi Arabians and Sudanese have their own states, that are not particularly democratic, but nobody claims they have no right to exist because they are not democratic. Democracy is part of a value system adopted by the Zionist movement and the Jewish people (save a few exceptions), but the existence of Israel cannot be made conditional on its being democratic, according to the definition of the UN or the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or some Jews in America.  

We also must contend with the dynamite hidden in the phrase "Jewish state," which is open to hi-jacking by those who insist that Israel must be a Jewish theocracy. For that reason, Avrum Burg, who has said some outrageous things, pointed out, correctly, in this case, that we should strive for a "state of the Jewish people" rather than a "Jewish state."

What does a real definition of Zionism add, that is missing from Doni Remba's definition. Remba himself supplies the answer: "It is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people."  A national liberation movement believes in much more than the right of a state to exist. Zionism succeeded in large part because it transformed the Jewish people. "Life is with people." Without the Jewish people to live in Israel and to support Israel, the "right of Israel to exist" would be a meaningless legalism. One of the Zionists cited by Remba, Echad Ha'am, was a leader in the cultural revolution wrought by Zionism, which brought about the rebirth of the Hebrew language as a spoken tongue, and increased the consciousness of secular Jews that they are a part of a Hebrew nation and culture. And of course, one of the key "ingredients" in Zionism is aliya. Without aliya (immigration) there would be no Jews here. Support for the existence of Israel, democratic or otherwise, without support for Aliya and Hebrew culture, is a sterile sort of Zionism, because Israel obviously cannot exist as the state of the Jewish people without having Jews in it. We cannot say that "Zionism is the belief that Israel has a right to exist as a democratic Jewish state--nothing more..."  

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Secular Aliya: A no brainer

Israel, or rather the Zionist Yishuv in Palestine, and Zionism, were built by secular Jews. Chaim Weizmann, Ze'ev Jabotinsky, David Ben Gurion, Theodor Herzl and the other major leaders of Zionism were secular Jews. Now however, the need for secular Aliya is in doubt, and has to be defended as if it is a strange concept. We have traveled a long road downhill.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Yes to secular aliya

david wainer,

THE JERUSALEM POST  Jul. 31, 2007

 

Recently in Jerusalem, a dinner conversation with friends from the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies turned into an impassioned discussion about secular aliya.

 

While enjoying our vegetarian Shabbat dinner, Deborah, 21, modern Orthodox from Wisconsin, scoffed at the fact that her friend had just made aliya from Miami to Tel Aviv. This friend is completely secular and "despises" religion. "He's enthralled by secular modernity and the Western way of life," she said.

 

So why, she wondered, bother leaving the comforts of America, where opportunities are limitless and terrorism - for the most part - is an ocean away to come to Tel Aviv? And, anyway, why come to the Holy Land only to live in the "decadence" of Tel Aviv?

 

Deborah's impetuous argument stirred a heated debate, and warranted a particular response from me, a secular Jew, which I now relay:

 

FIRST, IT'S important to note that although I don't agree with Deborah, statistics do. In 2005, as the second intifada began to wane, Israel welcomed a record number of olim from North America. Nefesh B'Nefesh brought over 3,000 immigrants. Seventy percent of the arrivals identified themselves as Orthodox, 15% as Conservative, 10% said they were Reform, but a mere five percent were secular or unaffiliated.

 

These numbers are understandable. To the observant Jew of whatever stream, Israel is the most precious place on earth. Israelis are perceived as special people; the Western Wall isn't just a wall, and fast food is not just fast food - it's kosher. But what impetus do secular Jews have to make aliya?

 

Start with the fact that the founders and most influential thinkers of modern Zionism were all secular. Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, and Ze'ev Jabotinsky were as cosmopolitan and secular as Deborah's secular friend.

 

If they were so acculturated, why the desire to create a Jewish state? Answer: anti-Semitism.

 

Alarmed by the Dreyfus Affair and the universality of anti-Semitism, the founding Zionists all agreed that the Jewish soul needed to be liberated and made safe. In Herzl's words: "It is true that we aspire to our ancient land. But what we want in that ancient land is a new blossoming of the Jewish spirit."

 

Herzl was cognizant that Jews were second-class citizens; and whether they were in imminent physical peril in the Pale of Settlement or constrained by more genteel discrimination in Western Europe, Jews needed a place where they could determine their own culture and live their lives in fulfillment.

 

And in Jabotinsky's words: "What we see around us among Jews is merely the outcome of arbitrary action perpetrated by others. Only after removing the dust accumulated through 2,000 years of exile, of galut, will the true, authentic Hebrew character reveal its glorious head."

 

In order to be redeemed, Jabotinsky argued, the Jew would first need to be liberated from the dangers of European Jew-hatred.

 

These Zionists' premonitions proved only too accurate. Half a century after Herzl's death almost all of European Jewry had vanished.

 

But today, for the most part, the Jew living in America or Europe is under no physical threat. Yarmulke-wearing Jews can live comfortably throughout the Western world while enjoying the perks of a first-world lifestyle.

 

TODAY, IT is the secular Jew living in America who is in cultural peril. And assimilation is the imminent threat to his or her Judaic existence.

 

In Israel, if a youth rebels against his or her traditional upbringing, wanting to pursue a more secular life-style, he or she can escape to Tel Aviv. There they might not keep Shabbat or kosher anymore. But they'll be present when the siren goes off on Holocaust Remembrance Day. They will speak Hebrew. They will still take off work for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur - even if it's to take a three-day cruise to Turkey.

 

And chances are they'll marry another Jew.

 

In Israel, being Jewish is organic; in America it is not.

 

In America, a cosmopolitan Jew who is completely secular and not culturally connected to a Jewish community has no connection to our people. So in New York City, Los Angeles or London, such a Jew would have little reason to have a Shabbat dinner or take off work for Rosh Hashana.

 

Falling in in love with a non-Jew is a very real possibility. And, over the generations, those Jews' lineage would likely come to an end. Thus, the secular Jew, no longer attached by faith, also risks detachment from tradition and peoplehood by living in America.

 

BEING JEWISH in America requires a special effort. Although most of the Jews making aliya from America today are affiliated with some branch of Judaism, it is secular Jews who need Israel the most. Only Israel can save them from long-term cultural decline. Only in Israel can they redefine what it means to be a Jew.

 

In response to Deborah and those who don't understand why a secular Jew would leave Miami for Tel Aviv, the answer is quite straightforward: to remain Jewish. In Israel, regardless of ethnicity, whether Orthodox or secular, right-wing or left-wing, gay or straight, each Jew constitutes - as described by Shimon Peres in his inaugural speech as president - one of the "fine threads of fabric that weave us together as a nation."

 

The writer was raised in Rio de Janeiro and recently graduated from Boston University. He is a media fellow at the Israel Project in Jerusalem this summer.
 

 

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Jewish Jewish Problem: Haredim

Isi Leibler is very right in his assessment below. The proliferation of the ultraorthodox educational establishment is a disaster for Israel. However, the repercussions must be explained and understood. Haredi schools omit not only Zionist and Jewish values, but all modern and practical subjects, so that their students are unequipped for practical occupations. Add to that the fact that Haredim usually do not serve in the army, and that the proportion of Haredim is growing rapidly, and you have a recipe for disaster from every point of view.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

The looming haredi disaster
By Isi Leibler   August 1, 2007

There is now a long-overdue recognition: the erosion of Jewish identity in the curriculum of the dominant secular school system is having disastrous repercussions. In their frenetic zeal to promote universalism, secular educators have diluted Jewish heritage to a minimum. Even the Bible, which once occupied a central place in secular Zionist education, has largely disappeared. Combined with growing hedonism and consumerism this has begun to undermine the faith of some youngsters in the sacred values of the nation.

This phenomenon manifests itself in the increasing brain drain of young Israelis emigrating to greener pastures. It is also reflected by a number of popular entertainers who shamelessly boast of having evaded the draft.

In spite of our minister of education who is besotted with post-modernism, many Israeli leaders are now conscious of the urgent need to restore Jewish and Zionist values in the school system.

But regrettably this problem among the secular is now being dwarfed by a more immediate crisis arising from the demographically exploding haredi sector, whose political leverage peaked simultaneously with a failed government willing to virtually sacrifice anything to retain power.

This was evidenced in the passage of recent legislation obligating municipalities to provide equal funding to haredi schools, including those affiliated with movements even more extreme than Shas and Aguda, who brazenly exclude obligatory secular core curriculum subjects.

Nobody seems unduly concerned that the state is effectively financing the molding of citizens destined for a life of impoverishment and total dependence on welfare.

Paradoxically, the children of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Western countries are obliged and do take part in secular core curriculum studies prescribed by their governments.

The statistics relating to this problem signal an even more alarming phenomenon. Currently the high haredi birth rates (considered a boon for Israel) have created a situation in which children from haredi families today comprise 22% of all first Israeli first-graders. This is virtually double the proportion which prevailed 10 to 15 years ago. No society in which almost a quarter of its members are destined to become parasitical burdens and impoverish the majority can indefinitely sustain itself.

Never in the history of the Jewish people has such a bizarre situation prevailed. In the past, exceptionally gifted Torah scholars were funded by philanthropists to lead a life of learning. But even in the shtetl, where poverty was endemic, religious Jews accepted earning a livelihood as a prerequisite to their well-being and dignity.

There is an equally frightening parallel to this. In 1948, in what was subsequently proven to be one of his greatest blunders, David Ben-Gurion agreed with Rabbi Avraham Yeshaye Karelitz - known as the Chazon Ish - to exempt all yeshiva students from conscription.

At the time only 400 were involved. This year that number - which obviously includes many who could never be considered serious students - has mushroomed to well in excess of 50,000 and will continue to rise.

The Tal Law was introduced with the laudable objective of reducing haredi draft evasion and encouraging participation in the work force. It failed abysmally. Over a four-year period only about 500 yeshiva students were drafted and minimal numbers opted for legal employment.

Yet the government once again buried its head in the sand and without weighing the consequences, extended the law for another five years.

But the worst has yet to come. Currently haredim account for 11 percent of draft exemptions. However, unless the system changes, when today's haredi first-graders turn 18, they will comprise nearly a quarter of the entire draft.

Should that happen, aside from the additional physical burden on those drafted, the psychological implications for the nation will be devastating. Instead of representing a badge of honor, military service will be regarded as applicable only to hapless freiers or "lower-class people."

What is now a marginal but growing phenomenon among secular elites, celebrity draft-dodging, could become infectious and lead to widespread efforts to evade the draft. That would surely be disastrous for the Zionist vision.

Who is responsible, and what can be done?

Setting aside a miserable political system which encourages politicians to prostitute themselves in order to retain office, the principal responsibility rests with haredi rabbis and heads of yeshivot. Many of them have yet to reconcile themselves with the obligations of living in a Jewish state.

There are no genuine halachic grounds to justify draft evasion. Far from promoting pacifism, Judaism is in fact explicit concerning the obligation to support a righteous war. Maimonides proclaims that even a groom at his wedding banquet is obliged to participate in defense of the nation.

But the primary reason that haredi rabbis so vehemently oppose the draft is a fear of exposing their followers to the outside world. They even have the gall to proclaim that the role of haredim is to "pray for the nation" - a none too subtle attempt to rationalize why non-observant Israelis and religious Zionists (who also pray) should fight and die for them. Their attitude is reminiscent of the ultra-Orthodox European rabbis before the Shoah who urged their followers not to leave Europe. Their attitude today could ultimately bring about an historical disaster of equal magnitude.

The negative attitude toward earning a livelihood is equally bizarre. Our sages from the time of the Mishna consistently upheld the virtues of labor and maintaining a family livelihood.

There is of course a substantial minority of haredim who do earn livelihoods and a number who also serve in the IDF. Some of them initiated efforts to create training centers and colleges for training haredim for employment in the computer and electronics industry. Regrettably, few rabbis encouraged their followers to take advantage of such opportunities.

Moderate religious Zionists, who in the past served as bridges to secular Israelis, should assume a leading role in this matter. Their children all serve in the IDF, are highly motivated and renowned for exemplary conduct and contribute - far out of proportion to their numbers - in combat units and as officers.

In leading the campaign, they can demonstrate that far from conflicting with Halacha, army service and contribution to the defense of the nation is a mitzva. They can relate to the haredi Nahal unit, which has performed admirably and provide reassurances that the IDF will ensure that religious observance is respected.

They will avoid the haredi-bashing of bigoted anti-religious parties, like the now-defunct Shinui, and be constructive, even highlighting the positive aspects of haredi life which secular Israelis could emulate.

Hopefully they will also gain the support of the hitherto silent haredim who are fully aware of the catastrophe that will inevitably impact on them and the entire nation unless these trends are reversed.

Views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Barak versus the ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers

The article states:

11% received exemptions this year on grounds of being ultra-Orthodox, an increase of 1% over last year.

As it is Jerusalem Post, we can assume that they mean that last year there were 10% ultra-Orthodox exemptions, and this year there were 11%. That is an increase of about 10%, not 1%.

 

For our mathematicians: assume that the number of ultraorthodox increases at the rate of 10% of current ultra-orthodox draft dodgers each year. In what year will all draftees be exempt because they are all ultra-orthodox, unfit or abroad? Now assume that there is a non-induction induction effect. By that I mean that for each ten ultra-orthodox draft dodgers, there will be 3 or 4 non-ultra-orthodox who decide they aren't going to be suckers: if the ultra-orthodox don't go to the army, why should they serve? Can you imagine the absurdity of the fact that Druze youth volunteer to serve in the army of the Jewish state, while ultra-orthodox Jews do not? Can someone explain how and why this is justified? Can you explain why a kibbutznik who belongs to peace now should be guarding settlements, while an ultra-orthodox Shas or United Torah Judaism voter who insists that Israel must never give up a millimeter of the occupation is busy making believe he is studying the Talmud?

