tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28738379837941729042024-03-05T07:30:26.820-08:00BRUMSPEAKPromoting a more Centrist point of view on Israel, America & World JewryDavid Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.comBlogger208125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-59681770642907733672012-07-09T16:01:00.000-07:002012-07-24T17:20:31.493-07:00Sad news<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: large;">We are saddened to inform you of the tragic passing of <b>David</b> <b>Brumer</b>, z”l husband of <b>Iris</b> <b>Brumer</b>, and father of <b>Nadav</b> and <b>Asaph Brumer</b>, Sunday, July 8th.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><br />A fund has been created to support Iris, Nadav, and Asaph.<br /></span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Donations to Iris Brumer can be made at any Wells Fargo branch; checks made out to Iris Brumer can be mailed to: </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Wells Fargo University Branch</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">4500 University Way NE </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Seattle, WA 98105</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">May his memory be for a blessing.</span></div>
</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com83tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-64060276353278622372012-06-28T11:37:00.000-07:002012-06-28T11:39:35.314-07:00Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon: A Realist's Perspective<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Fascinating interview by Ari Shavit with a man of great integrity and a quiet wisdom, Moshe Ya'alon. His words may shock some, yet his perspective is measured and deliberate. We in the West want to always fix things, and right away. What if a "solution" is not possible in the near future? Do we act now for the sake of "doing something?" According to Bogie, the urgency to act now is a mirage; the demographic threat is overblown, as is the political necessity. One has to understand the situation through the lens of the Middle East; not Europe or America. </div>
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david in Seattle</div>
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<b style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 15px;"><i>"We have to free ourselves of the way of thinking that holds that if I give to the enemy and if I please the enemy, the enemy will give me quiet. That is an Ashkenazi way of thinking; it is not connected to the reality of the Middle East.”</i></b>
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excerpts below; long article worth reading in its entirety</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 19.5pt;"><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/idf-chief-of-staff-turned-vice-premier-we-are-not-bluffing.premium-1.436414">IDF chief of staff-turned-vice premier:'We are not bluffing'</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b>Moshe Ya'alon tells Ari Shavit he is preparing for war. He
suggests you do the same.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9pt;">By <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/ari-shavit-1.294"><span style="color: black; text-decoration: none;">Ari Shavit</span></a>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Exactly seven years ago, I interviewed the chief
of staff. On the eve of his retirement from the Israel Defense Forces, Moshe
“Bogie” Ya’alon spoke with an expressionless face against the Gaza
disengagement, against a Palestinian state and against giving terrorism a
“tailwind.” He predicted that Hamas would seize control of the Gaza Strip and
that rockets would rain down on Israeli cities. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"> Bogie has surprised the “national camp”
time and again. He spoke out against the exclusion of women from public events
due to religious strictures, opposed racism against migrants and objected to
the silencing of reporters. He supported same-sex marriage and the right of
Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran not to sing the national anthem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">But despite his partial “otherness,” this son of
the Labor Movement became the hero of the followers of Jabotinsky, the hero of
the settlement project and the hero of hawkishness. It is only in regard to the
Iranian issue that the minister of strategic threats is perceived as a dove. In
closed conversations he reiterates his deep concern about the influence wielded
by Ehud Barak on Benjamin Netanyahu, and about the possibility that the former
will drag the latter into a wanton Iranian adventure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Moshe
“Bogie” Ya’alon, could a war erupt this year?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“I hope not. I hope that in regard to Iran it
will be possible to say, as the old saw goes, that the work of the just is done
by others. But obviously we are preparing for every possibility. If I am not
for myself, who will be for me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">I<b>f you
had to provide a comprehensive intelligence assessment today, would you say
that the probability of a war in the year ahead is negligible, low, middling or
high?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“The probability of an initiated attack on
Israel is low. I do not see an Arab coalition armed from head to foot deploying
on our borders − not this year, not in the year after and not in the
foreseeable future. Despite the trend toward Islamization in the Middle East,
we enjoy security and relative quiet along the borders. But the No. 1 challenge
is that of Iran. If anyone attacks Iran, it’s clear that Iran will take action
against us. If anyone, no matter who, decides to take military action against
Iran’s nuclear project, there is a high probability that Iran will react
against us, too, and will fire missiles at Israel. There is also a high
probability that Hezbollah and Islamist elements in the Gaza Strip will operate
against us. That possibility exists, and it’s with a view to that possibility
that we have to deploy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>What the
vice premier is telling me is that we are close to the moment of truth
regarding Iran.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“Definitely. When I was director of Military
Intelligence, in the 1990s, Iran did not possess one kilogram of enriched
uranium. Today it has 6,300 kilograms of uranium enriched to a level of 3.5
percent and about 150 kilograms enriched to a level of 20 percent. When I was
chief of staff, in the first decade of this century, Iran had a few hundred
centrifuges, most of which were substandard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“At present there are about 10,000 centrifuges
in Natanz and in Kom, which are enriching about eight kilograms of uranium a
day. Since this government took office in 2009, the number of centrifuges in
Iran has almost doubled and the amount of enriched uranium has increased
sixfold. The meaning of these data is that Iran already today has enough
enriched uranium to manufacture five atomic bombs. If Iran is not stopped,
within a year it will have enough uranium for seven or eight atomic bombs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“In addition, the Iranians apparently possess a
weapons development system which they are hiding from the international
supervisory apparatus. The Iranians also have 400 missiles of different types,
which can reach the whole area of Israel and certain parts of Europe. Those
missiles were built from the outset with the ability to carry nuclear warheads.
So the picture is clear. Five years ago, even three years ago, Iran was not
within the zone of the nuclear threshold. Today it is. Before our eyes Iran is
becoming a nuclear-threshold power.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Crossing
red lines</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>But you
yourself are telling me that the Iranians have already crossed most of the red
lines. They have swept past the points of no return. Doesn’t that mean that we
are now facing the cruel dilemma of bomb or bombing?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“We are not there yet. I hope we will not get
there. The international community can still act aggressively and with
determination. Other developments are also feasible. But if the question is
bomb or bombing, the answer is clear: bomb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>But the
Iranians are rational, and the use of nuclear weapons is an irrational act.
Like the Soviets, they will never do that.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“A Western individual observing the fantastic
ambitions of the Iranian leadership scoffs: ‘What do they think, that they will
Islamize us?’ The surprising answer is: Yes, they think they will Islamize us:
The ambition of the present regime in Tehran is for the Western world to become
Muslim at the end of a lengthy process. Accordingly, we have to understand that
their rationality is completely different from our rationality. Their concepts
are different and their considerations are different. They are completely
unlike the former Soviet Union. They are not even like Pakistan or North Korea.
If Iran enjoys a nuclear umbrella and the feeling of strength of a nuclear
power, there is no knowing how it will behave. It will be impossible to
accommodate a nuclear Iran and it will be impossible to attain stability. The
consequences of a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Bombing
too will have catastrophic consequences: a regional war, a religious war,
thousands of civilians killed.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“Anyone who has experienced war, as I have, does
not want war. War is a dire event. But the question is: What is the alternative?
What is the other option to war? I told you once and will tell you again: If it
is bomb or bombing, from my point of view it is bombing. True, bombing will
have a price. We must not underestimate or overestimate that price. We have to
assume that Israel will be attacked by Iranian missiles, many of which will be
intercepted by the Arrow system. We have to assume that Hezbollah will join the
confrontation and fire thousands of rockets at us. Rockets will also be fired
from the Gaza Strip. The probability of Syria entering the fray is low, but we
have to deploy for that possibility, too. I am not saying it will be easy. But
when you pit all of that against the alternative of a nuclear Iran, there is no
hesitation at all. It is preferable to pay the steep price of war than to allow
Iran to acquire military nuclear capability. That’s as clear as day, as far as
I am concerned.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Hezbollah
scenario</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Hezbollah
can hit every place in Israel today: population centers, army bases, strategic
targets. Doesn’t the scenario of a massive missile attack make you lose sleep?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“My assessment is that Hezbollah will enter the
fray. But what happened in the Second Lebanon War will not be repeated. The way
to stop the rockets is to exact from the other side a price that will oblige it
to ask for a cease-fire. We have the ability to hit Hezbollah with 150 times
the explosives that it can hit us with. We can also do it a lot more
accurately. If we are attacked from inside Lebanon, the government of Lebanon
will bear very great responsibility.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>You
answered my question about the home front. But what about the argument that
bombing will spark a permanent religious war and will unify the Iranian people
around the regime? What about the argument that bombing will in fact cause the
collapse of the sanctions and allow Iran to go confrontational and hurtle
openly toward nuclear capability?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“First things first and last things last. In
regard to a religious war, isn’t the regime in Iran waging a religious war
against us today? In regard to the people unifying behind the regime: I do not
accept that. I think that an operation could even destabilize the regime. In my
estimation, 70 percent of the Iranians will be happy to be rid of the regime of
the ayatollahs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“Let me reply in greater detail to the argument
that Iran will hurtle toward nuclearization on the day after the bombing. Those
who focus the debate on the narrow technological aspect of the problem can
argue that all that will be achieved is a delay of a year or two, not much more.