 

There is a solution however.  "Medically unfit" includes those who died before age 18 - we can start drafting the dead as well as the quick.

 

For the rest of us, an easy question: If it costs NIS 40,000 (currently - soon to be increased) to pay university tuition for one future Israeli engineer, how much does it cost to pay tuition for 100 ultraorthodox draft dodgers? Answer NIS 0. Yeshiva tuition is paid for.

 

The Israeli government can hardly complain, since they promulgated the Tal law. It is impossible that the majority of Israelis support this unfair, suicidal law, and yet periodically it is renewed, the monstrous offspring of incestuous coalitions.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Barak: Draft dodging a security threat

Yaakov Katz, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 30, 2007

Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned Monday that the growing number of youth who dodge the IDF draft will eventually harm national security and turn the IDF from a "people's army" into an "army of half the people."

"When a soldier who goes out to the battlefield feels like a sucker, this harms national security," Barak said during a conference at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security in memory of Ha'aretz military commentator Ze'ev Schiff who passed away last month.

Barak said that Israel needed to return to the days when military service was something to be proud of and draft dodgers carried the mark of Cain. Barak added that Israel's true heroes were those who served in the IDF.

Burning Issues: The Tal Law and IDF non-enlistment

"A society under an existential threat will only know how to survive if it respects those who defend it," he said.

Ahead of the August draft, the IDF reported damning statistics showing a sharp rise in the number of teenagers dodging military service. The total reaches 25 percent of youth born in 1989 and scheduled to enlist in the IDF this summer.

Of the 25%, some 11% received exemptions this year on grounds of being ultra-Orthodox, an increase of 1% over last year. Seven percent did not enlist for medical reasons, including physical and mental conditions. Four percent did not enlist because of criminal records, and 3% live abroad.

Barak further blasted university lecturers and employers who do not accommodate students or workers who are called up for reserve duty.

"I wonder what Schiff would have said about the delegitimization that military service has been granted by elements in Israeli society starting with university lecturers who don't find solutions for students who miss exams due to reserve duty," Barak said.   

Continued (Permanent Link)

The story of Zionism - a personal version

Time was/time is is a personal way of telling the Story of Zionism. It reminds us of what it is really all about. Enjoy. How many times, and in how many places, did this same story unfold?

---

Time was/time is

Hadassah Bat Haim, THE JERUSALEM POST Jul. 18, 2007

...

Eighty-four or maybe 85 years ago, in a darkened house in a suburb of Manchester when everybody else was sleeping, my grandfather,Itzik Samuel, checked my room, saw that I was awake - which I always was - wrapped me in a blanket and carried me downstairs to the cold, dark stone-floored kitchen. He lit the gas mantle with a match. It made a little plop, then soared into a light and some warmth. I blew out the match. He then made coffee, giving me the skin of the milk which had coagulated on the top.

This was my great treat in the morning. Then we sat for an hour or so, very quiet so as not to waken anybody, as he told me stories in Yiddish about his life in Romania, from where he had left with great gratitude in his heart a God he didn't believe in.

In the small village where he had grown up, officers from a nearby regiment would strut round, pushing everyone into the road, dressed up to the nines with gold epaulettes and sky-blue uniforms, picking their way daintily through the mud and garbage in the streets. There were no sidewalks and anyone in their way was rudely shoved into the road. Those identified as Jews, with side locks, hats and bowed shoulders were a favorite target for beatings, pushing, robbing and other humiliations.

He also told me about the river that froze over in the winter so they could skate over to a neighboring town. But in the winter the snow came up to the windows and wolves roamed the area.

He told me with enthusiasm and conviction about "Towdor Herzl" whose book he had read, Altneuland (The Old New Land, 1902, in which the father of Zionism pictured the future Jewish state as a socialist utopia), and was fired in his imagination of what could be. "When you are a big girl," he would say to me, "we will go together, you and me, hand in hand, to this wonderful new country where oranges grow and dates are for the picking, and Jews walk straight and no more Romanian officers."

Together we sang, in Yiddish, a song which translates as "Almonds and raisins." "Those grow there also," he said, "and raisins, you know, are made from grapes." ["Rozhinkehs mit mandeln" - A.I.]

I stored this vital information in my brain, where it remains to this day - although other, perhaps more pertinent matters have left it. At the merest hint, or the mention of agriculture, I can quote this knowledge without hesitation. At that time I had never seen any grapes and oranges were rare, but almonds we got every year in a blue-and-white box straight from this fabulous land.

At the age of 12, grandfather had been apprenticed to a cobbler and worked contributing to keeping the family of parents and siblings in an almost completely Jewish neighborhood. Some bureaucratic order, not unknown even in better armies, grabbed him out of his workshop and pushed him into the army where common soldiers - even if they were not Jewish - had a very hard time.

But grandfather had an advantage. He was literate, a wonder among his unit. His fellow soldiers got him to write letters home for them...

Astonishingly for a Jew, he rose to be a sergeant and we have a picture of him, circa 1890, in his cocked hat, breeches, white coat and side arms - a resplendent figure.

By then he was married and had two sons, Sam and Mendel. He was determined that their lives would somehow be better. If the dream of 'Towdor' Herzl became real he would take them there. But Romania was not a place to stay.

... It took 10 years of writing letters, waiting for answers, contacts, bribery and savings until finally they were ready to leave. Sam and Mendel, already apprenticed to tailors, would be able to work, and contact with old friends brought him to Manchester where there was a Romanian Synagogue.

The dream had not materialized. England was not the Promised Land but to Grandfather it was a revelation, an escape, a refuge: the Holy Land would have to wait.

It was a shame he could not know that one of his sons became a student of Dr. Chaim Weizmann who was to become the first President of the newly-founded State of Israel, his biographer and friend who later moved to Palestine.

The First World War - the Great War, the one to end all wars - was followed by the Second World War; and after five years of universal suffering that too came to an end. The camps were opened and desperate, hungry, ill-treated survivors emerged. The Jewish Agency was well-prepared, and on the spot organized transport in trucks, carts, people carriers, buses - anything that moved - and got these refugees down to the ports, fed them, clothed them, reassured them, talked to them and told them they were on their way to Palestine.

The British government, still exercising its mandate, decreed an entry of 75,000 Jews over a period of five years. But there were a million starving, dispossessed, desperate people refused entry to most European countries. So they came anyway. The young men and women who took them promised a new life in Palestine, which many had never heard of before. They came in unsafe and leaky boats. Those intercepted by the British were interned. Many came at night. Somehow they evaded the many patrol boats, were lifted from their boats by willing hands, scrambled ashore, taken out and hidden. A leaky boat, half-sunk in the water, was all the British would find.

They questioned the inhabitants. "Where are they?" shouted one sergeant, red-faced and frustrated. "No speakee Inglis," replied the interviewee, an Oxford don with a doctorate in semantics.

For once, the conscience of part of the world was aroused. The UN voted in favor, Israel became a state and the blue-and-white flag hung from the King David Hotel. The next day the Arabs attacked in force, furious at being deprived of this strip of desert, sparsely populated and mostly uncultivated.

With homemade weapons, First World War rifles supplied by Czechoslovakia, stones in slings and uncertain ammunition, the Israelis defended themselves.

A cease-fire was called. The first attempt at annihilation had failed. The truce lasted one month, during which the Arabs regrouped, congratulating themselves upon their actions and promising themselves and all who would listen about the annihilation of this upstart nation. The Israelis made their own preparations, making soldiers out of the most unlikely material. Pacifists, socialists, walking invalids, elderly gentlemen - and ladies - waited for the onslaught.

It came with amplified fury. The battle lasted 10 long days. The Arabs, convinced of their victory, brought up more men, more supplies. We civilians with small children held our breath and waited for news. When it came it seemed incredible. The hordes of enemy had left, leaving behind weapons, shoes and anything that could be discarded, in a hasty retreat. The onslaught had failed.

The Israelis spat on their hands and went to work. They built roads, schools, art galleries, orchestras, scientific institutes and greenhouses, bringing in at the same time all Jews who needed refuge.

There were other attacks: the borders were dangerous, buses were attacked, schools were besieged, from their superior positions the Jordanians shot down on passing Jews below them, and people were killed. Kibbutzim guarded their premises and watched their baby houses.

We had a presence at the UN. We were a nation, and we behaved as such. Always on guard, the work went on, schools and universities stayed open, experiments were pursued, and scientists from all over the world worked in the Weizmann Institute giving freely of their expertise.

The attacks continued.

At the UN, the implacable hatred of the Arab nations could not be alleviated. There was a feeling of uneasiness, a menace in the air as the year 1966 came to an end. There seemed to be in the Arab world a feeling of confidence, knowledge, satisfaction at their improved military skills. In Israel children were escorted to school and back. Parents took turns sitting at the gates of kindergartens. Only short journeys away from the house were permitted. No longer were there groups of youngsters making bonfires on the beach, singing, making jokes. There was a silence over all gatherings. Something was coming that was inevitable and frightening. And it came.

Once more a union of Arab states sought to destroy what they felt was an outrage on their land. They struck. For three days there was silence. My own son was then in the army and there was no word from him. But the fighting, we knew, would be fierce. Four days, five days, six days. And on the sixth day there was news. Despite their enormous superiority of equipment and training, the enemy had failed.

Incredulous, we heard that Jerusalem was whole and reunited, west and east. We hurried there to see for ourselves. The front of the Wall - the ancient wall which we had heard of and never seen - was crowded with soldiers, many looking as though they had just left school, tired, dirty and quiet. There was no jubilation. They were not grinning in victory, not patting each other's backs in admiration. They were in awe. This was the wall their grandparents had sometimes spoken of.

The sun was shining; I put my hand on the warm stones and thought of my grandfather. In my head was the echo of a song, the words as plain as if I could hear them - "Almonds and raisins will be your future."

And so it is.  

---

And so it should be. Building Israel must be the ongoing occupation of the Jewish people, for the work is not done, and it never will be. As long as there is a Jewish people, there must never be a "post-Zionist" period. Hitler wanted to make "post-Zionism" a reality.

 

And what about you? "Next year in Jerusalem" may be too late, after all.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Rebuld the Jewish Temple?

On Tisha B'av (ninth day of the month of Av) the traditional commemoration of the destruction of the temple, Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg asks, Should Jews build the Third Temple?. As there are a number of Jews, and many more Christian Zionists who would support this project, the question bears discussion. His answer is "no."

I have to agree, but for different reasons. He points out that each of the temples lasted only a relatively brief time before being variously looted or destroyed. Curiously, he doesn't mention the temple built upon the return of the Jews from Babylonian exile, only the temple of Solomon and the rebuilding done by Herod. The second temple built by Ezra and Nehemiah was a great national rallying point, and served as the symbol of the Maccabee revolt.

The Muslims would of course object to building a temple in place of the mosques, but perhaps this could be overcome by building a temple on the Ophel, which was probably the actual site of the first temple.

The big problems with rebuilding a temple are that Israelis do not want to live in a theocracy, do not want to engage in animal sacrifice, and do not want to support everyone named Cohen and Levy as temple acolytes and priests. I am not a vegetarian, but God might be.

Perhaps it would be OK to erect a modest structure on the Ophel, to symbolize the return of the Jewish people to our national home. That, after all, would be the real importance of the temple in a Zionist context. Instead of paying to subsidize Cohens and Levites, worshippers could voluntarily donate money to charity.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Zionism: I'm from Brooklyn, you wanna make something of it?

As an ex Brooklynite (though non-native) and Zionist, I am often amused and annoyed by the racist stereotype image of Zionists as right-wing religious fanatics from Brooklyn, so I have written a bit about Zionists & Brooklyn as well as examining the definition of Zionism and the question of whether or not anti-Zionism is racism, and whether or not it matters. Two articles that examined that question of what Zionism is, and what Zionism is not focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, Zionism cannot define itself based only on what critics of Zionism say - there is more to Zionism then arguing about the occupation. Read about it at Zionists & Brooklyn.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Increased Aliya (immigration) from France to Israel

The relatively small French Jewish community has contributed over 4,000 new immigrants to Israel in the past eighteen months. Six hundred of these French Jews are arriving in Israel today. Another 3,000 are expected to come by the end of the year. This is a far higher proportion than the 3,200  immigrants expected to arrive from the United States in 2007, as there are, on paper, over five million Jews in the United States, and only about half a million Jews in France. Like the American Jewish population, the population of French Jews has remained relatively constant, due to low birth rates and assimilation through intermarriage.

 

The Aliya flights were organized by the francophone aliya organization, Ami, along with the Jewish Agency. It seems that in each area, the Jewish Agency alone cannot do the job of recruiting aliya, and must have "helper" organizations such as Ami, Nativ and Nefesh beNefesh.

 

The French aliya is urban. The largest number of French olim, nearly 7,500 since 1989, live in Jerusalem, followed by Netanya with 4,900, Ashdod with 4,200 and Tel Aviv with 2,000.

 

As might be expected, the arrival of the immigrants was put in doubt by a general strike threat, but the immigrants arrived on schedule after the strike was postponed for 24 hours.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Support for Israel: Perhaps too enthusiastic?

Support for Israel is always welcome, but perhaps this support is a bit too enthusiastic. Few in Israel want the US to attack Iran immediately, but moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be an important gesture of support.

 

 Christian Zionists: Ahmadinejad is new Hitler

Christians United for Israel call on US to attack Iran immediately, move US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as sign of support

 

Yitzhak Benhorin and AP Published:  07.18.07, 23:13 / Israel News

 

 

 

WASHINGTON - Thousands of members of Christians United for Israel headed to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby Congress on behalf of the Jewish state.

 

 The group's founder, the Reverend John Hagee, declared, "We support Israel because we are Bible-believing Christians," and said the world needs to see that "the sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened."