If so, they will say, ‘What did we accomplish? What did we gain?’ But the
question is far broader. One of the important elements here is to convince the
Iranian regime that the West is determined to prevent its acquisition of
nuclear capability. And what demonstrates greater determination than the use of
force?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“Therefore, it is wrong for us to view a
military operation and its results only from an engineering point of view. I
want to remind you that in the discussions of the security cabinet before the
Israeli attack on [the nuclear reactor in] Iraq, the experts claimed that
Saddam Hussein would acquire a new reactor with a year. They were right from
the engineering aspect but mistaken historically. If Iran does go
confrontational and tries openly to manufacture nuclear weapons, it will find
itself in a head-on confrontation with the international community. The
president of the United States has undertaken that Iran will not be a nuclear
power. If Iran defies him directly, it will have to deal with him and will
embark upon a collision course with the West.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">But the
Americans are with us. The Americans will rescue us. Why jump in head-first?</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“There is agreement between the United States
and us on the goal, and agreement on intelligence and close cooperation. But we
are in disagreement about the red line. For the Americans, the red line is an
order by [Ayatollah] Khamenei to build a nuclear bomb.<b> For us, the red line is
Iranian ability to build a nuclear bomb.</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“We do not accept the American approach for three
reasons. First, because it implies that Iran can be a threshold-power which, as
long as it does not manufacture nuclear weapons in practice is allowed to
possess the ability to manufacture them. Second, because in our assessment
there is no certainty that it will be possible to intercept in time the
precious report that Khamenei finally gave the order to build a bomb . Third,
there is a disparity between the sense of threat and urgency in Jerusalem and
the sense of threat and urgency in Washington.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Yet,
Israel is not believed either internationally or domestically. The feeling is
that Israel is crying wolf and playing a sophisticated game of ‘Hold me back.’</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“Let me say one thing to you in English, because
it is very important for English speakers to understand it: ‘We are not
bluffing.’ If the political-economic pressure is played out and the other
alternatives are played out, and Iran continues to hurtle toward a bomb,
decisions will have to be made.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Is there
a danger that the Iranian crisis will reach its peak already in the year ahead?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“There was a time when we talked about a decade.
Afterward we talked about years. Now we are talking about months. It is
possible that the sanctions will suddenly work. But presently we are in a
situation that necessitates a daily check. I am not exaggerating: daily. From
our point of view, Iranian ability to manufacture nuclear weapons is a sword
held over our throat. The sword is getting closer and closer. Under no
circumstances will Israel agree to let the sword touch its throat.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">‘Cruel
truth’</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Bogie,
what happened to you? You are a Mapainik from the Labor-oriented Haifa suburbs,
a kibbutznik and a Rabinist from Oslo. Why did you suddenly move to beyond the
hills of darkness of the right? Isn’t it odd for you to wake up in the morning
and discover that you have become a Likudnik?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“The question is not what happened to me but
what happened to the camp in which I grew up. The Labor Movement had Yitzhak
Tabenkin and Yigal Allon and Yitzhak Rabin. Even Rabin, from the Oslo process,
was never from Peace Now. A month before he was assassinated he spoke in the
Knesset about an eternally unified Jerusalem, and about the Jordan Rift Valley
under Israeli sovereignty and about a Palestinian entity that would be less
than a state. Rabin supported the Allon Plan in the broad sense and was firmly
against a withdrawal to the 1967 lines ... Morally, mortal danger overcomes
land, but in practice giving up land causes mortal danger. That is the reality
we live in. That is the truth, however cruel.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Let’s
assume there is no “land for peace,” but that there is “land for Zionism” -
land in return for our ability to maintain a Jewish democratic state that does
not commit suicide by occupation and settlements.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“As long as the other side is not ready to
recognize our right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people, I am not
ready to forgo a millimeter. I am not even willing to talk about territory.
After land-for-peace became land-for-terror and land-for-rockets, I am no
longer willing to bury my head in the sand. In the reality of the Middle East
what is needed is stability above all. Stability is achieved not by means of
imaginary agreements on the White House lawn but by means of defense, by means
of a thick stick and a carrot.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>And we
can live like this for another 20 years?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“We can live like this for another 100 years,
too.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>But we
are rotting away, Bogie. Demographically, politically and morally, we are
rotting.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“The demographic argument is a lie. As for the
political legitimacy, I prefer to operate against a threatening entity from
within the present lines. And morally, as long as the Palestinians do not
recognize the right of existence of a Jewish state, they are the aggressor.
After all, they do not recognize my right to live in Tel Aviv, either. From
their point of view, the occupation did not begin in 1967 but in 1948. Anyone
who claims otherwise is throwing sand in your eyes or deceiving himself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">And what
do you propose for the future? Another 100 settlements? A million Jewish
settlers in Judea and Samaria?</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“The establishment of more settlements touches
on political and state sensitivities. But there are now already 350,000
settlers in Judea and Samaria. If the political reality does not change, their
number could rise to a million.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>If so,
what kind of reality will we be living in 10 years from now? A million Jews in
Judea and Samaria, the Palestinians with no state and the two populations
intermingled?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“The Palestinians will have autonomy and have
their own parliament. I can tolerate that state of affairs. Any other state of
affairs will be irresponsible in security terms. Do you want snipers in
Jerusalem? Do you want rockets hitting Ben-Gurion airport? It is the
Palestinians who are placing us in this difficult situation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“I was ready to divide the land. They are not
ready to divide the land and recognize my right to exist here within some sort
of border. Therefore, because they say ‘either them or us,’ I say ‘us.’ Until I
hear Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] say there is a Jewish
people with a connection to the Land of Israel, and until I see the
three-year-old in Ramallah learning that Israel has a right to exist − that is
the state of affairs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>If so,
there will be no peace, no withdrawal and no Palestinian state. There will be
no two-state solution.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“In the present situation ‘solution’ is a dirty
word. One of our biggest problems is that we have become solution-oriented and
now-oriented and expect a solution now. We believe that we are omnipotent and
have the ability to find a solution to this problem which torments us. But I
believe a person should be more modest. What’s needed is not to look for a
solution but to look for a path. There are problems in life that have no
solution. And at the moment the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a problem with
no solution. Anyone who suggests a solution-now of one kind or another is not
suggesting a true solution but a false illusion. A golden calf.
Self-deception.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Syrian
debacle</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>Bogie, I
understand what you are saying, but it is impossible live with what you are
saying. All you are offering me is a wall, an iron wall, a determined stance.
There is no hope in your words. No latitude. No movement toward some sort of
horizon.</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“I am actually very optimistic. I see where my
grandfather and grandmother were and where my parents were and where I am and
where my children are − and I see that time is not working against us. Time
works in favor of everyone who knows how to take advantage of it. That is the
secret of Zionism. And when our ethos is to build and the ethos of the other
side is to destroy, our ethos will triumph. But what we have to free ourselves
of is being solution-oriented and now-oriented and of self-blame. <b>We have to
free ourselves of the way of thinking that holds that if I give to the enemy
and if I please the enemy, the enemy will give me quiet. That is an Ashkenazi
way of thinking; it is not connected to the reality of the Middle East.”</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 11.25pt;">“There is a knight-on-a-white-horse phenomenon
in Israeli politics: the Democratic Movement for Change, Shinui, the Center
Party, Kadima. These knights appear like fireflies and then disappear. Why?
Because they do not possess an ideological backbone, only rhetoric that
generates white hope of a white knight on a white horse. Regrettably, there are
fools who flock to these white knights.</span></div>
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<i style="line-height: 11.25pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 11.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i style="line-height: 11.25pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>But you
are not the defense minister; you are a kind of upgraded minister without
portfolio. Yair Lapid claims that this is a form of corruption.</b></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 11.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“I certainly welcome everyone who is ready to
plunge his hands into the cold water of politics. Truly. But it seems to me a
little pretentious to appear on television and write columns in a newspaper and
think that you can be prime minister. A little humility, a little
responsibility. First work as an MK, then become a minister, prove that you can
manage a system. Occupy yourself with questions of life and death, like the
ones I dealt with for 37 years. I find the notion that you can move from the
media to being the leader of the country a bit childish.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 11.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i><b><br /></b></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 11.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b>And the
goal is to win the game: to become prime minister?</b></span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 11.25pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">“One of the good things in Likud is that when
there is a leader, he gets backing. No attempt is made to subvert him. But in
the remote future, after a lot more water flows in the Jordan and Benjamin
Netanyahu decides that he no longer wants to head the party and the country, we
will be in a different situation. I definitely see myself contesting the
leadership. The premiership, too.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-37165658669007412312012-06-09T21:31:00.001-07:002012-06-09T21:32:41.479-07:00Ambassador Michael Oren: Why Jews Boycotting Israeli Settlements Is Wrong (and Counterproductive)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20px;">Ambassador Michael Oren is perhaps Israel's most eloquent spokesperson. A historian of the first order, he authored the definitive work on Israel's 1967 War; </span></span></div>
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<span id="btAsinTitle"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Six-Days-War-Making-Modern/dp/0195151747">Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East</a>, and more recently, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Power-Faith-Fantasy-America-Present/dp/B00509CS7O">Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present</a>. </span></span></h1>
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This week, he graced Seattle's shores with his presence, appearing on Steve Scher's <a href="http://kuow.org/program.php?id=26966" style="color: black;">Weekday</a>, met with the<a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018372941_israeliambassador7m.html" style="color: black;"> <i>Seattle Times</i></a>, spoke at AJC's Inter-faith/Inter-ethnic Group (<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-auto;">AJC hosted an Interfaith and Intergroup Luncheon with Seattle’s religious and cultural leaders, allowing for an opportunity to engage in an open and honest dialogue about Israel), and culminated his whirlwind visit to Seattle with a talk at Temple de Hirsch Sinai. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Ever the diplomat, as well as an individual of class and distinction, Oren did not mention individuals (Peter Beinart) or groups (J-Street) by name. But his message was clear: Being Pro-Israel cannot mean advocating boycotts of any sort against the Jewish State, or bemoaning the state of Israeli democracy (in fact, democracy in Israel is alive and well and thriving, messy as it may be). And the settlements, however problematic they may be, do not constitute a major impediment to a peace process and an ultimate two-state solution. Presenting them as such is disingenuous. They are a red-herring. Were there a realistic partner on the other side who could deliver, any issues vis-a-vis the settlements could be accommodated. But as long as the Palestinians refuse to sit at the table without pre-conditions, and as long as Hamas remains ascendant in Palestinian politics, it is a categorical misrepresentation to lay the blame for the impasse in the "peace process" at the feet of the Israelis. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; text-align: -webkit-auto;">david in Seattle</span></div>
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<tr><td class="h2" style="font-size: 19px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 5px;" valign="top"><a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=4240">American Jews boycotting Israeli settlements is terribly wrong</a></td></tr>
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Sometimes it seems that we, Israelis and American Jews, not only inhabit different countries but different universes, different realities," Israel Ambassador to U.S. Michael Oren says • "At stake is nothing less than the unity of a Jewish people."</div>
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Ambassador Michael Oren. [Archive]<br />
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<span lang="EN"><b>The divide separating American and Israeli Jews is growing, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said on Sunday, adding that the unity of the Jewish people should be a primary concern for all Jews</b>.</span></div>
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Speaking at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs Plenum in Detroit on Sunday, Oren discussed his three children — Yoav, Lia and Noam — and described himself as an Israeli father shocked that American Jews would consider boycotting Israel while his own children were looking for bomb shelters and managing recruits in the Israel Defense Forces.</div>
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"There are American Jewish concerns such as ensuring Jewish continuity, maintaining Jewish institutions, affording a Jewish education. All are genuinely serious concerns, and not just for American Jewish kids," Oren told the audience in Detroit, made up of leaders from all walks of Jewish life. "I was shocked, then, that on the very day that I spoke with my kids about their concerns in Israel, some American Jews were discussing a call to boycott products made by Israeli settlements in the West Bank."</div>
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Oren said that he followed the issue because it was his duty to do so as an ambassador, but that he reacted to it as an Israeli father with genuine Israeli concerns.</div>
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"Something is wrong here. Terribly wrong," Oren said of the growing distance between Israeli and American Jews. "No doubt, a majority of American Jews care deeply about the security of Israel and oppose those seeking to undermine it. And even some of those calling for boycotts do so out of a sense of caring — I’d say misplaced sense of caring — about Israel."</div>
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If Jews do not join together as brothers and sisters, Oren added, the issue will become much bigger than questions of politics or free speech.</div>
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<b>"Let me be clear: At stake is not merely Israel’s policies or rights of American Jews to criticize them. At stake is nothing less than the unity of the Jewish people," he said. "Israel is our state, a work in progress in which every Jew can play a part. Of course, sovereignty is messy, and Jews can and will disagree about Israeli policies without necessarily loving Israel any less. Still, people often ask me, 'how do you define pro-Israel?' I have some elementary answers."</b></div>
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Oren then described for the audience what it meant to be "pro-Israel.<b>" A pro-Israel person, he said, "recalls what Jewish life was like without a Jewish state and works to ensure that there always will be a Jewish state." A pro-Israel person is also "grateful every day that he or she lives in a time in Jewish history when there is a proud and independent Jewish state."</b></div>
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But there is more to being pro-Israel, Oren added.<b> A pro-Israel person sees Israel's flaws and conundrums and thinks critically about them, but nevertheless, Oren says, "the pro-Israel person also asks, 'how can I contribute to Israel, how can I enrich it and be enriched by it?'"</b></div>
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<b>Three other stipulations make a person pro-Israel, Oren said. First, a pro-Israel person is aware that Israel is a tiny country living under a massive, deafening threat. Second, a pro-Israel person knows that making peace with the Palestinians constitutes a very real risk that the West Bank will devolve into a terror haven, just as Gaza did. Third, and finally, Oren said "a pro-Israel person takes pride in Israel’s incalculable successes."</b></div>
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The secret to the Jewish people's success, Oren stressed repeatedly during his speech, is the unity of the Jewish people. That means that the Jewish State of Israel and the broader, farther-flung tribe that is the Jewish people, must work together, not against each other, to be each other's lifelines.</div>
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"We are a small people, but we face big problems. We are a small people, with immense achievements. But we are a people. And because we are people, we have been able to overcome adversity. Peoplehood is the secret to our success," he said. "That's why the great task of our generation is to preserve our unity."</div>
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-80550372977878066522012-04-11T10:49:00.001-07:002012-04-11T10:51:23.790-07:00Daniel Gordis Puts His Finger On Peter Beinart's Identity Crisis: Why Particularism (Tribalism) Must Precede Universalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;"></div><h1 style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #3c6b8c; font-family: arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">Daniel Gordis locates the root of the problem with Beinart's "critique" of Israel, in his new book, <u>The Crisis of Zionism.</u> </span></h1><div><span style="font-size: small;">I've blogged about the discomfort American Jews have with the "tribalism" of Judaism <a href="http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/2011/06/daniel-gordis-on-imperatives-of.html">here</a>, referencing another important article by Gordis related to young American Rabbis. Natan Sharansky also added important insights to this conversation several years ago with his book, <u><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Defending-Identity-Indispensable-Protecting-Democracy/dp/158648513X">Defending Identity</a>,</u> which I wrote about <a href="http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/search?q=sharansky">here</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Gordis' penetrating analysis of how and where Beinart goes off the tracks. Psychologically astute as well. Beinart's critiques of the Jewish State read like an adolescent's naive apprehension of the world in black and white tones. Only perfection will satisfy. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Never mind the imperfection of the world, not to mention Israel's neighbors. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">david in Seattle</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px;"> <b><i>“But what distinguishes Palestinian terrorism and settler terrorism is the Israeli government’s response.” Really? That’s all that distinguishes Palestinian and Jewish terror? How about the fact that there have been very, very few incidents of Jewish terror, while the Palestinians have turned it into a cottage industry? How about the fact that Israeli society detests the Jews who do this sort of thing, while Palestinian society lionizes them? Why does Beinart not mention those enormous differences? His sort of accusation and absurd misrepresentation is what one would expect from the enemies of Israel, not someone who professes love for the Jewish state. When Beinart and I debated some time ago, I actually left the evening believing that he loved Israel. This book convinced me that I was horribly mistaken.</i></b></span><b><i><br style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px;">BUT WHY does he hate Israel so?</span></i></b> <br />
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</span></div><h1 style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #3c6b8c; font-family: arial; font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_lblArticleTitle"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=265690">A Dose of Nuance: Peter Beinart's mis-identity crisis</a></span></h1><div class="jp-writer" style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: arial; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_lblDateAndHour">04/11/2012 13:15</span> <span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_lblAuthor"><span class=""><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Authors/AuthorPage.aspx?id=75" style="color: grey; font-size: 11px; outline-color: initial !important; outline-style: none !important; outline-width: initial !important; text-decoration: none;">By DANIEL GORDIS</a></span></span></div><h3 style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_lblArticleTeaser">Peter Beinart is right. The relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state is indeed in crisis.</span></h3><div><br />
</div><div class="mainimage" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_art_pic" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><img alt="Peter Beinart's book" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_headerImage" src="http://www.jpost.com/HttpHandlers/ShowImage.ashx?ID=191336" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-style: none; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; display: inline-block; height: 187px; margin-bottom: 2px; text-align: center; vertical-align: middle; width: 311px;" title="Peter Beinart's book" /><br />
<span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_imgTitle">Photo by: Courtesy</span><br />
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</div><span id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_ArticleControl1_lblArticleBody" style="background-color: white; font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; text-align: left;"><b>Peter Beinart is right. The relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state is indeed in crisis. Beinart and his title are just wrong about what the crisis is. What we face, as his book accidentally demonstrates, is not The Crisis of Zionism, but a crisis of American Judaism.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic;">The Crisis of Zionism</span> is, as countless reviewers have already noted, an Israel-bashing-fest. The second intifada was Israel’s fault: It “erupted because while many Israelis genuinely believed that [Ehud] Barak was trying to end the occupation, Palestinians felt it was closing in on them.” Israel attacks terrorists “nestled amid a stateless and thus largely defenseless Palestinian population,” as if the terrorists’ decision to lodge there were Israel’s fault. Such myopia abounds.<br />
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Israel is blamed everywhere in this book, often thoughtlessly. The most obvious example is the one with which the book opens. Beinart watched a video of a young Palestinian boy wailing uncontrollably as Israeli troops arrested his father for “stealing water,” and found himself “staring in mute horror” at his computer screen. He is right, of course, that it is painful to watch a five-year-old weeping as his father is arrested. But Beinart is so anxious to blame Israel that he abandons any investigative savvy. <span style="font-style: italic;">Haaretz</span>, not known for its enthusiastic support of the occupation that so troubles Beinart, reported that Fadel Jaber was actually arrested on suspicion of attacking the police. Border Police sources also suggested that the whole scene of the sobbing five-year-old was staged for the cameras. And everyone admits that Jaber was breaking the law.<br />
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Why, though, does Beinart never even wonder if there is an Israeli side to the story, never entertain the possibility that Jaber deserved to be arrested? The mere fact that Israeli actions cause people pain is too much for him to bear.<br />
Here, then, is the rub, and the central question that I kept asking myself as I read the book: Why do Beinart and his ilk expect their Zionist bride to be free of all blemish? And worse, what is the reason for their instinctively blaming the bride they allegedly love, without asking whether anyone else might bear some responsibility for the painful realities they witness?<br />
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Why is there not one mention of the extraordinary social organizations in Israel, or the many cultural, literary and other accomplishments of Jews and Arabs in Israeli society? Why does one finish the book with the sense that Beinart, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, actually detests Israel? Why are assaults on Israel described in the cold language of the pathologist, while the scene with Jaber is so emotional? When Beinart mentions Gilad Schalit, this is all he has to say: “Hamas was not innocent in all this: it had abducted an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and refused to release him until Israel released Palestinians in its jails.” That’s it?! No mention of the fact that Schalit was captured inside Israeli territory? Or that Hamas never once allowed the Red Cross to visit him? Or that Schalit emerged from captivity emaciated? Or that he was held in virtual solitary confinement, with no sunlight, for five hellish years?<br />