 

 Hagee said that the entire Christian world kept quiet during World War II and allowed the genocide of the Jewish people. "This time we will not be silent," Hagee said.

At "A Night to Honor Israel" banquet, Hagee called on President Bush to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also called for American divestment from Iran, which he compared to Nazi Germany as a threat to the Jewish people.

 

Hagee said Mideast tensions shouldn't be blamed on Israel, but on Islamic radicals and moderate Muslims who won't condemn them.

 

Hagee continued to warn against Iranian President Ahmadinejad, calling him the new Hitler, saying the Iranian president will use a nuclear bomb to destroy Israel the first chance he gets.

Ahmandinejad must be stopped, Hagee said, calling on the United State to attack Iran immediately.

 

'We must end the madness'
Former speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, who is considering running for the Republican Party's presidential candidate, said at the event that if US President George W. Bush really wanted to get a message across to Hamas, he should move the US Embassy to Jerusalem "tomorrow morning".

Gingrich charged that instead of fighting to win, President Bush is now pursuing appeasement through a proposed Mideast peace conference.

Comparing that to the attempted appeasement of Nazi Germany at Munich before World War II, Gingrich said, "We don't have a peace process. We have a surrender process."

 

Gingrich said the United States and Western civilization are in a global conflict with radical Islam, and must choose between victory and surrender.

Gary Bauer, who ran for the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2000, also spoke at the rally, saying, "You are Ahmadinejad, Hamas, and Hizbullah's worst nightmare, because you support Israel. They are telling you to give back land. We are telling you, don't give back one inch."

 

Israeli Ambassador to the US Salai Meridor, told the protesters, "We must end this nightmare. We must end the madness. We must make it clear to the Iranians that all options are on the table and that there is no way they will be allowed to hold nuclear weapons."

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israeli government versus the Zionist project

Bradley Burston, at his usual excellent best, raises important and worrisome questions in Why Israel was created, why it still exists. Can Israel be killed by the greed, short sightedness and incompetence of its own leaders? We should add to the list below, discrimination against Reform and Conservative Jews that is preventing immigration from the United States, laws that make it difficult for non-Jews to join the Jewish people, lack of action on democracy, lack of action on demographic issues, lack of action to save the Jews of Russia and many more policy blunders that "just happen."

 

By Bradley Burston

One way or another, Israel will spend this summer fighting the last war.

 

Never has a prospective war been more expected. Well before the Second Lebanon War was over, the Third was already being confidently predicted by a broad consensus of experts.

 

But even if the predictions of a new war are proven mistaken, the last war is likely to remain a focus of the nation's attention though the summer and beyond. Inquiries on the government's wartime failings are likely to monopolize the attention of a prime minister whose every calculation is keyed to political survival.

 

At the same time, there is every danger that in dealing with the fallout of the last war, the government will find ways to refrain from working to resolve issues that go the very heart of why the state of Israel was created, and why it continues to exist.

 

The problems represent critical tests of the very idea of Zionism. As such, the government may have every interest in trying to skirt them, ignore them, or otherwise dodge them. Here are five:

 

1. The new Palestinian refugees - the settlers of Gaza

 

Israel was not created in order to settle and hold the West Bank. Ironically, however, the 2005 disengagement from Gaza may serve to keep the West Bank in Israel's hands indefinitely.

 

Any future peace prospects will hinge on Israel's treatment of the Jews it expelled from Gaza. The logic is simple. Israel has shown itself unable or unwilling to find adequate permanent housing and satisfactory employment for less than 2,000 families evacuated from an area for which a large majority of Israelis felt no affinity and which polls showed most had wanted to abandon years before. How can the government then expect to win support for the expulsion of tens of thousands in the West Bank, an area which many more Israelis consider traditionally Jewish land.

 

And this consideration is brought into even greater relief at a time when Qassam rockets are still being fired from abandoned settlements into Israel ? some of them striking areas to which evacuated settlers have been moved.

 

The situation is oddly advantageous for the larger settlement movement, which can rest assured that the treatment of Gaza settlers, and the overkill evacuation of the illegal Amona outpost in January, 2006, coupled with Qassams, virtually guarantee that present settlements will remain where they are.

 

As such, the situation bears peculiar reminders of the plight of Palestinian refugees still in Gaza. For sixty years, Arab states and fellow Palestinians made strenuous efforts to enshrine the misery of the Palestinian refugees. They blocked efforts to resettle them in improved housing, and generally took advantage of their own and Israel's inaction, holding the refugees hostage for their own ends.

 

2. The refugees from Darfur

 

Israel was not created as a refuge for all the world's threatened and displaced persons. Nonetheless, when peoples are threatened with genocide and appeal for help, Israel cannot turn its back.

 

Jews cannot continue to complain about the world's silence during the Holocaust, if they are willing to stand on the sidelines while another people is systematically slaughtered.

 

In recent months, refugees from the Sudan, currently the site of the signal human rights atrocity in all the world, have made their way on foot through the Sinai desert and across the border into Israel. Government agencies and the Knesset have ducked and deferred policy decisions regarding their status. Soldiers who have picked them up as they cross the border, have been instructed to simply take them to Negev cities and leave them there. The government cannot decide how - or when, or whether - to deport them. The Knesset cannot even decide whether to discuss the issue.

 

"We as Jews are obliged to help not only Jews." Nopel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel told Haaretz last year. "I was a refugee and therefore I am in favor of admitting refugees."

 

"I thought it was very laudable when Israel became the first country to admit the Vietnamese boat people. History constantly chooses a capital of human suffering, and Darfur is today the capital of human suffering. Israel should absorb refugees from Darfur, even a symbolic number."

 

3. The people of Sderot

 

Sderot is a test case for Israel, and for the world as well. It is a daily target of war crimes violations. The world should pressure Hamas to stop rocket attacks targeting civilians. The world has shown itself unwilling. Israel's military efforts have also been unable to stop the attacks.

 

In the present reality, protecting the people of Sderot and the western Negev must be a primary priority of the government. Resources must be marshaled, here and abroad, to make certain that homes, schools, and workplaces receive proper reinforcement, that children and adults receive needed psychological support.

 

Israelis must redouble their efforts to show the people of the western Negev that they are not an expendable appendage, but that their resistance to what Palestinians have laughably called "resistance" is crucial to the future of all Israelis.

 

4. Economic support of destitute Holocaust survivors

 

Over the past year, Israelis have learned in detail that large numbers of the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors in the country are living in poverty. Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik has announced that she will seek to block passage of the State Budget unless and until the treasury agrees to address the needs of survivors.

 

If the effort fails, this will be the surest proof that the very foundation of the state has been sold to finance some Thatcherite ideal.

 

5. The end of the People of the Book

 

In large part, the Jewish people, and the state it created, are alive today because of education. Unsexy, not violent, the subject barely draws yawns in crisis-inured Israel. But public education is being allowed to die a slow death. When it does, the rest of this enterprise will not be far behind.

Continued (Permanent Link)

"Liberal" Anti-Zionism revisited

When Alvin Rosenfeld dared to speak out against critics who deny the right of Israel to exist, the New York Times rushed to the defense of these "Liberals," virtually equating the word "Liberal" with anti-Zionist. Some water has flowed under the dam since then. It is a bit easier to evaluate the "progressive" nature of some of this rhetoric and its originators, who have not been deterred from the anti-Israel fight by the ascent of the Hamas in Gaza, and who support the genocidal Hamas as the "democratically elected government" of the Palestinians. Ynet interviewed Rosenfeld recently. He discusses the controversy below.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Alvin Rosenfeld

Anti-Zionism by 'progressive' Jews

Ynetnews interviews Professor Alvin Rosenfeld, author of controversial article that noted growing trend of rhetoric resembling 'anti-Zionist hate speech employed by the worst anti-Semites' among progressive Jewish academics

Noa Levanon

Were you surprised by the controversy surrounding your article, "'Progressive' Jewish thought and the new anti-Semitism ? What do you think caused it?

The New York Times ran a story about my article entitled "Essay Linking Liberal Jews to Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor." It was really after this article that the furor began.

The article linked anti-Semitism with "liberal Jews", a term I had not used. That disturbed a lot of people, for perhaps 85 to 90 percent of Jews in America think of themselves as liberals.

Additionally, the AJC was erroneously labeled a "conservative advocacy group," which it is not. So, unfortunately, the article played into the current culture wars in the United States between right and left, liberal and conservative opinion.

In an explanatory article that you wrote for The New Republic, you emphasized the fact that your choice of the word "progressive" was self-chosen by the individuals whose work you examined. Could you define some generalized characteristics of the term, and what distinguishes it from liberalism, in your opinion?

The terms "liberal" and "liberalism" have fallen casualty to the culture wars, so some now use "progressive." In some sense, "progressive" is a more radical version of "liberal." But, in many cases, it's merely an honorific adopted by people who want to be on the "right-thinking side of things".

 

For some, to be counted as a member of the progressive camp, anti-Zionism is a necessary part of the equation - as well as anti-capitalism, anti-globalization, anti-Americanism, etc. It's part of a whole ideological package.

 

In many respects, I regard myself as a liberal, especially on domestic US issues such as healthcare and public education. But, when it comes to foreign policy, if being a liberal means being anti-Zionist, I'd quickly count myself out.

 

Some so-called "progressives" are pro-Israel, but the momentum right now is not with them. Instead, many who see themselves in this camp have become so radical as to routinely accuse Israel of rampant racism, ethnic cleansing, even genocide. They are angry and bitter in their denunciations of Israel.

 

In their work, we often see an extreme version of rhetorical inflation, which sometimes goes so far as to link Israel with history's worst regimes, such as Nazi Germany or apartheid South Africa. Some of their pronouncements resemble anti-Zionist hate speech employed by the worst anti-Semites.

 

How do you think the anti-Zionism of some progressive Jews relates to their Jewish identity?

 

It varies a good deal. For some, being anti-Israel defines their core Jewish identity. They feel the need to negate Israel in order to validate a newly affirmed Diaspora identity, similar to the rejection of the Diaspora in Israel, especially during the nation's early years.

 

Some of those in the leadership of the British effort for an academic boycott of Israel are Jews, including Israelis or ex-Israelis living in Great Britain. They dislike Israel intensely. Some also claim to be acting in accord with prophetic teachings and what they see as a higher Jewish ideal. They find their Jewish affirmations in opposition to the Jewish state.

 

Also, you find people who don't want any Jewish connection at all. Many Jewish academics who think of themselves as Marxists, for example, refuse to be associated with religious or national identities, either Judaism or Israel.

 

Within the political sphere, Marxism is by and large a spent force, but Marxist ideas and loyalties hang on in universities and sometimes express themselves in fierce opposition to or outright rejection of Israel.

 

Moving from margins to mainstream

In line with these adversarial postures, Prof Rosenfeld alluded to a movement of extreme anti-Zionist thinking into the mainstream, noting that books by some of Israel's foremost Jewish detractors have been picked up by major publishing houses.

 

One example, which he cited in his original article, was British academic Jacqueline Rose's book, "The Question of Zion", published by Princeton University Press.

 

"What was disturbing about this," he said, "is that the book is full of egregious factual errors, as well as badly distorted by ideological bias.

 

"Rose claims Adolf Hitler and Theodore Herzl attended an opera by Wagner on the same night in Paris, which supposedly inspired both of their ideas, although Hitler did not come to Paris until 1940, long after Herzl had died. Rose also calls Israel to task for the 'razing' of Jenin, which never happened.

 

"The fact that such a book carries the Princeton University stamp may show a troubling movement of radical anti-Zionist ideas from the margins into the mainstream. And Rose's book is hardly alone.

 

"Norman Finkelstein's most recent tirade against Israel was published by the University of California Press, and Jimmy Carter's best-selling tarring of Israel with the apartheid brush came out with Simon & Schuster.

 

"These are seriously flawed, deeply tendentious books, but they carry the imprimatur of some of America's most highly respected publishing houses. That's worrisome."

 

Can any legal recourse be taken, in light of such blatant factual errors?

 

I've been accused of advocating censorship, even of wanting to bring us back to the age of McCarthyism, but none of that is true.

 

Here, simply put, is what I believe: biased, erroneous, and irrational criticism must be met by all of the power of lucid argument and rational criticism. Any writer who publishes his or her ideas is subject to the latter.

 

What I and others are attempting to do is expose the poverty of some of these malicious ideas, including those that unfairly attack Israel and its supporters. But in the realm of public opinion, short of committing outright defamation, I don't think legal recourse can or should be taken.

 

So, is that the way you believe we should combat the globalization and evolution, as you called it in your article, of anti-Semitism?

 

Let's separate between anti-Semitic acts and anti-Semitic utterances. The first are illegal, so if one is caught firebombing a synagogue or physically accosting Jews, those people are liable for prosecution.

 

Anti-Semitic books, articles, and the like are something else altogether, especially in the United States where free speech is constitutionally protected.

 

If writers really think Israel resembles apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, there is no question of throwing the legal book at them. However, those are scurrilous accusations, and they need to be exposed as such.

 

It's not easy, for we are involved today in a war of ideas, and there are some very bad ideas out there, many of them directed against Israel. It's imperative to combat them with good ideas. We need more people to step forward and show the errors in that kind of thinking.

 

Intellectually and politically, it's an intense war and will not quickly fade, and there are Jews on both sides. Hearing Israeli voices on the anti-Zionist side is especially troubling. Avraham Burg, for example, can now be cited by Israel's enemies as validating some of their most damning charges.

 

If a state can validly be compared to Nazi Germany — and Burg apparently makes such comparisons in his new book - its existence should be called into question.

 

I don't think Israel can be legitimately compared to the Third Reich or apartheid South Africa. But when some Israelis make these analogies, it becomes harder for those of us on the outside to contest them.