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Where’s the Jewish soul here? What kind of Jewish observer weeps over young Khaled Jaber but has nothing else to say about Schalit? It’s worse than infuriating; it’s stunningly sad.<br />
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Again, the pathologist: Discussing the March 2011 murder of the Fogel family, Beinart first says, “[The terrorists] murdered Ehud and Ruth Fogel and three of their children, Yoav, Elad and Hadas, in their beds. Elad, aged four, was strangled to death. Hadas, aged three months, was decapitated.” Even about the Fogels, he can summon no emotion?</b><br />
read the rest <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=265690">here</a></span></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-28024710736395432482012-04-06T10:54:00.002-07:002012-04-06T10:57:42.421-07:00Michael Oren, Israel's Most Eloquent Spokesperson, Elucidates On The Resilience & Vibrancy Of Israeli Democracy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div id="art-mast" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="translateHead" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><h1 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.04em; margin-bottom: 0.15em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; word-spacing: -0.06em;"><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">There is no better spokesperson for all that is right and good and just about Israel than Ambassador Michael Oren. Here Oren beautifully demonstrates that for all its flaws, Israel is a model of democracy in action, and under the most difficult of circumstances. We have much to be proud of and celebrate! </span><span style="font-size: large;">Happy Passover to all!!!</span></h1><div><span style="font-size: small;">david in Seattle</span></div><div>below, multiple excerpts of his long essay in <i>Foreign Policy</i>, well worth reading in its entirety</div><div><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><h1 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.04em; margin-bottom: 0.15em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; word-spacing: -0.06em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/05/Israel_Is_a_Democracy">Is<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-style: initial; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial;">rael's Resilient Democracy</span></a></span></h1><h1 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.04em; margin-bottom: 0.15em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -0.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; word-spacing: -0.06em;"><br />
</h1><h2 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1.208em; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: -0.01em; margin-bottom: 8px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; word-spacing: -0.02em;">Like the United States, we have our flaws. But to say Israel is undemocratic is just dead wrong.</h2></div><h3 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 0.958em; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><span id="by-line" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px;">BY MICHAEL OREN</span> <span id="byline-pubdate-separator" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 0px;">|</span> <span id="pub-date" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">APRIL 5, 2012</span></h3></div><div id="art-body" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="content" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="translateBody" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class=" " id="graphic-well" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 15px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><img src="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/files/images/israel_2.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-style: initial; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: none; outline-width: initial; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" /></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">At 64, Israel is older than more than half of the democracies in the world. The Jewish state, moreover, belongs to a tiny group of countries -- the United States, Britain, and Canada among them -- never to have suffered intervals of non-democratic governance. Since its inception, Israel has been threatened ceaselessly with destruction. Yet it never once succumbed to the wartime pressures that often crush democracies.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="line-height: 1.7em;">On the contrary, conflict has only tempered an Israeli democracy that affords equal rights even to those Arabs and Jews who deny the state's legitimacy. Is there another democracy that would uphold the immunity of legislators who praise the terrorists sworn to destroy it? Where else could more than 5 percent of the population -- the equivalent of 15 million Americans -- rally in protest without incident and be</span><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-08-15-israel-protests-demonstrations_n.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">protected</i></a><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.7em;">by the police</span><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">.</b><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.7em;">And which country could rival the commitment to the rule of law displayed by the Jewish state, whose former president was</span><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-s-supreme-court-rules-unanimously-katsav-guilty-of-rape-1.394884" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">convicted and jailed</a><span style="line-height: 1.7em;"> </span><span style="line-height: 1.7em;">for sexual offenses by three Supreme Court justices -- two women and an Arab? Israeli democracy, according to pollster Khalil Shikaki, topped the United States as the most admired government in the world -- by the Palestinians.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">These facts are incontestable, and yet recent media reports<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </b>suggest that democracy in Israel is endangered. The<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </i><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/israels-effort-to-muffle-speech/2011/11/14/gIQADMU7fN_story.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Washington Post</i></a> was "shock[ed] to see Israel's democratic government propose measures that could silence its own critics" after several Israeli ministers proposed limiting contributions to political NGOs by foreign governments. Citing "sickening reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on school girls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses," <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/03/12/120312taco_talk_remnick" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">New Yorker</i></a> editor David Remnick warned that the dream of a democratic, Jewish state "may be painfully, even fatally, deferred." In response to legislation sanctioning civil suits against those who boycott Israelis living in the West Bank, the<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/opinion/18mon2.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">New York Times</i></a> concluded that "Israel's reputation as a vibrant democracy has been seriously tarnished."</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The most scathing criticism of Israeli democracy derives from the situation in the West Bank, captured by Israel in a defensive war with Jordan in 1967. The fact that the Israelis and Palestinians living in those territories exercise different rights is certainly anomalous -- some would say anti-democratic. "There are today two Israels," author Peter Beinart wrote recently in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/opinion/to-save-israel-boycott-the-settlements.html?pagewanted=all" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">New York Times</i></a>, "a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based nondemocracy beyond it." The latter, Beinart concluded, should actually be called "nondemocratic Israel."</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Together, these critiques create the impression of an erosion of democratic values in Israel. Threats to freedom of speech and equal rights for women are cited as harbingers of this breakdown. Several observers have wondered whether the state that has long distinguished itself as the Middle East's only genuine democracy is deteriorating into one of the region's many autocracies and theocracies.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">But are the allegations justified? Is Israeli democracy truly in jeopardy? Are basic liberties and gender equality -- the cornerstones of an open society -- imperiled? Will Israel retain its character as both a Jewish and a democratic state -- a redoubt of stability in the Middle East and of shared values with the United States?</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b style="line-height: 1.7em;">These questions will be examined in depth, citing comparative, historical, and contemporary examples. The answers will show that, in the face of innumerable obstacles, Israeli democracy remains remarkable, resilient, and stable.</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1.135em; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Creation <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Ex Nihilo</i></b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In the United States, as in most Western countries, democracy evolved over the course of centuries. First nobles and then commoners wrested rights from monarchs, established representative institutions, and expanded the parameters of freedom. Democracy in Israel, however, emerged without the benefits of this gradual process. Taking root in hostile conditions, nurtured by a citizenry largely unfamiliar with Western liberal thought, democratic Israel appeared to sprout from nothing.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Under its <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">declaration of independence</a>, Israel ensured all of its citizens "complete equality of social and political rights ... irrespective of religion, race, or sex." It guaranteed "freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture." In addition to a popularly elected government, Israelis would be represented by the 120-seat Knesset and protected by an independent judiciary. Suffrage was universal and assembly safeguarded.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">**Israel had forged the Middle East's first genuinely functional democracy. But the obstacles confronting that system -- domestic and external -- remained immense. A nation founded by pioneers from autocratic societies would have to wrestle with identity and security issues that would daunt even the most deeply rooted democracies, especially as it subsequently absorbed <a href="http://www.mio.org.il/files/table2.pdf" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">nearly two million</a> immigrants from the Middle East and the former Soviet bloc. Indeed, in the annals of modern democracy, Israel is entirely unique.</div><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.135em; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>Sui Generis</b></i></span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">While Israeli democracy is grounded in the institutions and principles intrinsic to democratic systems, the Jewish state is nevertheless exceptional. It is a nation-state much like Bulgaria, Greece, and Ireland, but it also includes a large minority -- the Arabs -- whose distinct national and linguistic character is officially recognized. Though Judaism has a prominent place in both public and political life, Israel -- unlike Denmark, Great Britain, and Cambodia -- does not have a national religion. And in contrast to any of the world's democracies, Israel has never known a moment of peace, and must struggle to reconcile the often-clashing duties of preserving liberty and ensuring national survival.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">**Israel is not in any way a theocracy. It is, rather, the nation-state of the Jewish people. </div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">**All countries establish criteria for citizenship, and Israel is no exception. Nation-states such as Finland, Germany, and Hungary guarantee citizenship to their repatriating nationals. Israel, too, has a Law of Return, assuring citizenship to Jewish immigrants. The law is a form of affirmative action, righting the historic wrong of statelessness that cost the Jewish people immeasurable suffering and loss.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">**But Israel isn't just home to Jews. Muslims, Christians, Druze, and other minorities account for<a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/People/SOCIETY-+Minority+Communities.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">more than 20 percent</a> of the population. Each enjoys autonomy in religious affairs and supervises its own sacred places. Indeed, the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, which is also revered by Muslims, has remained under the auspices of the Islamic <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">waqf.</i></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">**Discrimination, unfortunately, is common to virtually all countries, and Israel also grapples with it. Still, Arabs serve in the Knesset and on the Supreme Court, and they represent Israel diplomatically as well as athletically on its national teams. Though Arabs are exempted from national service,<a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3974580,00.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">thousands</a> volunteer to serve in the Israel Defense Forces alongside conscripted Circassians and Druze.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b>Israeli democracy is distinguished not only by its receptiveness to public opinion but, perhaps most singularly, by its ability to thrive during conflict. Whether by suspending habeas corpus or imprisoning a suspected ethnic community, as the United States did in its Civil War and World War II, embattled democracies frequently take measures that depart from peacetime norms. "Congress should have spent more time learning from the Israeli experience," <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/2006/10/19_minow.