 

There have been parallel rises in violence on the streets and intellectual aggression against Jews. How much are these two trends related? If progressives ceased their verbal attacks on Israel, would you expect there to be less physical violence from anti-Semites?

 

It's best to look at this matter country by country. Within Europe, the most vociferous anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, on the street, in the public media, and in academia, are found in England and France.

 

Do I think anti-Semitic violence would disappear in those countries entirely, in the absence of anti-Zionist rhetoric? No.

 

But anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist utterances help to underwrite or abet anti-Semitic violence. Such hate speech provides a kind of license to street thugs to hit out at Jews, they feel freer to behave aggressively if they know public opinion in the countries in which they reside regularly condemns the Jewish state in the harshest of terms. It makes it easier for them to then target local Jews and Jewish institutions.

 

So the more we can dampen down rhetorical abuse directed against Jews, the better the chances of containing violence against them.

 

Alvin Rosenfeld is a professor of English and the director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program at Indiana University.

 

He has authored the books 'Imagining Hitler' and 'Double-Dying: Reflections on Holocaust Literature', as well as editing several books, including 'Confronting the Holocaust: The Impact of Elie Weisel' and 'Thinking about the Holocaust after half a century'.

Continued (Permanent Link)

American Jews: The Pity of it all

In Ha'aretz, Shmuel Rosner   published a very interesting reaction of an anonymous American Jew to the proposition that Israel is the center of Jewish life. To my silly mind, this proposition must be self evident to every person who studies Jewish religion and Jewish culture, and it has been true for 3,000 years. In the farthest reaches of China and Africa, wherever they were, orthodox Jews prayed toward Jerusalem, and vowed, "Next Year in Jerusalem." A millennium ago, a Jewish poet wrote, "My heart is in the East and I am at the ends of the West." The common language of all the Jewish people, East and West, was always Hebrew, the holidays celebrated by Jews were mostly related to the land, and the shared history of the Jewish people always began with the land and ended with return to the land. "The land" has always been only one place for Jews - it is here, in Israel, not in beautiful California, or fabulous Florida or Florence Italy nor even in majestic London or cosmopolitan New York. Jews means "people of Israel." And when, in the 19th century, many Jews stopped being religious, they nonetheless came to realize that they could not be French or Russian or German precisely like their neighbors, but rather that they had something in common with religious Jews: Israel.

 

This innocent, straightforward proposition meets the fiercest sort of opposition from some Jews. Here is author Aaron Hamburger: "Israel is not a pillar of our religious belief." I wonder what that religious belief could possibly be. If Hamburger is a Hindu or a Muslim, Israel and the relation of the Jews to Israel might not be part of his religious belief. If he is a religious Jew, or belongs to any one of many Protestant denominations, then Israel is necessarily central to his religious belief, even if he is an anti-Zionist who believes that Israel can only be established when the Messiah comes, or a Christian of the replacement theology persuasion who believes that the Church replaced the Jews  in God's promises.

 

A former American Jewish functionary, Steve Hoffman,  asserted apparently, that he is still not prepared to view Israel as the center of the Jewish people. There are two centers, Israel and the U.S. he claims. Indeed. When Hoffman goes to synagogue, no doubt they pray, "For from America will come forth the Torah, and the word of the LORD from Washington D.C." 

 

Places like Vilna, Lodz and Satu-Mare were also once "centers" of some of the Jewish people. Most of the Jews of those places, if they didn't leave, became ashes.  In ancient times, there were centers in Iraq too. Some of your sons may be fighting Jihadists in those places now. There are no Jews there, and few Jews remember or know where those places were.  Nobody but fools thought that they could compete in Jewish cultural centrality with Zion and Israel, even when there was nothing here but barchash flies and malaria. No Jews prayed to be "Next Year in Vilna," though perhaps many Israelis wish for next year in Cupertino or Miami.  

 

One of Rosner's readers, a great philosopher named Jack, who would not give his last name, wrote:

 

If Israel, god forbid, disappears (and we all know, deep down, that this is not some distant unimaginable possibility) suddenly American Jews will find themselves wandering in empty space. On the other hand, if the center is here, we have nothing to worry about. America is strong and so are we.

 

"America is strong and so are we," quoth he.  Jews are two percent of the population of the United States. In every generation, anti-Zionists repeat the same shibboleths as though they were original "wisdom."  Here is another quote, which that reader should consider:

 

We are not immigrants -- we were born here -- and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Americans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my American fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language -- the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer.

 

I am sure that reader, Jack, would agree with the above. However, I cheated. I changed the quote a bit. Here is the real quote:

 

We are not immigrants -- we were born here -- and so we cannot claim any other home: either we are Germans or we have no homeland. Whoever disputes my claim to this my German fatherland disputes my right to my own thoughts, my feelings, my language -- the very air I breathe. Therefore, I must defend myself against him as I would against a murderer. (Gabriel Riesser, German Revolutionary National Assembly, 1849, Quoted in Amos Elon, The Pity of it All)

 

Jack is so sure of himself. He will no doubt insist that the comparison is absurd. After all, nothing could happen to American Jews. They are strong, as he says. I am sure that all American Jews agree, and I too would not be so brash as to predict a bad end for the Jews of America. After all, the Holocaust happened only once in Germany, and the expulsion from Spain, well that happened only once too. And the pogroms in Russia, they happened a few times. Of course, history does not repeat itself, necessarily. But I would not be so brash as to predict a good end either. We all know that every Jewish Diaspora in history has been threatened at one time or another, and the most brilliant Jewish Diaspora communities, in Spain, in Germany and in Poland, all met with disaster. It is possible that history has suddenly changed its course, and that what was true for 2,000 years is no longer true. The Sun might also fail to rise tomorrow. It is possible. But it is impossible to be certain that the Sun will not rise, and it is tempting fate to believe that Jews are absolutely safe in any Diaspora. Now you are all angry at me, a doctrinaire Zionist and crazy Israeli, for saying these things, I know.

 

But actually, Mr. Jack is not so sure of himself after all. Perhaps the tiniest sliver of a doubt exists in his mind, for he wrote:

 

 

"...Any connection to Israel only weakens us, and causes trouble. "

 

Really Mr. Jack! What sort of trouble could be caused by a connection to Israel? Don't the Irish march proudly each year in their St. Patrick's day parade? Would Americans have it any other way? Would America be the same America without St Patrick's day? Aren't you as proud to be Jewish as Kennedy is to be Irish? Aren't all Americans supposed to be proud of their roots? Is there, perhaps, something different about Jews? It is impossible? Here's what Mr. Jack says:

 

Supporting Israel weakens our position in America and opens the door to accusations regarding loyalty etc. So both from our own selfish psychological point of view AND from the point of view of the society around us, it's much better for us to be on our own, without any special connection to Israel.

 

Such an original thesis! This man's mother must think he is a genius. But I'll tell you what Jack - Ireland was neutral in World War II. I doubt if it entered anyone's mind that Americans of Irish descent were Nazi spies. Irish were fighting Britain, an ally of the United States at one time, and yet the issue of double loyalty never really came up. And don't forget that America fought Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but there were no pogroms of Italians and Germans - only Japanese. But you don't look Japanese, I bet, so there is no problem.

 

So why are you worried? Jews are no different from other Americans, isn't that so Jack? Or maybe you don't really believe that.

 

Jack probably never heard of the anti-Zionist Jew, Edwin Montagu, a member of the British cabinet in 1917, who opposed the Balfour declaration for precisely those reasons.  He was certain that the creation of a national home for the Jews would be an impetus to European anti-Semitism. There was plenty of European anti-Semitism to be sure, but it was not caused by the Balfour declaration.

 

Jack, nobody is forcing you to be Jewish. If you want to repudiate your heritage, it is your business. It is America after all. But I know that Jack is a Jew. He will remain a Jew. A Jew of the old kind, not the kind we want to create in Israel. This is how I know. He wrote:

 

Imagine: all the money and hours wasted on Israel by Jewish Americans is suddenly available for Jewish schools, Jewish community centers, Jewish outreach, Jewish renewal, and all the other great project that will make us ? not just Jews but rather Jewish Americans ? stronger and more vital. What a wonderful dream." 

Ah, Now we understand what is bothering you Jack. It is a typical Jewish complaint. As the anti-Semites say:

"Money. All you people ever think about is money."

 

That is what is bothering you Yankel, your pocket.  In the end, all you are thinking about is money. Keep your money, Mister. You cannot buy your part in what we are building here with your money, if your heart does not go with your money. Keep your money and be damned.

 

I wonder what American Jews could teach in such schools, devoid of Israel, and what they would do in such community centers,  and how it would be related to Judaism. They could not teach the Tanach (Old Testament) , which is mostly about God's promise of Israel to the Jewish people, and about the fulfillment of that promise, and the history of the Jews in the land of Israel. The whole book is set in the Middle East. America is not mentioned even once as far as anyone knows.

 

They could not teach the prayers, which vow, "Next Year in Jerusalem." They could not teach Hebrew, the language of the ancient Israelites.  They could not teach about Passover, a holiday not only of release from bondage, but of return to Israel. They could not teach the children to celebrate Hannukah, the holiday that celebrates liberation of Jerusalem. They could not teach about Tu Bishvat, the holiday of Israeli trees and fruits. Forget Tish'a Be'av too - it mourns the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. They would be left with Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and Purim.   Perhaps they could teach Yiddish and help kids develop a taste for bagels and lox. Would they then be accused of double loyalty to Germany?  How would that education be "vital?" Of what would their Judaism consist?

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Persian Jews about Immigration to Israel: Hell no, we won't go

What is behind the strange reluctance of Jews to leave places where they are in obvious danger? Iran is ruled by a Holocaust -denying bigot. It is not a got place for ethnic Persians to live. It can't really be a good place for Jews, yet Iran's Jews are apparently obstinate. Why do Jews always wait until it is too late?

 

Text of report by web version of Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv on 8 July

[Report by Eli Bradenstein: "Israel to Iranian Jews: Immigration At Any Price"]

Israel is trying to find new ways of encouraging immigration from Iran in the wake of a lack of desire on the part of thousands of Iranian Jews to leave. In order to do this, an expatriate group of Iranian Jewish donors, which is behind a special fund to encourage aliyah from the land of the ayatollahs, is now offering approximately $60,000 to every Jewish family that comes to Israel, which will be in addition to the regular absorption basket.

Only a few months ago, the fund decided to grant an incentive of $5,000 to every new immigrant, but this did not persuade Iranian Jews, many of whom are comfortably off, to leave.

The fund has now decided to double the sum for every new immigrant, and to offer $10,000 in the hope that it will persuade Iranian Jews to come to Israel.

If the Jews do decide to come to Israel as whole families, they will also receive thousands more dollars: $2,000 for a head of family and $1,500 for a mother and each of her children. More than $1 million has been invested in the fund, and it is operated by means of one of the major aliyah organizations in Israel. Unconnected with the grants, the new immigrants also receive the regular absorption basket like other immigrants, as well as mortgages on easy terms.

The news of the grant has been published on an Israeli Internet site in Persian, which has been launched in order to convey vital information on the process of aliyah. It has also been reported on Israel Radio's Persian-language service, and is being passed on by means of various organizations and relatives to Jews in Iran.

Some 20,000 Jews live in Iran, mostly in Tehran. It is the largest remaining Jewish community in the Arab states. According to reports, many of them are comfortably off and free to practise their religion and provide religious education for their children. Given that, most are not interested in leaving Iran. However, Iran's Jews visit Israel a lot to see their relatives, and Israelis of Iranian origin pay family and business visits there. Iranian Jews who live in the United States also make frequent visits to family in Iran.

"In contrast to the previously laughable sum, we are now talking about a sizeable sum, and if a whole family decides to make aliyah, they will receive tens of thousands of dollars - a serious sum that could really persuade Jews to leave there and come to Israel, and assist in their absorption here," Ma'ariv was told by sources that are dealing with Iranian immigrants.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Reform Jews turning to Aliya

 Reform Movement encourages aliya, the Jerusalem post tells us:

Joining in the spirit of the evening, Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Eric Yoffie surprised the crowd of several hundred olim, who gathered here for a sendoff this week, with his outspoken Zionism.

 

"Those of us who live here live in galut, and to live in Israel is to live a fuller Jewish life," Yoffie said. "For an American people that does not understand the importance and centrality of Zion, you are an important bridge."

Yoffie's words reflected noticeable changes in the Reform Movement's approach to aliya. Traditionally, aliya has not been a major component of the movement's platform, but increasingly over the last few years, it has been placing greater energy on their Israel-related activities, including hiring a full-time aliya emissary for the first time.

Brett Willner, 22, who will make aliya at the beginning of August and start his army service, is in many ways a poster child for the movement. He went to Reform summer camp and religious school, and grew up in the youth movement. It was also the Reform Movement that first brought him to Israel, in 2002, during his junior year of high school.

The evolution of Reform Judaism to support of Aliya is a gratifying and important historic development. Reform Judaism has come a long way from resolutions such as those of the Philadelphia convention and the odious Pittsburgh Platform.  Unfortunately, when Reform Jews get to Israel, they may find that it is hard to be a reform Jew here. Israeli society and culture evolved from the early beginnings of Zionism, in which secular and religious Jews united against the anti-Zionist reform movement.  As reform Jews were not interested in Zionism, Zionism was not interested in them for a long time. Rabbi Yoffe himself heard from ex-President Katsav himself that a reform rabbi is not a rabbi. Nobody really protested against Katsav's dictum.

 

A recent initiative by the Jewish Agency to pass a resolution that would recommend that the state of Israel honor reform conversions was quashed for technical reasons.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Conference on the future of the Jews probably has no future

 

Will talk lead to action? asks the Jewish Telegraphic Agency of the 2007 Conference on the Future of the Jewish People, sponsored by the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute.