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">wrote</a> Harvard Law School dean Martha Minow and professor Gabriella Blum in 2006, noting that Israel provides broader rights to security detainees than the United States. In spite of the unrelenting and often existential nature of the threats confronting Israel, it has stuck with the standards established on the day of its independence. As Arab armies joined with local Arab forces in an attempt to destroy the nascent state, Ben-Gurion determined that Israel "must not begin with national discrimination." Israeli Arabs received the right to vote and run for political office.</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">**<b>In fact, Israel has tolerated acts that would be deemed treasonous in virtually any other democracy. Ahmed Tibi, who once advised PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and <a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=254230" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">recently praised</a> Palestinian "martyrs" -- a well-known euphemism for suicide bombers -- serves as a member and deputy speaker of the Knesset. Another Arab Knesset member, Hanin Zoabi, was censured for her <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0602/Gaza-flotilla-raid-pushes-unknown-Knesset-member-into-spotlight" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">participation</a> in the 2010 flotilla in support of the terrorist organization Hamas, but retained her seat and parliamentary immunity. Israeli Arab parties routinely call for dismantling the Jewish state, yet only one party was ever barred from Israeli elections: <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Law/Legal%20Issues%20and%20Rulings/THE%20KACH%20MOVEMENT%20-%20BACKGROUND%20-%2003-Mar-94" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Kach</a>, a Jewish party that preached hatred of Arabs.</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><b>In 1988, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30851" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">found</a> that "Israel ... provides the best hope for building a jurisprudence that can protect civil liberties against the demands of national security." Confronted with a phalanx of dangers -- suicide bombers, tens of thousands of enemy missiles, unconventional weapons -- Israel strives to maintain what its own Supreme Court <a href="http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Government/Law/Legal+Issues+and+Rulings/Fighting+Terrorism+within+the+Law+2-Jan-2005.htm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">calls</a> "a delicate and sensitive balance" between meeting the country's defense needs and preserving human rights. Though terrorists have used ambulances to ferry ammunition and carry out attacks, the court in 2002 instructed Israeli forces to refrain from impeding medical care even at the cost of compromising security. And when, in 1999, Israel's defense services argued that physical duress was necessary to extract life-saving information from terrorist suspects, the court <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/sep/07/israel" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">banned</a> the use of all moderate, non-lethal pressure. In fact, Israel became the first democracy to tackle this controversial issue. In 2011, the court <a href="http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=229933" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">upheld</a> the right of Mustafa Dirani, a Lebanese terrorist captured by Israel and later released in a prisoner exchange, to sue the state for alleged abuse during his imprisonment. "This is the price of democracy," the Supreme Court has concluded, "It is expensive, but worthwhile. It strengthens the State. It provides a reason for its struggle."</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #1f1f1f; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1.135em; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Democracy's Litmus</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Clearly, Israeli democracy is distinctive, capable of bearing unparalleled burdens and coping with dizzying complexities. And yet, with increasing frequency, Israel's commitment to democratic principles has been challenged.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Take, for example, the <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Washington Post</i>'s claim that the Israeli cabinet had stifled free speech by proposing to tax and cap foreign government donations to NGOs operating in Israel. European governments contribute more to NGOs in Israel than to similar groups in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/world/middleeast/israeli-government-backs-financing-limits-for-nonprofit-groups.html?ref=world" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">all other Middle Eastern states combined</a>. <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=245583" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Eighty percent</a> of those funds are directed toward political organizations that often oppose the government's policies or, as in the case of Adalah and Badil, deny Israel's legitimacy<b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </b>as a Jewish state. The United States also places restrictions on foreign funding for NGOs, which can <a href="http://www.humanrights.gov/2012/01/12/fact-sheet-non-governmental-organizations-ngos-in-the-united-states/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">forfeit their tax-exempt status</a> by engaging in political advocacy.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Many Israelis saw the bill not as a threat to free speech, but rather as a means of defending their state from international isolation. The proposed bill did not, in fact, restrict the right of NGOs to speak freely -- only their ability to receive unlimited foreign funding. Even so, the bill was keenly debated within the government and ultimately not approved.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>To call Israeli democracy into question because of one suggested bill that never made it into law is unjust. Democracies consider many laws, some of them imperfect, without compromising their democratic character. In Israel, as in America, legislation is tabled, deliberated, and often rejected without impugning the democratic process. In fact, that <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">is</i> the democratic process.</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1.135em; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Anomaly or Non-Democracy?</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Still, there have b<span style="line-height: 1.7em;">een calls to boycott the settlements. "Israel," argues Peter Beinart, "is forging ... an entity of dubious democratic legitimacy" that bars "West Bank Palestinians ... from citizenship and the right to vote in the state that controls their lives." Beinart's reasoning is based on the assumption that the West Bank Palestinians are denied democratic rights, legal recourse, or any say in their future, and that Israel has taken no serious measures to facilitate Palestinian statehood.</span></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>In reality, the majority of the Palestinians in the West Bank reside in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. </b>Together with the Palestinians living under direct Israeli control, they vote in the Palestinian elections. These were scheduled for January 2010, but <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0126/Palestinian-parliament-expires-four-years-after-Hamas-electoral-upset" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">have been delayed</a> by the Palestinian leadership -- not by Israel. The Palestinian inhabitants of East Jerusalem, for their part, have also voted<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2873837983794172904&postID=2802471073639543248" name="_GoBack" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="_GoBack"></a> in the Palestinian elections.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Similarly, the legal situation in the West Bank cannot simply be reduced to democracy or non-democracy. Palestinian law applies to those Palestinians living under Palestinian Authority auspices. In Israeli-controlled areas and for Palestinians arrested for security offenses, Israeli military law, based on British and Jordanian precedents, is enforced. Such a patchwork might confound any democracy, but Israel has endowed all Palestinians with the right to appeal directly to its Supreme Court. Palestinian villagers in the past have contested the location of Israel's security barrier, claiming it infringed on their land. Though the barrier has proven vital in protecting Israelis from terrorist attacks, the justices often found in the Palestinians' favor and ordered the fence moved. "One of the most unusual aspects of Israeli law is the rapid access that petitioners, including Palestinians, can gain to Israel's highest court," the<i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/05/world/trial-of-palestinian-leader-focuses-attention-on-israeli-courts.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #003366; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">New York Times</i></a><i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"> </i>observed in 2003, noting that even during periods of fierce fighting, "the high court was receiving and ruling on petitions almost daily."</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">**<b>Of course, the Palestinians are not passive observers of this process. They have exercised their agency by rejecting Israel's multiple offers of independence. During their last elections, the majority of the Palestinian people voted for Hamas, a terrorist organization that is dedicated to Israel's destruction and has transformed Gaza into a terrorist mini-state.</b> In recent years, Palestinian Authority leaders have balked at direct negotiations with Israel, preferring instead to seek independence unilaterally without making peace and pursue reconciliation with Hamas.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>As impediments to peace, settlements pale beside those posed by Palestinian support for terror and the rejection of Israel's right to exist as a secure and legitimate Jewish state. Yet, in spite of all the disappointment and loss, Israelis still hope that the Palestinians will achieve sovereignty -- that they, too, will face the myriad challenges of maintaining a Middle Eastern democracy. And next door they will have a seasoned, dynamic model.</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 1.135em; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">A Work in Progress</b></div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The fulfillment of the two-state solution might ease Israel's difficulties balancing defense needs and civil rights. But regional instability, combined with a highly pluralistic and value-diverse society, will continue to test Israel's democratic resolve.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The litmus test for any democracy is its ability to protect the rights of its minorities. Along with its need to reconcile civil liberties with security needs, Israel must also strike a balance between democracy and pluralism. The task can become onerous, especially when the interests of large minorities conflict with democratic norms. Many ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, for example, object to billboards depicting women. They, too, have a right to express their beliefs, however inconsistent with democracy, and Israel has a duty to hear them.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">For all this, Israeli democracy remains a work in progress. Like all democracies, even those in less turbulent parts of the globe, Israel's has its flaws. We have to work harder to safeguard minority rights and gender equality, harder to achieve a just balance between defense and civil liberties and between democracy and pluralism. And we must never abandon the vision of peace.</div><div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.7em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><b>But we must also acknowledge that Israel is a work <i style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">of</i> progress. Founded by individuals from dissimilar, often illiberal cultures, pressed with the absorption of millions of immigrants and saddled with the West Bank situation which it has repeatedly offered to resolve, confronted with the relentless threat of war, democracy in Israel is today more robust and effervescent than ever. Against incalculable odds, Israel remains unflaggingly -- even flagrantly -- democratic.</b></div><br />
<br />
</div></div></div></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-56885777373055608552012-04-01T13:58:00.002-07:002012-04-01T14:02:34.180-07:00Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch's Important Shabbat Sermon: Peter Beinart's Offense Against Liberalism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch's impassioned sermon last Shabbat regarding the real dangers posed to Liberalism, and why Peter Beinart continues to cross red lines of legitimate criticism.<br />
Last year at just about this time, also right before Passover, Rabbi Hirsch gave an important speech in New Orleans at the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis) that I used in my <a href="http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/2011/04/duality-of-pesach-remembering-that-we.html">Pesach D'var</a>. His full speech of March 2011 can be seen <a href="http://weareforisrael.org/2011/04/03/ammiel-hirschs-response-to-peter-beinart-at-the-ccar-convention/">here</a>.<br />
This year, in response to Beinart's just published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Crisis-Zionism-Peter-Beinart/dp/0805094121">The Crisis of Zionism</a>, and to his <i>NY Times </i>op-ed, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/opinion/to-save-israel-boycott-the-settlements.html?pagewanted=all">To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements</a>, published two weeks ago on March 18th, Rabbi Hirsch gives voice to why Beinart is not only wrong, but acting irresponsibly and even immorally.<br />
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I urge you to listen to this 20 minute sermon in its entirety, <a href="http://vimeo.com/39083446">here</a><br />
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david in Seattle</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-60646798479679646802012-03-26T13:10:00.002-07:002012-03-26T13:16:45.878-07:00Peter Beinart’s False Prophecy: "The 'Crisis' of Zionism" Deconstructed<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<h1 class="story-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 9px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">This is an important, cogent retort to Beinart's latest catastrophizing. Some excerpts below. Worth reading in its entirety. Hopefully, this will be read by the legions ready to get on Beinart's self-righteous, out-of-touch bandwagon.</span></h1><div><span style="font-size: x-small;">david in Seattle</span></div><h1 class="story-title" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 28px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 9px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/94872/peter-beinarts-false-prophecy/?print=1">Peter Beinart’s False Prophecy</a></h1><h3 class="story-dek" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 5px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>The Crisis of Zionism</em>, his book arguing that the Israeli occupation alienates young American Jews, is sloppy with facts and emotionally contrived</div></h3><div class="story-meta" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">By <a class="author" href="http://www.tabletmag.com/author/bret-stephens/" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bret Stephens</a></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
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<center style="font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px;"><img src="http://cdn1.tabletmag.com/wp-content/files_mf/beinart_032312_620px.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></center><br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"></div><div class="story-text clearfix" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 24px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">“I wrote this book because of my grandmother, who made me a Zionist. And because of Khaled Jaber, who could have been my son.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So begins Peter Beinart’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Crisis-Zionism-Peter-Beinart/dp/0805094121" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">new book</a> <sup>[1]</sup>, <em>The Crisis of Zionism</em>, and already you know he’s off to a bad start. Leave aside the oleaginous appeal to Grandma. The real question is: Someone named Khaled Jaber could have been Beinart’s <em>son</em>?</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Sorry if I just can’t get past hello, but this curious little intro tells us something about the methods—factually cavalier and emotionally contrived—of the whole book. Here’s the story: Khaled Jaber is a young Palestinian boy whose father, Fadel, was arrested by Israelis in 2010 for stealing water after being repeatedly denied access to pipes serving a nearby settlement. The arrest—and Khaled’s frantic efforts to reach his “Baba” as he’s being hauled away—were caught on a video and later reported in the Israeli press.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The connection to Beinart is that Beinart’s son also calls him Baba. That’s it. Yet watching the video sparked in Beinart what he describes as a kind of Damascene conversion: “For most of my life,” he writes, “my reaction to accounts of Palestinian suffering has been rationalization, a search for reasons why the accounts are exaggerated or the suffering self-inflicted. … But in recent years, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I have been lowering my defenses, and Khaled’s cries left me staring in mute horror at my computer screen.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This is disturbing, though not in the way Beinart intends. Many people form their views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on snapshot impressions, often shorn of the most basic context. That’s a shame, but at least most of these people don’t go on to write books on the subject. Journalists, by contrast—and Beinart is a former editor of the<em> New Republic</em> who currently teaches journalism at City University of New York—are supposed to, you know, dig deeper. Get the full picture. Go where the facts lead.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So, you might expect that Beinart would have made the effort to reach out to the Jabers, perhaps even by flying out and meeting them in person. Who is this family in whose name this book is ostensibly written? Are they supporters of peaceful co-existence with Israel or advocates of terrorism? Do they intend to vote for Fatah or Hamas at the next poll? Was Fadel’s arrest as unjustified as Beinart makes it seem? Is it true that Israel deprives Palestinians of their fair share of water rights? Would the Fadels be better off as farmers in a Palestinian state? What was the state of Palestinian agriculture—not to mention education, health, and infrastructure—before 1967?</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">These are real questions, worth exploring intelligently. The answers might be flattering to Israel. Or they might not be. But you won’t learn a thing about them here. The Jaber family arrives in Beinart’s story on page 1 and exits it on page 3, never to be heard from again. Beinart might think of them (or, perhaps, think he thinks of them) as flesh-and-blood people. But in this book they are merely props in the drama known as Being Peter Beinart, the self-appointed anguished conscience and angry scold of the Jewish state.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As readers of Tablet are surely aware, Beinart is the author of a June 2010 essay in the <em>New York Review of Books</em>, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment.” Beinart’s basic thesis was that institutional U.S. Jewry has slavishly followed a right-wing line on Israel at the very moment when younger American Jews are becoming increasingly sympathetic to Palestinians, ashamed of the occupation, and appalled by what Zionism has become.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">How many minutes elapsed between the <em>Review </em>publication and the signing of a contract with the publishing imprint of the <em>New York Times</em> I do not know. Clearly it wasn’t long enough. A few months after “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” first appeared—based primarily on the testimony of a Frank Luntz focus group—a team of scholars led by Brandeis’ Theodore Sasson released an <a href="http://bir.brandeis.edu/bitstream/handle/10192/24037/still.connected.08.25.10.3.pdf?sequence=9" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">exhaustive survey</a> <sup>[2]</sup> of American Jewish views toward Israel.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/34533/wrong-numbers/" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sasson study</a> <sup>[3]</sup> was to Beinart’s thesis approximately what Fat Man was to the city of Nagasaki. A whopping 82 percent of American Jews feel that U.S. support for Israel is either “just about right” or “not supportive enough”—and that’s just among those Jews who describe themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Among those calling themselves “middle of the road,” the figure rises to 94 percent. Regarding the settlements, just 26 percent of even liberal Jews think Israel should dismantle all of them; among moderates, the figure drops to 10 percent. Generationally speaking, there even seems to be a rightward tilt among younger Jews. Consider Jerusalem: 58 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29 oppose re-dividing it. Just 51 percent of their parents and grandparents feel the same way.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * * </div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beinart’s habit of what is either inexplicable sloppiness or extreme interpretative elasticity turns out to be one of the defining characteristics of <em>The Crisis of Zionism</em>. In fact, one of the challenges of reviewing the book is that it practically demands a typology. Consider a few examples:</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Elasticity of attribution:</em></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Describing the effects of Israel’s policy toward Gaza after Hamas’s election in 2006, Beinart writes that “the blockade shattered [Gaza’s] economy. By 2008, 90 percent of Gaza’s industrial complex had closed.” The source of this claim is a study conducted by the IMF—<em>in 2003</em>.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Of omission:</em></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beinart quotes former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami telling Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman that “If I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David as well.” Yet Ben-Ami said in the same interview that Yasser Arafat “was morally, psychologically, physically incapable of accepting the moral legitimacy of a Jewish state, regardless of its borders or whatever.” This goes unquoted. I suspect that’s because Beinart found it in <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/88397/framed-2/" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>The Israel Lobby</em></a> <sup>[5]</sup> by political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, which also quotes the first part of Ben-Ami’s statement but not the second.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Of consistency:</em></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Beinart acknowledges that “the populism sweeping the Middle East has unleashed frightening hostility against the Jewish state.” Yet in the same paragraph he writes: “The Egyptian leaders who have emerged in Hosni Mubarak’s wake are not calling for Israel’s destruction, let alone promising to take up arms in the cause.” Maybe Beinart should acquaint himself with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Essam El-Eryah, currently head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Egyptian Parliament. “The earthquake of the Arab Spring will mark the end of the Zionist entity,” El-Eryah said recently.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><em>Of fact:</em></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Returning to the subject of Gaza, Beinart writes that the Strip “remains a place of brutal suffering.” This, he adds, is the case even after Israel eased its blockade following the Turkish flotilla business in 2010.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Really? Here’s what <em>New York Times</em> columnist Nicholas Kristof (whose politics track Beinart’s, but who also visits the places he writes about) had to say on that score in a July 2010 column: “Visiting Gaza persuaded me, to my surprise, that Israel is correct when it denies that there is any full-fledged humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The tunnels have so undermined the Israeli blockade that shops are filled and daily life is considerably easier than when I last visited here two years.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s more of this. Much more. In fact, the errors in Beinart’s book pile up at such a rate that they become almost impossible to track.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Still, the deeper problem isn’t that there’s so much in Beinart’s book that is untrue, but rather so much that is half-true: the accurate quote used in a misleading way; the treatment of highly partisan sources as objective and unobjectionable; the settlement of ferocious debates among historians in a single, dismissive sentence; the one-sided giving—and withholding—of the benefit of the doubt; the “to be sure” and “of course” clauses that do more to erase balance than introduce it. It’s a cheap kind of slipperiness that’s hard to detect but leaves its stain on nearly every page.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">A few months ago I read pretty much the same book by Gershom Gorenberg. But whereas Gorenberg’s</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span><em style="font-family: inherit;">The Unmaking of Israel</em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">is based on the honest toil of on-the-ground reporting, nothing in</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span><em style="font-family: inherit;">The Crisis of Zionism</em><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;">suggests that Beinart ever set foot outside of his study to write this book. “That’s not writing, that’s typing!” Truman Capote supposedly once said of a Jack Kerouac novel. Similarly with Beinart: It isn’t reporting. It’s Googling.</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Again, you see it in the small but important details that Beinart misuses. For instance, in making the case that Israel could withdraw from the West Bank without putting its security critically at risk, Beinart commends readers to the authority of former Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash, who is quoted as saying: “There is no longer an eastern front.” Translation: Top Israeli brass no longer views the Jordan Valley as a strategic asset because they don’t seriously fear a conventional attack along that front.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">There are, however, problems with this reference. You have to realize that the quote is at least eight years old, uttered when the United States appeared to be triumphant in Iraq. You have to realize that it is lifted with little context from a Brookings Institute report by Gal Luft, whose views on the matter are more-or-less the opposite of Beinart’s. You have to realize that Farkash has been <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHsC9WWebWQ" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">outspoken</a> <sup>[7]</sup> in warning that an independent Palestinian state poses all kinds of security hazards to Israel. And you have to realize that even if Israel were to receive various security guarantees in a prospective peace deal with the Palestinians, it can have little confidence that those promises would be honored for very long.