 

The short answer is "probably not." If talk could lead to action, then there would probably have been no need for a conference on the future of the Jewish people. The future will be like the past. The "important people" will gather at conferences to show themselves and to be seen, to make statements and to be important. The work will be done by others, if at all. As it is written "The work of the righteous is done by others." Who can be more righteous than these leading lights of the Jewish community? So they are waiting for others to do the work.  

 

As the article notes:

 

Some of the more effective Jewish initiatives in recent years have started outside the organized Jewish community, such as birthright israel. That program, which in bringing more than 100,000 young Diaspora Jews to Israel has helped bolster Jewish identity as well as ties to Israel and among fellow Jews, was adopted by the organized Jewish community only after much resistance...

And the guarantee that the conference will have no result is given here:

Perhaps the follow-up to this conference – some sort of task force is planned – will determine whether or not the next great idea will emanate from the people who came to Jerusalem this week.

They did not even have the moxie to form a real committee to do nothing, just "some sort of task force."

 

We can see how this will work. "Ladies and gentlemen of the some sort of task force. We have called you to some sort of meeting to make some sort of decision."

 

By the time this task force makes some sort of decision, there may only be a dozen Jews left outside Israel.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Anti-Zionist plot: End of State Education

 

State schools are dying, and we know why explains Yossi Sarid. Ultra-orthodox education is taking over budgets from state schools. The result will be to turn the Zionist dream into the Zionist nightmare - the triumph of the "Old Yishuv" over Zionism.

 

 

The ultra-Orthodox parties have been disconnecting the terminally ill patient from the life support machines. This is not mercy killing, it's deduction killing: They're deducting from the state education system and adding to the ultra-Orthodox education.

 

About a month and a half ago, the Knesset enacted the Nahari Law, which requires local authorities to finance the ultra-Orthodox schools. This week the Knesset passed in preliminary reading the bill presented by United Torah Judaism abolishing the link between state financing and the core study program, and paving the road for generous budgetary increments.

 

How many times has it been said that the future is in education and nothing is more important than our children's education Not a bit of it. A stupid war and Qassams fired at Sderot bring people onto the streets, albeit not enough. A wretched decision by the attorney general brings demonstrators to the city square. The slogan, 'You're corrupt; we're fed up with you' generates a minor protest here and there. But when national education is handed to plunderers, no one utters a squeak. What do we care if our children are raised as ignoramuses, and our grandchildren as illiterates?

 

The mercy killing is not carried out by ultra-Orthodox Knesset members alone. Without the support of secular MKs, they would not have succeeded in pulling it off. Again they're kowtowing to Shas and UTJ. For without Shas in the coalition and without UTJ in reserve, Ehud Olmert has no government, just as Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak have no chance of setting up their own governments.

 

Thus they are willing to sell their own mothers for their personal ambitions, and her grandchildren and great-grandchildren too, while they're at it. Oh, mother, mother, what children you have raised, they are sinning against us.

 

...

This government, too, declares that education tops its priorities. In reality, it is dragging it to the lowest depths.

 

The politicians are selling our birthright for a mess of coalition votes.

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel Academic Boycott: Principles versus political reactions

In "Israel Academic Boycott threatens Academic Freedom," John Furedy takes issue with Israel academic boycott protesters who try to reverse boycotts based on Israel's presumed lack of innocence. That is not the point, he writes. The boycotts threaten everyone's academic freedom. Anyone should have the right to speak up as they wish on any topic.

That is his opinion, but do we really want to leave ourselves defenseless against professors who teach linkage between race and intelligence based on bad data, against Holocaust deniers and other miscreants? How about even less acceptable doctrines? Does a university have the right to fire a professor who teaches the flat earth theory? Does a theology journal have the right to reject an article that insists that Molokh is the real god, and human sacrifice is the only good form of worship?

You be the judge.

Ami Isseroff

Israel Academic Boycott threatens Academic Freedom

Radically principled vs. compromisingly political reactions
to the academic anti-Israeli boycott: "Welcome to the fight".

At end of the classic film, "Casablanca", when Rick finally decides to abandon his neutrality with regard to the Nazi and Vichy regimes, the resistance fighter Victor Laszlo says, "Welcome to the fight." Victor's words seem apt as the academic anti-Israeli boycott, that abuse of academic freedom, continues. Anti-Semitism and other dark impulses may likely motivate the boycott. Whatever the motives for the boycott may be, however, the boycott threatens the central mission of any genuine university. That mission is the search for truth through the conflict of ideas. For academics, then, a phrase from the theme song of Casablanca is also relevant: "The fundamental things apply."

Opposition to the boycott, indeed, is incumbent on all who value a free society, in which freedom of speech is a central tenet. This tenet was recently formulated by Nathan Sharansky, who distinguished between free and "fear" or totalitarian societies. He noted that in a free society, even the most outrageous opinions can be publicly stated without fear of criminal punishment.

For those who believe in a free society, then, academic freedom on campus and freedom of speech off campus should be closely related. In particular, non- academics should not make the mistake of treating academic freedom as merely an "ivory tower" issue. Another mistake is to minimize the boycott on the grounds that it merely places Israeli professors in a sort of academic Coventry. The essence of academic freedom is, as I have argued, the right of all members of the academic community (students and faculty) to be evaluated solely on their academic performance, and not at all on their politics, religion, or citizenship. The boycott denies this right, and is therefore properly labeled an abuse of academic freedom. Those who are not direct victims of this abuse (in this instance those who do not hold Israeli citizenship or are not Jews) should not treat the boycott with indifference, or worse still, join, even in a partial way, those who threaten academic freedom. Like justice, freedom is indivisible.

Read the rest at  Israel Academic Boycott threatens Academic Freedom

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis

Continued (Permanent Link)

Canadian anti-Semitic cartoons

For some reason, this cartoon controversy doesn't get a great deal of media attention. This time, the cartoons are offensive to Jews, but they don't riot in the streets and burn embassies. Their leaders don't set them against the newspapers that published them or against Quebec which has a history of antisemitism.

Ratna Pelle

Canada's Cartoon Controversy

From the desk of Rondi Adamson on Mon, 2007-07-09 15:40

There's a new cartoon controversy -- this time in Canada. And the controversy is that there hasn't been one. Some three weeks ago, in close succession, anti-Semitic cartoons-- at least two of which appeared to have been borrowed from Der Sturmer -- were published on the editorial pages of three mainstream newspapers in the Canadian province of Quebec. The cartoons concerned the meeting between Mario Dumont the leader of Quebec's opposition party, the Action Democratique du Quebec , with fundraisers who had traditionally supported Quebec's Liberal Party -- the party currently in power. Some of the fundraisers were Jewish businessmen.

View the cartoons and the complete article on Israel en Palestijnen Nieuwsblog

Continued (Permanent Link)

Vicissitudes of US Public Support for Israel

As usual, opinion polls find that attitudes depend on how you ask the question.

 

In Gazans don't deserve to get water from Israel, or do they?, Shmuel Rosner tells us:

 

Another study by The Israel Project (TIP, it was briefly mentioned in my Friday column) gives me an opportunity to delve, yet again, into the complicated issue of America's public opinion toward Israel. The study was conducted by Stan Greenberg of Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner and Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies. Bottom line: A marked increase is evident in Democrats' support of Israel. But there's much more to it than just that.

 

1.
Support has increased among Democrats by six points (35 percent in January, 41 percent in June), but decreased among Republicans (three points) and Independents (five points)....

 

But here's the most interesting phenomenon:
When the question of providing utilities is asked separately, and the interviewees are given two options ("Despite the fact that Hamas wants to destroy Israel, Israel still has a humanitarian obligation to continue to provide Gaza with electricity and water" or "Because Hamas wants to destroy Israel, Hamas should be forced to get electricity and water from Egypt, or on their own, unless they recognize Israel's right to exist"), most Republicans (64 percent), Independents (56 percent) and Democrats (54 percent) think that Hamas should be on its own.

 

However, if the same question is asked in a different manner - "do you agree or disagree with the following statement: Despite the fact that Hamas wants to destroy Israel, Israel still has a humanitarian obligation to continue to provide Gaza with electricity and water" - Republicans tend to disagree (55 percent), Democrats to agree (59 percent).

 

Among Israel strong supporters, the second version will provide for only a small majority of people supporting the option of severing all ties (53 percent to 42 percent).

The same thing is true regarding how news is presented. "Israel kills five Gaza Teenagers" is not going to get the same reaction as "Israel kills five terrorists trying to launch Qassam rockets." Unfortunately, the first version is the headline most likely to appear in most media.

 

Ami Isseroff

 

 

Continued (Permanent Link)

Creative Zionism

From challah sales to JewTube,
young innovators cook up fresh ideas

 

 

Uriel Heilman

Participants in the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism work on innovative ideas at the program's home in Jerusalem

By Uriel Heilman

Published: 07/09/2007

JERUSALEM (JTA) – When Eli Winkelman first had the idea of transforming her weekly challah sale at Scripps College in Claremont, Calif., into a charity benefiting Sudanese refugees, she thought it would be a cool way to sell a few extra peanut-butter loaves.

Winkelman never thought the idea would galvanize hundreds of students to write letters to their lawmakers about the genocidal campaign in Darfur, raise $30,000 for the refugees, spark interest in replicating her Challah for Hunger program at campuses from coast to coast and earn her a mention in a speech by former President Bill Clinton.

"People who aren't involved anywhere else in Jewish campus life think baking challah to help people in Darfur is cool," she said. "It becomes a steppingstone for people who are getting in touch with their Jewish roots."

Two-and-a-half years after starting Challah for Hunger, and weeks after graduating from college, Winkelman, 22, is pondering her next big move. She is one of 18 fellows spending time in Israel this summer participating in the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism.

The brainchild of another pair of young innovators, Ariel Beery and Aharon Horwitz, both 27, the institute is a six-week summer program in Jerusalem for a select group of enterprising 20- and 30-somethings from Panama to the West Bank – all of whom are looking for ways to change the Jewish world with fresh ideas.

Organizers of the institute hope the program, which they dreamed up several months ago, will serve as an incubator for creative Jewish concepts.

The idea is to produce great Jewish achievements not just as a result of the training the fellows receive in such fields as Web publishing, podcasting, grant writing and business development, but also as a result of the synergy among talented people working together.

"There is so little Jewish leadership development," Beery said. "There is so much talk about it, but there isn't really an intensive skill-building workshop for these kids to come in and get the skills they need. We want to open up new paths for them. The idea is to have professional development for these innovators.

"It's the next paradigm for Jewish collective existence," he said.

It's basically the same idea as another recent gathering in Jerusalem, the Global ROI Summit, where 120 young Jewish innovators from all over the world assembled for a four-day meeting of the minds.

Run under the auspices of birthright israel and the Center for Leadership Initiatives, the summit also offered participants workshops in building online communities, publishing webzines and making films.

But the primary goal appeared to be networking. Computer geeks mingled with bloggers, filmmakers dissected Kafka with doctoral students and artists shared their creative visions with anyone willing to listen over a glass of wine.

"The idea is to train emerging leaders in the Jewish community," Yonatan Gordis, director of programs at the Center for Leadership Initiatives, said over cocktails at sunset in the Israel Museum sculpture garden. "Here in Israel they have a chance to engage, cross-country and cross-topic. They think collectively."

Participants came from Russia, Latin America, Israel, the United States, Australia, South Africa – pretty much anywhere there are Jews. There were TV reporters, Webmasters, Hillel directors, CEOs of start-up companies, environmental activists, Israel advocates, museum programmers and, of course, an assortment of Jewish community professionals.

A few of the Creative Zionism Institute fellows were there, too.
"It's an interesting group," said Jeremy Kossen, 34, founder of the recently launched Jewish culture and entertainment site JewTube.com.

Promoted as "Facebook meets YouTube for Jews," JewTube aims to become the central address for Jewish entertainment, culture, education and advocacy – insofar as it can fit into a five-minute video clip.

Kossen said he originated the idea when he couldn't find relevant, interesting Jewish multimedia content on the Internet. He said the summit was helpful mainly in getting his new Web site widespread attention in the Israeli media.

Philanthropist Lynn Schusterman, who sponsored both the ROI summit and the Creative Zionism Institute through the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, said participants in these events are the rising stars of the Jewish people.

"I'm sorry I don't have the time to sit and visit with each and every one of them," she said.

Schusterman said it's no coincidence that the programs are in Israel.

"One of the tracks of the summit is Israel advocacy," she said, "and Israel is the Jewish people's home."
Horwitz, of the Creative Zionism Institute, said Israel should be the creative platform for the Jewish people. As the co-editor of BlogsofZion.org, he also was one of the ROI fellows.

"Israel is a hub for the Diaspora. In Israel we have the spirit, wisdom, knowledge and social capital to take the next step forward in Jewish collective life," he said.

Beyond all the argot and hype, it appeared as if something indeed was being accomplished at 3 HaRan St., where the Creative Zionism Institute is housed in an apartment turned dormitory with a broadband Internet connection.

Wires crisscrossed the floor where one fellow sat tapping out computer code for an easy-to-use Web-based publishing system, while another, Matt Barr, worked on Bible-inspired rap music (http://mattbar.com/music-43.html).

Horwitz said the institute is modeled on high-tech incubators, where people with promising ideas are given the resources they need to succeed and make money for their investors.

In this case, he and Beery said, the dividend is new and improved Jewish life.
"We're trying to create 360-degree solutions for Jewish problems," Beery said, speaking rapidly and peppering his monologue with the latest buzzwords.

"The Jewish world is at a crossroads right now, with the information age affecting entire humanity, but specifically the Jews, who are spread around the world," he said. "We're trying to unify the Jewish world and create new ways for the Jewish world to think, act, work and program."