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * * </div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">None of this appears to disturb Beinart much, except to prompt some glib and equivocal acknowledgment that Israelis live in a less-than-super neighborhood. Indeed, to read Beinart is to appreciate how much mental slovenliness can be contained by the word “but.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">• “Yes, the Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah traffic in anti-Semitism and murder Jews, but they gain strength when Israel—by subsidizing West Bank settlement and meeting nonviolent protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and military courts—discredits those Palestinians willing to live in peace.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">• “Discussing the Hamas charter is important; people should read it. But listening to American Jewish organizations, one would never know that Hamas has in recent years issued several new documents, which are more compatible with a two-state solution.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">• “There is, of course, real anti-Semitism in today’s Middle East. But by too often ascribing criticism of Israel to a primordial hatred of Jews, American Jewish leaders fail to grapple with Israel’s own role in its mounting isolation.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * * </div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit;"> Beinart is singularly intent on scolding Israel, like an angry ex who has lost all grip on the proportions of the original dispute. To him, no Israeli misdeed is too small that it can’t serve as an alibi for Palestinian malfeasance. And no Palestinian crime is so great that it can justify even a moment’s pause in Israel’s quest to do right by its neighbor.</span></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">P<b>aradoxically, the result of such thinking is an unwitting, but profound, contempt for the very Arabs for whom Beinart claims so much concern. Beinart’s Arabs are almost always characters off-stage, to be trotted out only when—as with the Jaber family—they can serve some trite homiletic purpose. These are Arabs who have no moral agency: They never act; they only react. The very thought that Palestinians need not celebrate suicide bombers or cheer the murder of Jewish children seems never to have crossed Beinart’s mind. They are like some not-fully domesticated animal that requires the ministrations of a horse whisperer lest it trample you underfoot.</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This has implications for Beinart’s argument. To typical Israelis, theirs is a country of 6 million Jews faced with the ardent, sometimes fanatic, hostility of 350 million neighboring Arabs (to say nothing of another billion or so non-Arab Muslims) and the contested loyalty of one million of its own Arab citizens. Lebanon is in the hands of Hezbollah; Gaza in the hands of Hamas; Turkey and Egypt—until recently, its only significant Muslim allies—are gradually moving into the column of adversaries. In the past decade, it has had to fend off a steady drizzle of suicide bombers and Kassam and Katyusha rockets over the course of three separate wars. The Arab Spring has become an Islamist winter. Iran has now enriched more than 5,000 kilograms of uranium. Israel will soon have to roll the dice with a military strike or otherwise allow a regime that pledges its destruction the means to carry out that pledge almost instantaneously.</div><div align="right" class="nextPageLink" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To all this Beinart’s considered reply seems to be: Whatever. Israel, he says, is a “regional superpower” that can dispatch its enemies almost with the flick of a finger. I can’t swear that Beinart never devotes more than a sentence to Iran’s nuclear capabilities (the review copy I used for this essay lacks an index). But I am pretty sure he doesn’t give the subject more than a paragraph, and certainly not a whole page. It’s true he makes a fuller case when writing about delegitimization and anti-Semitism. But here, too, he’s dismissive of the idea that there’s any real problem: “The main reason Israel generates disproportionate criticism from leftist academics, artists and labor unionists, not to mention the General Assembly of the United Nations, is not because it’s a Jewish state but because it’s perceived as a Western one,” he explains. So, now you know that the General Assembly’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution really wasn’t aimed at the Jews at all.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In Beinart’s world, then, Israel has no real mortal enemies—other than itself. Would that it were so.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Would that the happy outcome of Jewish statehood after 2,000 years of exile were the elevation of all politics to a form of ethics, and vice versa. Would that Israel be renamed Altneuland, after Theodor Herzl’s fable. Would that Israel’s politicians all be wise and just and its generals all kind and fair. Would that Israel’s enemies answer conciliation with conciliation. Would that Israel’s friends were true in fair weather and foul.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But that’s not how it is. That wasn’t the hand dealt to the Jews of 1948 when they fought—and shot, and killed and, yes, sometimes murdered—their way to statehood. That hasn’t been the deal with which Israelis have lived ever since. Maybe Beinart imagines that his own treasured Zionist legacy—the one he learned on his grandmother’s knee—exists in some sealed compartment, translucent and softly glowing. I suspect his grandmother knows better.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Here, then, is the core problem with <em>The Crisis of Zionism</em>: It is not a work of political analysis. It is an act of moral solipsism. It shows no understanding that the essence of statesmanship is the weighing of various unpalatable alternatives. Instead, the book imagines that politics is merely a matter of weighing “right” against “wrong,” both words defined in exclusively moral terms, and always choosing “right.”</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This brings us to the occupation. For the sake of argument, let’s allow that everything Beinart says about it—the indignities it inflicts on Palestinians, its corrosive effects on Israeli values and democracy—is true. Does that alone make for a compelling argument for withdrawal?</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A serious person would have to give this subject some serious thought. But not Beinart: Such is the cancer of occupation, in his view, that any kind of surgery that removes it will do. That includes his prescription to apply a limited form of the boycott-divestment-sanctions campaign—call it BDS lite—against Israeli settlements, a suggestion that he admits makes him “cringe.” His hope is to draw a line between the condemnation the settlements fairly deserve and what the current BDS campaign unfairly does to Israel as a whole. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that his idea amounts to another squeaky note in the blasting chorus that is modern-day Israel bashing.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">* * *</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This has been a harsh review. Perhaps not harsh enough. This isn’t because there’s nothing worth reading in the book—I commended Beinart’s chapter on Obama’s education in Jewish radicalism in a <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203458604577263382407488986.html" rel="external" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #e65a1e; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">recent column</a> <sup>[13]</sup>—but because there’s a book called <em>The Crisis of Zionism</em> that really does need to be written.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What would such a book be like? It can’t be a Peacenik’s Complaint. It can’t be a Likudnik’s Lament, either.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What such a book would do, however, is understand that Israel today is a country besieged by real enemies and phony friends. It would appreciate that the purpose of Israel is to defend its citizens, not to make Diaspora Jews feel upstanding. It would attend to Israel’s internal dilemmas, social, ethnic, and economic, which lack the cachet of “the conflict” but are arguably of greater potency. It would cock a listening ear to the conversations of the Arab world and consider carefully the implications of present upheavals. It would not treat the choices of the Israeli electorate with derision or elected leaders as mere boobs and knaves. It would be carefully reported and scrupulously fact-checked. As for “the conflict,” it would be sensible that in the event of a return to the 1967 borders, another day would come, and Israel would find that it had merely traded one set of unpalatable realities for another. This is not an argument for or against withdrawal. It is a plea for an intelligent argument, written in something other than a spirit of icy contempt and patent insincerity.</div><div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 15px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Any takers?</div></div></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-61730969934550416862012-03-17T17:04:00.000-07:002012-03-17T17:04:23.877-07:00An Irish Artist and Founder & Director of Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group Have Change of Heart re:Israel & Palestinians<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"><span style="color: darkblue;"><b><a href="http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/nicky-larkin-israel-is-a-refuge-but-a-refuge-under-siege-3046227.html">Israel is a Refuge Under Siege</a></b></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">- Nicky Larkin</span><br style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">I used to hate Israel. Not any more. Now I loathe Palestinian terrorists. After Israel's incursion into Gaza in December 2008 I applied for funding from the Irish Arts Council to make a film in Israel and Palestine and spent seven weeks in the area.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Posters of martyrs followed us throughout the West Bank. They watched from lamp-posts and walls wherever we went. But the more I felt the martyrs watching me, the more confused I became. After all, the Palestinian mantra was one of "non-violent resistance." Yet when I interviewed Hind Khoury, a former Palestinian government member, she refused to condemn the actions of the suicide bombers. She was all aggression.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Back in Tel Aviv in the summer of 2011, I began to listen more closely to the Israeli side. I remember one conversation in Shenkin Street - Tel Aviv's most fashionable quarter, where everybody looks as if they went to art college. I was outside a cafe interviewing a former soldier. He talked slowly about his time in Gaza. He spoke about Arab teenagers sent running towards the base he'd patrolled. Each strapped with a bomb and carrying a hand-held detonator.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Conversations like this are normal in Tel Aviv. I began to experience the sense of isolation Israelis feel. An isolation that began in the ghettos of Europe and ended in Auschwitz. Israel is a refuge - but a refuge under siege, a refuge where rockets rain death from the skies. My film is called "Forty Shades of Grey." But only one side was wanted back in Dublin. My peers expected me to come back with an attack on Israel. No grey areas were acceptable.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Why have Irish artists surrendered to group-think on Israel? I would urge every one of those 216 Irish artists who pledged to boycott the Israeli state to spend some time in Israel and Palestine. Maybe when you come home you will bin your PLO scarf. I did. (</span><i style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Independent-Ireland</i><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">)</span><br />
<br />
<br style="background-color: white;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: navy; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"><b><span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT293" style="color: darkblue; cursor: pointer;"><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:fJKzXk_KQf4J:www.sajewishreport.co.za/pdf/latest_issue/NJWED00307.pdf+&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgb0yuw7tGFszyr9xBVGn00rJ6lzBm_Aj8s5vzlgzikXPM69ILsMXrjwdv7kXzMkVnKeh6h2NoTBwVSDRyJmQHJ9TVJGHVQezaaXja6rKQyngfjK4pCRT_9rNSd4L-NLL67icRd&sig=AHIEtbSkEhkevXz-YaZ-UcqX4K4tet3wqQ&pli=1">"Corrupt" Palestinian Leadership Slammed by Palestinian Activist</a></span></b>- Alison Goldberg (<i>South African Jewish Report</i>)<br />
"There are no Palestinian leaders capable of conducting peace talks," says Bassam Eid, founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.<br />
He says the Palestinian leadership is corrupt and Palestinians are worse off under their administration after Oslo.<br />
Eid also castigated the Palestinian Solidarity Committees around the world for fomenting hatred between Palestinians and Jews that does not exist in Israel or in the territories.<br />
Eid is a former anti-Israel activist turned critic of the violation of Palestinian human rights by his own leaders. </span> </div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-76946264881875815422012-03-08T08:58:00.000-08:002012-03-08T08:58:05.290-08:00Halevi Articulates Why Israelis Are Still Queasy About Obama's Reassurances<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div class="entry_header clearfix" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 1%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><h1 style="color: black; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1em; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/world/101440/obama-netanyahu-israel-iran-aipac-foreign-policy"><span style="font-size: small;">Why Israel Still Can’t Trust That Obama Has Its Back</span></a></h1><div class="deck" style="font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"></div><ul class="detail_top_links" style="font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><li class="post_date" style="float: left; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px;">Yossi Klein Halevi</li>