A lofty goal, Beery acknowledged as he took a breath, but one worth aiming to reach.

Perhaps, he admitted with a yawn, it's why he finds so little time to sleep.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Magdi Allam - Muslim Zionist

There are many things to appreciate in this story, not the least of which is the understanding that not all Muslims are enemies of Israel, not all Muslims are anti-Zionist and not all Muslims are fanatics bent on murdering non-believers. And enthusiasts of the Hamas and related causes should carefully weigh these words:

In his new book he describes his long road from profound admiration for Arafat and "the prophet of pan-Arabism," Gamal Abdel Nasser, and strong support for the Palestinian cause, to his unreserved support for Israel. "I want to tell you about my slow and tortured path from the ideology of lies, tyranny, hatred, violence and death, to the culture of truth, freedom, love, peace and life, until it ripened into absolute certainly that defending the sanctity of life is more than ever in keeping with defending Israel's right to exist," he writes. At the end of this "slow and tortured path" he reached the conclusion that the Arab countries' refusal to recognize Israel during the 1950s and 1960s hurt the Palestinians, and that Arafat was a tyrant, a megalomaniac, corrupt and corrupting, and the worst disaster to befall them.

Regarding the present situation in Gaza, Allam says he never had any illusions about Hamas. "I thought it was a big mistake to allow a terror organization to participate in elections. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair deluded themselves in believing that Hamas' very participation in the government would turn the group into a pragmatic political power," he says. "Instead, it turned out that Hamas will never recognize Israel's right to exist, will not relinquish terror and will not honor international agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas wants absolute rule in order to impose sharia and to revive the international Islamic caliphate. As it pushes for absolute rule, it does not hesitate to massacre its Palestinian brothers in Gaza. It will try to do the same thing in the West Bank."

Ami Isseroff

Muslim, Italian and Zionist

By Saviona Mane


It's not every day that a Muslim intellectual puts his own head on the line to defend Israel's right to exist. But that is exactly what Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born Italian writer and journalist, has been doing for years. He recently published a book whose name alone is enough to endanger his life: "Long Live Israel - From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life: My Story."

Allam defends Israel even though Hamas condemned him to death in 2003, after he denounced the group's terror attacks. Because of this threat, the Italian government has provided him with round-the-clock bodyguards. But Allam is not afraid. He finds it hard to "live an armored life," but he tells Haaretz in an interview, "I'm willing to pay the price in order to continue to be who I am, to write and speak freely." Those who cut out tongues and slit throats will not subdue him, he writes in the book.

Allam, 55, is the assistant editor of Corriere della Sera and the 2006 Dan David Prize laureate. His new book, which immediately became a best-seller in Italy, is part of his consistent and uncompromising fight against extremist Islam and for Israel's right to exist. In addition, he is trying to convince people that "the culture of hatred and death that the West now attributes to Muslims is not embedded in Islam's DNA."

In "Long Live Israel" ("Viva Israele" in Italian), Allam directly links the denial of Israel's right to exist to the death cult being nurtured in fundamentalist Islamic circles, and refers to "the ethical erosion that has led to even the denial of the supreme value of the sanctity of life." Allam sees Israel as "an ethical parameter that separates between lovers of civilization and those who preach the ideology of death." The sanctity of life, he writes, "applies to everyone, or to no one."

Sanctity of life

In recent days Allam's attention has been focused on another major event - the birth of his son, Davide, brother to Sofia, 27, and Alessandro, 23. Allam says he and his wife Valentina Colombo chose the name Davide "because in the battle for life during the pregnancy, Davide subdued his Goliath, and because it meshes with the name of my new book."

And speaking of names, weren't you afraid when choosing such a strong, even provocative name for the book?

"Those who like me and more or less agree with me see it as a provocation. 'What did you need this for, don't you have enough problems?' they asked. Those who don't like me and condemn me for my opinions see this as additional proof that I am a traitor to the Arab cause and an enemy of Islam, have sold myself to Israel and work for the Mossad. But for me, 'Viva Israele' is a song of praise to Israel's life and to everyone's life. My book opens with the words: 'What you are about to read is a declaration of faith in the sanctity of life, 'the sanctity of life of every human being.'"

Allam was not always a defender of the Jewish state. "'Zionism' was a dirty word for me," he admits in his book. For years he considered Israel an aggressive, racist, colonialist, immoral entity, and he accepted the methods of the Palestinian struggle and its leader Yasser Arafat, "without criticizing the fact that Fatah adopted the path of terror extensively inside and outside Israel." After emigrating from Egypt to Italy in 1972, he even enlisted actively for the Palestinian cause, writing, lecturing and participating in demonstrations by the Italian left: "I also shouted 'Long live Palestine! Long live the Palestinian resistance!'" he writes in the book. "My passion for the Palestinian cause was strong, as was my enthusiasm for Arafat's personality."

In his new book he describes his long road from profound admiration for Arafat and "the prophet of pan-Arabism," Gamal Abdel Nasser, and strong support for the Palestinian cause, to his unreserved support for Israel. "I want to tell you about my slow and tortured path from the ideology of lies, tyranny, hatred, violence and death, to the culture of truth, freedom, love, peace and life, until it ripened into absolute certainly that defending the sanctity of life is more than ever in keeping with defending Israel's right to exist," he writes. At the end of this "slow and tortured path" he reached the conclusion that the Arab countries' refusal to recognize Israel during the 1950s and 1960s hurt the Palestinians, and that Arafat was a tyrant, a megalomaniac, corrupt and corrupting, and the worst disaster to befall them.

Regarding the present situation in Gaza, Allam says he never had any illusions about Hamas. "I thought it was a big mistake to allow a terror organization to participate in elections. Condoleezza Rice and Tony Blair deluded themselves in believing that Hamas' very participation in the government would turn the group into a pragmatic political power," he says. "Instead, it turned out that Hamas will never recognize Israel's right to exist, will not relinquish terror and will not honor international agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority. Hamas wants absolute rule in order to impose sharia and to revive the international Islamic caliphate. As it pushes for absolute rule, it does not hesitate to massacre its Palestinian brothers in Gaza. It will try to do the same thing in the West Bank."

Do you believe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved before the "ideology of death" is uprooted - that even if Israel returns all the territories it occupied in 1967, it will continue to live by the sword?

"The Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and Gaza demonstrates that the problem is not the need to withdraw from territories occupied in preemptive wars, but rather the Arabs' lack of desire to recognize Israel's right to exist. Israel erred in 1967 when it accepted the formula of territory for peace, and thus placed its very existence up for public auction. Experience teaches that the right to life cannot and should not be a subject for negotiation and bargaining. No negotiations should be held with extremists and terrorists who deny Israel's right to exist."

Interrogation trauma

Allam believes the defeat of the Arabs during the Six-Day War was the watershed between the waning of pan-Arabism and the rise of pan-Islamism. Allam, who was then 15, remembers the war, the brainwashing, the deceptive Egyptian propaganda machine, the blind admiration of Nasser and the masses he joined in the streets calling on Nasser not to resign. He devotes a substantial part of his book to the war: three autobiographical chapters seasoned with the fragrances, sounds, colors and flavors of his beloved Aunt Adreya's home and the streets of Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo - a colorful, pluralistic and tolerant city where girls wore miniskirts and boys sported Beatles haircuts.

This was the city where he was detained, interrogated and imprisoned at age 15 by the Muhabarat, the secret services, on suspicion of spying for Israel, because of his relationship with a Jewish girl, also 15 and "the first true love of his life." "The trauma of that interrogation at the Muhabarat barracks accompanied me until that day on Christmas Eve 1972, when I left Egypt to continue my studies in Italy."

In the book you lovingly describe your childhood. Do you miss Egypt? Do you visit often?

"I miss an Egypt that no longer exists and that continues to live inside me thanks to the memories, the songs of Umm Kulthum, the novels of Naguib Mahfouz and the films of Yusuf Shahin. I long for the social fabric that embodied a genuine love of others and a simple life where emotion was more important than money. Unfortunately, for reasons of personal security, I haven't been back to Egypt since 2002."

Regarding the question of the Islamization of Europe, Allam says, "Europe is already a bastion of Islamic extremism. Just look at attack on Mike's Place in Tel Aviv, which was carried out by British suicide bombers drafted by Hamas; the massacre by Islamists in Madrid and in London; the slitting of director Theo Van Gogh's throat in Amsterdam; and the dozens of Islamic terror attacks that were prevented in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland.

"This bastion exists thanks to a widespread network of mosques, Koran schools, financial bodies and charitable institutions linked to the Muslim Brotherhood; Moroccan, Tunisian and Algerian Salfists; Saudi Wahabis; Al-Qaida jihadis and Pakistani groups. This multicultural Europe, which has trampled its values and betrayed its identity, is satisfied with reacting to the obvious terror, which is only the tip of the iceberg, but is afraid to deal with terror's ideological and organizational roots."

Why don't we hear the voices of the moderate imams?

"Because they're afraid. They're a minority and they're afraid. Only a handful of Islamic intellectuals, journalists, women and clerics have shown courage and condemned terror and Islamic extremism, and as a result they were sentenced to death by the terrorists. But make no mistake, even those moderates who condemn Islamic terror often legitimize terrorists who massacre in Israel. They feel there is good terror, which massacres Israelis, and bad terror, which threatens their lives."

What do you believe is the best way to deal with the Iranian threat?

"Israel has to prevent the Nazi-Islamic government of [Ali] Khamenei and [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad from acquiring nuclear weapons. I don't place my faith in the United Nations and I have no illusions about the Bush administration, which now wants only to leave Iraq without losing face. And of course I don't count on a weak, cowardly and divided Europe. I believe Israel is the last bastion in Islamic terror's war against all of human civilization. Therefore I hope Israel will have a strong national unity government, determined to confront the most serious threat to world security since World War II."

Last year, when he came here for his fourth visit, in order to receive the Dan David Prize, he visited Yad Vashem. This was "an experience that left an indelible impression on me," he says. "I hope that some day Israel will capture Ahmadinejad and force him to live the rest of his life between the walls of Yad Vashem."

Continued (Permanent Link)

America Magazine unfair to Israel, says church group

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East has released the following statement regarding coverage of the Middle East in America Magazine:

Fair Witness Is Troubled By America Magazine's Coverage of The Middle East

Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East is troubled by America Magazine's continuing application of a double standard to the violence in the Middle East.  In its most recent issue, printed just three weeks after the outbreak of bloody Hamas/Fatah infighting in Gaza which left hundreds of Palestinians dead and injured, America's editors chose to run two full articles focused on Palestinian suffering supposedly caused by Israeli policies.  The Palestinian-on- Palestinian violence in Gaza, on the other hand, received only a passing mention in this same edition.

The first article levels the by now familiar indictment of the Israeli "occupation" and the security barrier. "Any responsible coverage of the difficulties posed by the security barrier should include the fact that Palestinian leadership turned down their best chance of ending the Israeli presence in the West Bank entirely," comments Rev. Dr. Archer Summers, Senior Minister in the First United Methodist Church in Palo Alto, California, and Fair Witness Executive Committee member.  "In 2000 the Palestinians were offered Gaza, 97 percent of contiguous territory on the West Bank, East Jerusalem for a capital, three quarters of the Old City and a 30 billion dollar fund to compensate refugees in exchange for peace with Israel.  They turned it down and opted instead for the bloody reign of terror against Israelis called the Second Intifada.  There is no integrity in complaining about Israel's security barrier without even mentioning this shameful action on the part of the Palestinians."

"One has to admire Rabbi Ascherman, the subject of the second article, whose efforts on behalf of human rights for Palestinians underscores the self-critical and self-correcting nature of Israeli society," adds Sr. Ruth Lautt, Fair Witness National Director.  "However, we question America's failure to discuss the role that the Palestinians and their leadership have played in causing their own suffering."

"A fuller and more comprehensive understanding of the issues surrounding the sad need for a security barrier and the Arab/Israeli conflict in general is necessary for promoting a peaceful solution," adds Fr. James Loughran, S.A., Director of the Graymoor Ecumenical & Interreligious Institute.  "America's publication of these articles, however, can only foment anti-Israeli sentiment among American Christians.  It is neither fair, just nor helpful."

--
Sr. Ruth Lautt, OP, Esq.
National Director
Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East
475 Riverside Drive, Ste 1960
New York, NY 10115
(212) 870-2320
www.christianfairwitness.com

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israel, Zionism, Peace and Americans

According to a recent poll, U.S. 'elites' support Israel, but aren't sure it wants peace:

70 percent cited the need to be "a leader in working for peace" as heading the list of 13 qualities required of an American "ally." But only 16 percent saw this among Israel's traits.

That is something to think about when doing "Israel advocacy" - isn't it? My dear fellow Zionists, it sure is great to blow off steam at the Hamas and their allies, but you really aren't going to nuke Mecca or Tehran, and you don't even really want to do it, so why write such things under the rubric of "Zionism?" Portraying Israel, Zionism and Zionists as being against peace is a falsification of reality. It is "auto-demonification" of "self-hating Jews," isn't it? If you write that "there is no diplomatic solution," you can hardly blame anti-'Zionists' for drawing cartoons of baby-eating Ariel Sharon, and you can't blame Radio Islam and Electronic Intifadah for their rants against Zionist warmongers either.

Of course, it is a vicious and cynical libel to say that Zionists do not want peace, because tiny Israel cannot survive in the Middle East without peace. A Jewish state that will not be able to live in peace with its neighbors, whose right to exist is not recognized, has no future. The work of Zionism is certainly not done until we achieve peace. Then we might talk about a "post-Zionist" period, provided we can bring the majority of Jews here. Until then, peace must remain the cardinal goal of Zionism. Peace is a Zionist plot. Just ask any Hamas representative and he (not 'she,' for certain) will tell you that. So it is ironic and unfortunate that Americans think Israel doesn't want peace, and it is even more ironic when would-be "Zionist" advocates try to project a ferocious and uncompromising image of Israel, to fulfill the propaganda fantasies of our enemies.

In all of the horrific landscape of Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab relations, there are a few tiny rays of hope, however imperfect, however quixotic. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan offers a reasonable compromise that will allow self determination and a bright future for the Jews and for Palestinian Arabs in two independent states. It is unfortunate that Palestinian Arab advocacy groups like BADIL insist that Sari Nusseibeh is a traitor for giving up the "Right of Return" of Palestinian Arab refugees and the struggle against the "Zionist enemy." It is also indicative of what stand supports of peace and supporters of Israel should be taking with regard to Ayalon-Nusseibeh.

The Onevoice initiative for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict tries to unite Palestinians and Israelis around an agreed two state peace solution, that is refined in a series of e-referenda. They are educating youth for peace, and creating a constituency that will lobby leaders for peace. It would seem that any decent person would get solidly behind these projects and initiatives, which offer rallying points for those who support peace. We do not need to agree with every word. We all want two independent states for two peoples, living side by side. However, I am embarrassed to say that it is not so: these projects are attaced not only by Islamists and hardline Palestinian 'drive em into the sea' folks, but by "Zionists" as well. Both these projects, and many like them, have been attacked for various reasons by squadrons of "Zionist" publicists and bloggers who live in Chicago or California and other "Zionist" places. One of them decided, on flimsy evidence, that Onevoice supports terrorism, and this bit of rubbish was repeated in a popular "Zionist" publication that appears in the United States.

Others misunderstood or deliberately distorted both the Ayalon Nusseibeh document and the Onevoice initiative, so that they would appear to be "unfair" or threats to Israel. Of course, any peace solution is going to be a compromise, so it is easy for extremists to point out what their side is risking, and what their side is losing in any proposed agreement or peace initiative. The people who lead the anti-peace-group campaigns are often well-meaning. Bitter experience with the peace process of the past thirteen years has illustrated the dangers of misconceived peace agreements. But the peace process foundered because there was no support for peace among the Palestinian people, who elected the genocidal Hamas to lead them. The enemy is not Onevoice or Ayalon-Nusseibeh, which are both, essentially, educational initiatives for peace rather than political statements. The enemy is opposition to the existence of Israel, which these initiatives are trying to overcome.

Those supporters of Israel who want to carry on a political war for or against the occupation or for or against election of a particular Israeli leader, have a right to do so. But they should not confuse their political opinions with "Zionism" and they should not speak in the name of Zionism or of Israel when they insist on opposing peace.

On the other hand, Americans need to do some thinking too:

57 percent "strongly agree" that "the Arab countries around Israel are hostile to its existence," and 85 percent overall said they "agree" with that statement. Some 75 percent said they agreed that "the Arabs don't really accept Israel's right to exist."

That being the case, with whom is Israel to make peace? Those who say there is no partner just now seem to right, and the horrific events in Gaza bear them out.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Avram Burg's case against Israel

In this interview, Avram Burg presents his controversial case against Israel, elaborated in his book. It seems that though there are valid criticisms in his point of view, he has carried them to an extreme. Likewise, his notion that the EU is Jewish is absurd, even disregarding the growing population of Muslim extremists there.

In a television interview he gave for Israeli Channel 2 television, he appeared to be much more reasonable.

Ami Isseroff

---

Leaving the Zionist ghetto

Ari Shavit

We met 25 years ago. Exactly 25 years ago. Avraham - Avrum - Burg and I were then part of a small group of reserve soldiers and officers who came out against the First Lebanon War. "Soldiers Against Silence," we were called. Very quickly Avrum was taken from us. In the great demonstration of the 400,000 [the peace rally in Tel Aviv following the September 1982 massacre in the Sabra and Chatilla camps in Beirut], he became a star and immediately turned to politics. At first he was one of Shimon Peres' smart young men. Then he was the great hope of the Labor Party's Young Guard. After that the chairman of the Jewish Agency, Speaker of the Knesset, a candidate for the Labor leadership.

And then, suddenly, three years ago, Burg got up and left. Went to feather his nest. Got entangled in a problematic and failed privatization deal. Was slandered in the papers, scrutinized by the state comptroller, investigated by the police. And all this time he was writing a book.

All this time he was formulating the bold insights of "Defeating Hitler."

Burg will not admit it, but from his point of view the book he is launching now, to coincide with Hebrew Book Week, is a book of prophecy. A book that is intended to vest the kingdom with prophecy. For others, the book will not be easily definable. It contains deep thoughts about Israel and Zionism, a prolonged comparison between Israel and Germany, trenchant criticism of Eichmann's hanging, reflections on Judaism in the age of globalization and memories from his father's house.

Yosef Burg, the refugee from Dresden, accords the book a certain softness that is not to be found in the angry words of his son. True, toward the end the optimist Avrum tries to transform his eulogy into a paean, but the attempt is not entirely convincing. The Israel of "Defeating Hitler" is a very harsh place. Brutal and imperialist, confrontational and insular. A shallow place, thuggish, lacking spiritual inspiration.

I was outraged by the book. I saw it as a turning away of an Israeli colleague from our shared Israeliness. I saw it as a one-dimensional and unempathetic attack on the Israeli experience. Still, the dialogue with Avrum was riveting. We got angry at each other and raised our voices at each other and circled each other warily like two wounded gladiators in the arena. You can't take away from Avrum what he has. You can't take away the education or the articulateness or the ability to touch truly painful places. Maybe that's why he is so infuriating. Friend and predator; brother and deserter.

Avrum Burg, I read your new book, "Defeating Hitler," as a parting from Zionism. Am I wrong? Are you still a Zionist?

"I am a human being, I am a Jew and I am an Israeli. Zionism was an instrument to move me from the Jewish state of being to the Israeli state of being. I think it was Ben-Gurion who said that the Zionist movement was the scaffolding to build the home, and that after the state's establishment it should be dismantled."

So you confirm that you are no longer a Zionist?

"Already at the First Zionist Congress, Herzl's Zionism was victorious over the Zionism of Ahad Ha'am. I think that the 21st century should be the century of Ahad Ha'am. We have to leave Herzl behind and move to Ahad Ha'am."

Does this mean that you no longer find the notion of a Jewish state acceptable?

"It can't work anymore. To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite."

And a Jewish-democratic state?

"People find this very comfortable. It's lovely. It's schmaltzy. It's nostalgic. It's retro. It gives a sense of fullness. But 'Jewish-democratic' is nitroglycerine."

We have to change the national anthem?

"The anthem is a symbol. I would be ready to buy into a reality in which everything is fine and only the anthem is screwed-up."

Do we have to amend the Law of Return?

"We have to open the discussion. The Law of Return is an apologetic law. It is the mirror image of Hitler. I don't want Hitler to define my identity."

Should the Jewish Agency be dismantled?

"Back when I was chairman of the Jewish Agency, I suggested changing its name from the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel to the Jewish Agency for Israeli Society. There is room for philanthropic tools. But at the center of its experience it have to deal with all of Israel's citizens, including the Arabs."

You write in your book that if Zionism is catastrophic Zionism, then you are not only post-Zionist but anti-Zionist. And I say that since the 1940s, the catastrophic element has been integral to Zionism. It follows that you are anti-Zionist.

"Ahad Ha'am made the charge against Herzl that his whole Zionism had its source in anti-Semitism. He thought of something else, of Israel as a spiritual center - the Ahad Ha'am line has not died, and now its time has come. Our confrontational Zionism vis-a-vis the world is disastrous."

But it's not just the Zionist issue. Your book is anti-Israeli, in the deepest sense. It is a book from which loathing of Israeliness emanates.

"When I was a boy I was a Jew. In the language prevalent here: a Jew-boy. I attended a heder [religious school]. I was taught by former yeshiva students. After that, for most of my life I was an Israeli. Language, signs, smells, tastes, places. Everything. Today that is not enough for me. In my situation today, I am beyond Israeli. Of the three identities that form me - human, Jewish and Israeli - I feel that the Israeli element deprives the other two."

On the face of it, your position is conciliatory and humanistic. But out of that approach you develop a very harsh attitude toward Israeliness and Israelis. You say terrible things about us.

"I think that I have written a book of love. Love hurts. If I were writing about Nicaragua, I wouldn't care. But I am coming from a place of tremendous pain. I see my love withering before my eyes. I see my society and the place I was raised in and my home being destroyed."

Love? You write that Israelis understand only force. If someone were to write that Arabs understand only force or that the Turkmen understand only force, he would immediately be condemned as a racist. And rightly.

"You can't take one sentence and say that this is the whole book."

It's not just one sentence. It is repeated. You say that we have force, a great deal of force and only force. You say that Israel is a Zionist ghetto, an imperialistic, brutish place that believes only in itself.

"Look at the Lebanon War. The people returned from the field of battle. There were certain achievements, there were certain failures, things were revealed. You would expect people in the mainstream and even on the right to understand that when the IDF is allowed to win, it doesn't win. That force is not a solution. But then comes Gaza, and what is the Gaza discourse? We will smash them, we will erase them. Nothing has sunk in. Nothing. And it's not just between nation and nation. Look at the relations between people. Listen to the personal conversation. The graph of violence on the roads, the discourse of the battered women. Look at the mirror of Israel's face."

What you are saying is that the problem is not just the occupation. In your eyes, Israel as a whole is some sort of horrible mutation.

"The occupation is a very small part of it. Israel is a frightened society. To look for the source of the obsession with force and to uproot it, you have to deal with the fears. And the meta-fear, the primal fear is the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust."

That is the book's thesis. You are not the first to propose it, but you formulate it very acutely. We are psychic cripples, you claim. We are gripped by dread and fear and make use of force because Hitler caused us deep psychic damage.

"Yes."

Well, I will counter by saying that your description is distorted. It's not as though we are living in Iceland and imagining that we are surrounded by Nazis who actually disappeared 60 years ago. We are surrounded by genuine threats. We are one of the most threatened countries in the world.

"The true Israeli rift today is between those who believe and those who are afraid. The great victory of the Israeli right in the struggle for the Israeli political soul lies in the way it has imbued it almost totally with absolute paranoia. I accept that there are difficulties. But are they absolute? Is every enemy Auschwitz? Is Hamas a scourge?"

You are patronizing and supercilious, Avrum. You have no empathy for Israelis. You treat the Israeli Jew as a paranoid. But as the cliche goes, some paranoids really are persecuted. On the day we are speaking, Ahmadinejad is saying that our days are numbered. He promises to eradicate us. No, he is not Hitler. But he is also not a mirage. He is a true threat. He is the real world - a world you ignore.

"I say that as of this moment, Israel is a state of trauma in nearly every one of its dimensions. And it's not just a theoretical question. Would our ability to cope with Iran not be much better if we renewed in Israel the ability to trust the world? Would it not be more right if we didn't deal with the problem on our own, but rather as part of a world alignment beginning with the Christian churches, going on to the governments and finally the armies?

"Instead, we say we do not trust the world, they will abandon us, and here's Chamberlain returning from Munich with the black umbrella and we will bomb them alone."

In your book we are not only victims of the Nazis. In your book we are almost Judeo-Nazis. You are careful. You do not actually say that Israel is Nazi Germany. But you come very close. You say that Israel is pre-Nazi Germany. Israel is Germany up to the Nazis.

"Yes. I started the book from the saddest place. As mourning, but for the loss of Israel. During most of the writing the book's title was 'Hitler Won.' I was sure it was finished. But slowly I discovered the layer of not everything being lost. And I discovered my father as a representative of German Jewry that was ahead of its time. These two themes nourished the book from beginning to end. In the end I am an optimistic person, and the end of the book is also optimistic."

The end may be optimistic, but throughout its entire course the book repeatedly equates Israel with Germany. Is that really justified? Is there sufficient basis for the Israel-Germany analogy?

"It is not an exact science, but I will describe to you some of the elements that go into the stew: a great sense of national insult; a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity. The place of reserve officers in society. The number of armed Israelis in the streets. Where is this swarm of armed people going? The expressions hurled publicly: 'Arabs out.'"

What you are actually claiming is that we have viruses of Nazism within us.

"The term 'Nazism' is extremely charged."

Avrum Burg writes in his new book: "It is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."

"There is a difference between saying 'Nazi' and saying 'National-Socialist.' Nazi is an ultimate icon; in us it goes to final and terminal places."

OK, we will leave Nazism. Are you concerned about a fascist debacle in Israel?

"I think it is already here."

Do you really believe that the racist slogans which, appallingly, do indeed appear on the stone walks in Jerusalem are akin to the slogans of the 1930s in Germany?

"I see that we are not weeding out those utterances with all our might. And I hear voices coming out of Sderot .... We will destroy and kill and expel. And there is a transferist discourse in the government .... We have crossed so many red lines in the past few years. And then you ask yourself what the next red lines that we cross will be."

In the book you both ask and answer. "I feel very strongly," you write, "that there is a very good chance that a future Knesset in Israel ... will prohibit sexual relations with Arabs, use administrative means to prevent Arabs from employing Jewish cleaning ladies and workers ... like the Nuremberg Laws ... All this will happen, and is already happening." Didn't you get carried away, Avrum?

"When I was Speaker of the Knesset, I heard people talking. I conducted in-depth conversations with members from all parts of the House. I heard people of peace say -I want peace because I hate Arabs and can't stand to look at them and can't tolerate them, - and I heard people on the right use Kahanist language. Kahanism [referring to the ultranational doctrine of Rabbi Meir Kahane] is in the Knesset. It was disqualified as a party, but it constitutes 10 and maybe 15 and maybe even 20 percent of the Jewish discourse in the Knesset. These matters are far from simple. These are roiling waters."

I will tell you frankly. I think we have serious moral and psychological problems. But I think that the comparison with Germany on the eve of the rise of Nazism to power is baseless. One example: There is a problem with the place of the army in our lives and with the place of the generals in our politics and in the relations between the political echelon and the army. But you are likening Israeli militarism to German militarism, and that is a false comparison. You describe Israel as a Prussian Sparta living by the sword, and that is not the Israel I see outside. Certainly not in 2007.

"I envy your ability to read the situation as you read it. I very much envy you. But I think we are a society that in its feelings lives by the sword .... It is not by chance that I make the comparison with Germany, because our feeling that we are obliged to live by the sword stems from Germany. What they deprived us of in the 12 years of Nazism necessitates a very large sword. Look at the fence. The separation fence is a fence against paranoia. And it was born in my milieu. In my school of thought. With my own Haim Ramon. What is the thinking here? That I will erect a big wall and the problem will be solved because I will not see them. You know, the Labor movement always saw the historical context and represented a culture of dialogue, but here we have terrible pettiness of soul. The fence physically demarcates the end of Europe. It says that this is where Europe ends. It says that you are the forward post of Europe and the fence separates you from the barbarians. Like the Roman Wall. Like the Wall of China. But that is so pathetic. And it is a bill of divorce from the vision of integration. There is something so xenophobic about it. So insane. And it comes just at a time when Europe itself, and the world with it, has made such an impressive advance in internalizing the lessons of the Holocaust and has fomented a great advance in the normative behavior of nations."

The truth is that you are a salient Europist. You live in Nataf but you are all Brussels. The prophet of Brussels.

"Completely. Completely. I see the European Union as a biblical utopia. I don't know how long it will hold together, but it is amazing. It is completely Jewish."

And this admiration you show for Europe is not accidental. Because one of the riveting things in your book is that the sabra Avrum Burg turns his back on being sabra and connects very deeply with some sort of yekke [a reference to Jews of German origin] romanticism. Zionist Israel comes across as a vulgar baron in the book, whereas German Jewry is the ideal and the paragon.

"You are dichotomous, Ari, and I am inclusive. You slice off and I try to contain. Therefore I do not say that I am turning my back on being sabra but that I am turning in a different direction. And that is true. Completely. true."

I have a bone to pick with this romanticism. You describe a thousand wonderful years of German Jewry. In large measure you view German Jewry as a model. But it ends in Auschwitz, Avrum. It leads to Auschwitz. Your yekke romanticism is understandable and attractive, but it lies.

"Is there a well-grounded romanticism? Is your Israeli romanticism grounded?"

My Israeliness is not romantic. On the contrary: It is cruel. It stems from understanding necessity. And you blur the necessity. Emotionally, you prefer the move from Dresden to Manhattan over coping with the Jewish-Israeli fate.

"We do not want to accept this, but the existence of the Diaspora dates from the beginnings of our history. Abraham discovers God outside the borders of the Land. Jacob leads tribes to outside the borders. The tribes become a people outside the borders. The Torah is given outside the borders. As Israelis and Zionists, we ignored this completely. We rejected the Diaspora. But I maintain that just as there was something astonishing about German Jewry, in America, too, they also created the potential for something astonishing. They created a situation in which the goy can be my father and my mother and my son and my partner. The goy there is not hostile but embracing. And as a result, what emerges is a Jewish experience of integration, not separation. Not segregation. I find those things lacking here. Here the goy is what he was in the ghetto: confrontational and hostile."

There really is a deep anti-Zionist pattern in you. Emotionally, you are with German Jewry and American Jewry. They excite you, thrill you, and by comparison you find the Zionist option crude and spiritually meager. It broadens neither the heart nor the soul.

"Yes, yes. The Israeli reality is not exciting. People are not willing to admit it, but Israel has reached the wall. Ask your friends if they are certain their children will live here. How many will say yes? At most 50 percent. In other words, the Israeli elite has already parted with this place. And without an elite there is no nation."

You are saying that we are suffocating here for lack of spirit.

"Totally. We are already dead. We haven't received the news yet, but we are dead. It doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work."

And you see in American Jewry the spiritual dimension and the cultural ferment that you don't find here.

"Certainly. There is no important Jewish writing in Israel. There is important Jewish writing in the United States. There is no one to talk to here. The religious community of which I was a part - I feel no sense of belonging to it. The secular community - I am not part of it, either. I have no one to talk to. I am sitting with you and you don't understand me, either. You are stuck at a chauvinist national extremity."

That is not completely accurate. I am aware of the Jewish richness you are talking about. But I am also aware that the basic Zionist analysis was correct. Without Israel there is no future for a non-Orthodox Jewish civilization.

"Take the purest Israeliness there is. Moshe Dayan, for example. And we will shed all the Avrums from him. Totally immaculate Israeliness. No nudniks. No effete types. Nothing. Are you sure that this living-in-order-to-live will endure? Take on the other hand the 'kites.' Martin Buber, George Steiner. You say that these [ethereal] kites will not get anywhere. But my historical experience tells me that these kites get farther than the troopers."

You are actually preparing tools for exile.

"I have been living with them from the day I was born. What is it when I say in prayer that because of our sins we were exiled from our land? In Jewish history the spiritual existence is eternal and the political existence is temporary."

In this sense, you are essentially non-Zionist. Because the energy needed to establish and maintain this place is tremendous, and you are saying that we must not give our all to this place.

"There is no Israeli whole. There is a Jewish whole. The Israeli is a half-Jew. Judaism always prepared alternatives. The strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. It built an enterprise here whose most important sections are an illusion. Do you really think that some sort of floating secular Tel Aviv-type post-kibbutz entity will [continue to] exist here? Never. Israeliness has only body; it doesn't have soul. At most, remnants of soul. You are already dead spiritually, Ari. You have only an Israeli body. If you go on like this, you will no longer be."

Israeliness is far richer, Avrum. It has energy and vibrancy and diversity and productivity. But you fled from Israeliness. You defected from Israeliness. You were an Israeli. You were more Israeli than I was. But no more.

"No more. I think that the 'non-Israeli' is not an alternative to the whole Jewish existence of two thousand years that I am talking about. That is why I wrote this book. Because I cannot leave this world while lying to myself. I told you: There is no Jewish existence without a narrative. There is no such thing. And here there is certainly no narrative. But what is even graver is that there are no forces that will draw out a narrative from within.

"Accordingly, I am going to the world and to Judaism. Because the Jew is the first postmodernist, the Jew is the first globalist."

You really are a globalist now. You really are going out to the world. You have taken a French passport, and as a French citizen you voted in the French presidential elections.

"I have already declared: I am a citizen of the world. This is my hierarchy of identities: citizen of the world, afterward Jew and only after that Israeli. I feel a weighty responsibility for the peace of the world. And Sarkozy is in my eyes a threat to world peace. That is why I went to vote against him."

Are you French?

"In many senses I am European. And from my point of view, Israel is part of Europe."

But it isn't. Not yet. And you are an Israeli public figure who is taking part in the French presidential elections as a Frenchman. That is a far-reaching act. A pre-Zionist Jewish act. Something that neither an Englishman or a Dutchman would do.

"True. It is completely Jewish. I am moving forward to the Jewish condition."

Do you recommend that every Israeli take out a foreign passport?

"Whoever can."

But in this, in this too, you are dismantling the Israeli mutual surety. You are playing with your multiple passports and your multiple identities, which is a course not available to many others. You are dismantling something very basic.

"Those are your fears, Ari. I suggest that you not be afraid. That is what I say in the book. I propose that we stop being afraid."

But you are not only the book, Avrum. You are also the person outside the book. And there is a contradiction between the purism of the man who wrote the book and the political life you lived here.

"A terrible question. Terrible. And it's true. For some of those years I lived a lie. For many years I was not myself. At the outset of my political path I had the energy of the struggle for religion and state and the struggle for peace. I had the precise wind of [the late Prof. Yeshayahu] Leibowitz in my sails. Those were my years of honesty. That was me. But afterward, for long years I was a Mapainik [Mapai, forerunner of the Labor Party]. I was there just to be. And I was no longer me. I was false to the tenets."

And now that you are free of the limitations of politics, you are going all the way with the Leibowitz in you. You describe the targeted assassinations as acts of murder. You are happy that your mother's grandson is not a fighter pilot who kills innocent people. You describe the occupation as an Israeli Anschluss. An Israeli Anschluss?

"That is what we are doing there. What do you want me to say about what we are doing there? That it's humanism? The Red Cross?"

And the targeted assassinations are murder?

"Some of them, certainly."

We are being dragged into carrying out war crimes?

"I have no other way to see it. Especially if there is no horizon of dialogue. The Israelis are very calm. One more Arab, one less Arab. Ya'allah, it's alright. But in the end, the pile grows high. The number of innocent people is so large that it can no longer be contained. And then our explosion and their explosion and the world's will be infinite. I see it happening before my eyes. I see the pile of Palestinian bodies crossing the wall we erected so as not to see it."

And you are not only Leibowitz. You are also Gandhi. You say that the right reaction to the Holocaust was not Anielewicz [Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising] but Gandhi.

"I believe in the doctrine of nonviolence. I do not think that to believe in nonviolence is to be a patsy. In my eyes, Gandhi is as Jewish as there is. He embodies a very ancient Jewish approach. Like Yochanan ben Zakkai, who asked for Yavneh and its sages. Not Jerusalem, not the Temple, not sovereignty: Yavneh and its sages."

And your Gandhiist approach has a political expression: You believe Israel should be relieved of nuclear weapons.

"Of course, of course. The day the Bomb is dismantled will be the most important day in Israel's history. It will be the day on which we get such a good deal with the other side that we will no longer need the Bomb. That has to be our ambition."

Avrum, your book is that of a man of peace. Almost a pacifist. How did it happen that when a man of peace like you left politics you tried to buy from the government a factory that manufactures tank parts?

"I am a businessman. I deal with companies. With bringing them back to health. Privatizations. I like this job and I am also good at it. One of my main projects was Ashot Industries in Ashkelon, 40 percent of which manufactures arms. My intention was to close down that production line and expand Ashot's involvement in the world of civil aviation. I will not be responsible for manufacturing arms for one day. The challenge I saw was to take a place that makes spears and beat them into plowshares."

That deal raised serious questions. It led to an investigation by the state comptroller and by the police. But I don't want to ask about its criminal aspect, because the case was closed and you were exonerated. I want to ask how it can be that the first thing a politician who presented himself as an anti-Thatcherite and as a sworn enemy of privatization did after leaving politics was to try to earn a huge personal profit from privatization.

"I set out to do the most anti-Thatcherite thing. The state sold badly but I wanted to buy well. The state wronged the workers and I wanted to ensure their rights. I wanted to show a different model of partnership between employees and owners. So I think it is unjust that the State of Israel took this deal away from me. When I left politics, the temptations were great. I could have sat on this board or that board. People wanted me to open doors and close doors. But I said no. I went to the old [type of] industry. To the periphery. I am now producing corn in Hatzor Haglilit. Show me another person like me who emerged from politics and is doing work like this. I am not sitting in Kiryat Atidim [a high-tech industrial zone]. I am not sitting in the slick places. I am sweating my guts out every month to pay my 600 employees. Their salary."

It's not exactly right that you decided not to open doors or close doors. In your joint venture with businessman David Appel you were supposed to open doors so he could reincarnate the 'Greek Island' tourist project in southern Italy.

"Nothing came of that project. Not even a business opportunity. But if something had come of it - so what? Because 20 people don't like David he is unacceptable? Because terrible things are said about him in the judicial system but nothing is proved? That is violence I cannot tolerate. It is simply an executioner's approach. Israeliness as executioner, and we really love it - it sells papers."

Are the allegations against you concerning Ashot Industries and David Appel part of an Israeli executioner's approach?

"There is a gallows society here. First we'll hang you and when you breathe your last breath we will clarify why it was your last. How it left your body. We are now living in the equivalent of the 1950s in America. In a McCarthyite era. The assault on corruption is McCarthyism. It is important that we set boundaries. In the past we swiped things from the chicken coop, and today that is impossible. Once we asked girls, When you say no, what do you mean? - and today sexual harassment is forbidden. But the way it is being done - the style, the vulgarity, the populism, the superficiality. The inability of those who are under attack to fight back properly."

You do know how to fight back. For example, Salai Meridor [former Jewish Agency chairman] decides that there is no justification for him and you to enjoy the baseless privilege of a service car with a chauffeur for life, and you go to court to fight for that privilege with all your might.

"As a former chairman of the Jewish Agency, I have pension rights just as you have pension rights. One day they are suddenly gone. Out of the blue. Think that part of your pension is to receive Haaretz free and one day Amos Schocken [the publisher] suddenly takes it away. Wouldn't you fight? Wouldn't you go to the workers' committee?

"But every person is allowed to fight when something is taken from him - only Avrum is not allowed. Why? Because. This whole thing is such a pittance in money terms that it doesn't even exist. But the level of principle sent me up the wall."

We're talking about NIS 200,000. And about your behavior, which the judge found disgraceful. And about the fact that even though you talk high and mighty about morals, you don't see the moral flaw in the fact that 10 years after leaving the Jewish Agency you are driving on your business trips throughout the country with a Jewish Agency chauffeur driving you everywhere. On top of which, today you are so alienated from everything the Jewish Agency stands for.

"I have something to say about what the judge said. But I will not counterattack. I will not correct violence with violence. We are talking about a person's basic right. About a pension right."

Was it worth it? What will remain engraved in people's memory is that Salai Meridor was fair and modest, and Avrum Burg was a hedonist who coveted benefits.

"What remains of all this is that I am at peace with myself. Everyone who feels good with secret violence or hidden knifing or with being an open or covert Sicarius [name given to Second Temple Jews who used a dagger, sicarius, to dispose of collaborators with Rome] - good l