<li class="post_date" style="float: left; font-size: 1em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 6px;">March 7, 2012 </li>
</ul></div><div class="clear" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #444444; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"></div><div class="img-left" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; float: left; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 2px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; width: 250px;"><img alt="" class="imagecache imagecache-detail_page" height="250" src="http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/detail_page/obamanetanyahu7.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px;" title="" width="250" /></div><div id="print-body" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">When the President of the United States repeatedly says he’s got your back, and in precisely those words, what more can you ask for?</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Yet as I read <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/obama-to-iran-and-israel-as-president-of-the-united-states-i-dont-bluff/253875/" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;">Obama’s interview with Jeff Goldberg</a> in <i>The Atlantic</i>, then his speech to the AIPAC convention, and finally reports of his meeting with Netanyahu, I felt increasingly uneasy. True, Obama went farther than he ever has in reassuring Israel of his commitment to stopping a nuclear Iran. He explicitly mentioned the military option. He upheld Israel’s right to defend itself. He articulated the reasons why a nuclear Iran would be disastrous—from an accelerated nuclear arms race in the Middle East to the threat of a nuclear suitcase in the hands of terrorists. He affirmed, in other words, what we in Israel have been warning about for years.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Why, then, the unease? Because Obama wasn’t speaking primarily to Iran but to Israel. Even when he seemed to be warning Tehran, he was really warning Jerusalem. His goal these last days hasn’t been so much to deter them but us. The headlines got it right: Cool down the war talk. Give sanctions—and diplomacy—a chance.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">If this were, say, two years ago, that would be a reasonable request. But it has taken Obama the better part of his first term to finally put in place serious sanctions—and at this late date, the sanctions may still not be strong enough to work. Speaking to AIPAC, Netanyahu implicitly responded to Obama: We gave diplomacy a chance for a decade, and sanctions for the last six years. If you’re asking for more time—when we are now looking at Iran achieving nuclear capacity in months rather than years—the sanctions had better be tougher.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Writing in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/03/opinion/only-crippling-sanctions-will-stop-iran.html" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;"><i>The</i> <i>New York Times</i> on Friday</a>, Emanuele Ottolenghi of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies suggested one scenario for effective sanctions: “a complete United Nations-imposed oil embargo enforced by a naval blockade, as well as total diplomatic isolation.” And, he added, the West must unambiguously warn Iran that it is “willing to inflict devastating harm.”</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Obama’s main argument for why Israel and its American friends should trust him on Iran is because he has been Israel’s most dependable ally all along. Look at my record, he’s argued. I believe Obama is a friend—but a problematic friend. True, security cooperation with Israel has been excellent, which is at least partly a result of George W. Bush’s agreement with Israel to enhance military cooperation over this decade – though Obama went farther than Bush in one crucial respect, providing Israel with bunker busters, which Bush withheld.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Still, in recalling his record, Obama omitted some crucial details. Israelis still recall with disbelief how Obama refused to honor Bush’s written commitment to Ariel Sharon—that the U.S. would support settlement blocs being incorporated into Israel proper. And never has an American president treated an Israeli prime minister with such shabbiness as Obama has treated Netanyahu. Indeed one gets the impression that of all the world’s leaders, Obama most detests the prime minister of Israel.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Consider how Obama squandered Netanyahu’s ten-month settlement freeze. Rather than pressing the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table, Obama provoked an ugly public fight with Netanyahu over building in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The message conveyed to the international public by that and other humiliations was that the special relationship was fraying.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Obama’s resolve on Israel often comes too late, an attempt to compensate for his own clumsiness. Like his speech defending Israel to the U.N. General Assembly last September. It was a powerful speech—<a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/world/95356/un-general-assembly-obama-clinton-abbas-netanyahu-israel-palestine" style="color: #cc0000; text-decoration: none;">I wrote about it enthusiastically</a> in TNR at the time. But in retrospect the speech was irrelevant. Except for the Jews, no one seemed to be listening. In the Arab world the speech was dismissed as electioneering. The missed moment was as much a part of the story as the speech itself. That was the speech Obama should have delivered in Cairo in 2009, when he had the attention of the Muslim world. Instead, he squandered a historic opportunity to affirm Israel’s legitimacy, and by the time he did deliver the right speech, it was too late.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">All too often that defines Obama’s relationship to Israel. He finally says the right thing and it no longer matters. Because the context is wrong. Or the timing. Or because he seems to be addressing one audience while in fact addressing another—like seeming to talk tough to Iran while in fact trying to restrain Israel.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Nor does Obama’s record in the Middle East more broadly reassure Israelis. Perhaps the worst moment of his presidency was turning his back on the Iranian anti-government demonstrators in 2009, who chanted “Obama, are you with us or with the regime?” Obama’s silence was a historic missed opportunity. So is his current inaction on Syria, Iran’s most important ally. There appears to be no strategic coherence in his Middle East policy. Why, for example, help bring down Qaddafi, as odious as he was, after he had abandoned his nuclear program and his support of terrorism—while allowing Assad a free hand?</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Instead of the increasingly harsh warnings we’ve been hearing from Washington in recent weeks against a preemptive Israeli strike, we are now being overwhelmed with reassurance. In fact that has been the pattern in Obama’s relationship to Israel all along: first abuse, then flowers.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Even with all the current goodwill, there was a nasty undertone to Obama’s message. It was this: I believe in a peaceful resolution to the Iranian crisis, while you Israelis are pushing for war.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Those who opposed sanctions in the past and now accuse Israel of war-mongering share at least some of the blame for the current crisis. Since 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin first defined the Iranian nuclear threat as the ultimate existential challenge facing Israel, successive Israeli governments, along with pro-Israel American Jews, have advocated sanctions as the way to avert a choice between preemptive strike and a nuclear Iran. It took five years before the Clinton administration accepted Israel’s assessment that the goal of Iran’s nuclear program was a bomb; and it took Europe a few years longer. And then it took nearly a decade before the international community adopted the Israeli position of real sanctions. Even at this late date, that remains the Israeli position: Only devastating sanctions can break the regime’s determination to produce a bomb. When Obama complains that war talk has forced up oil prices, what are Israelis to conclude except that he will not push sanctions to the limit?</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">For me to trust Obama on Israel’s ultimate security threat, I need him to speak directly to Iran, not to American Jews and the Israeli public. I need to know that he is as committed to a military solution as he is to a diplomatic solution, if the first option fails. I need to know what his red line is for determining when diplomacy has exhausted itself. Most of all, I need to know whether he is prepared to live with Iranian nuclear capability, just short of developing a bomb—a position he hinted at in his AIPAC speech, when he repeatedly spoke of opposing Iranian nuclear weapons, rather than the capability to produce those weapons.</div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Mr. President, I’m not reassured. On this one I need to watch my own back. </div><div style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><i>Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor for </i>The New Republic <i>and a fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.</i></div></div></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-65890041599959513932012-03-02T10:33:00.003-08:002012-03-02T18:01:24.683-08:00Yossi Klein Halevi: The Big Question: Can Israel Trust The United States When It Comes To Iran?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;">The concern over Iran's nuclear ambition has been with us for over 20 years now. When Yitzchak Rabin became Prime Minister in 1992, he already had his eye on the main threat facing Israel, Iran, even as he embarked on a peace process with the Palestinians. Eleven years later, Ariel Sharon was not as concerned with Iraq as he was about the growing threat from the Iranian Mullahs. Contrary to the Walt and Mearsheimer version of history, Sharon was fearful that an American assault on Iraq could potentially weaken American resolve when it came to the greater threat from Tehran. History has confirmed his fears. By not prosecuting the Iraq War successfully from the beginning (and not securing the peace quickly and effectively through more serious nation-building), America set the stage for <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/Walt%20Mearsheimer%20and%20Cold%20Feet.html">cold feet </a>when it came to Iran. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Today we stand on the precipice. The military option to stop Iran from going nuclear may be the worst one: but it may be the only option that will prove decisive at this late stage. Halevi ponders Israel's excruciating dilemma. As Ari Shavit wrote last week, </span><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/if-israel-strikes-iran-it-ll-be-because-obama-didn-t-stop-it-1.414245" style="background-color: white; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;">If Israel Strikes Iran, It'll Be Because Obama Didn't Stop It.</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; line-height: 1.1em; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> Next week's meeting between the two leaders may determine the fate of the Middle East and the larger world for many years to come. Let's hope when Bibi leaves Washington for Jerusalem, there is no light between the two capitals.</span><br />
<div class="entry_header clearfix" style="background-color: white; color: #444444; margin-bottom: 20px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 1%; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><div><span style="font-size: small;">david in Seattle</span></div><h1 style="color: black; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 2.6em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.1em; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 20px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Can Israel Trust the United States When It Comes to Iran?</h1><div>Yossi Klein Halevi</div><ul class="detail_top_links" style="margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><li style="float: left; font-family: Baskerville, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 1.1em; line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><div class="author" style="color: #555555; font-family: 'Times New Roman', Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 1.1em; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 3px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 3px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 2px;"><br />
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</span></div><div style="line-height: 1.4em;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: large; line-height: 1.4em;">When Benjamin Netanyahu meets <span style="line-height: 1.4em;">Obama on </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em;">Monday, the main issue will be trust. Obama will ask that Israel trust America’s determination to stop Iran, and trust that when he says all options are on the table he means it. Netanyahu will likely be thinking about May 1967.</span></div></div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In late May 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol dispatched his foreign minister, Abba Eban, to Washington. Egyptian and Syrian troops were pressing on Israel’s borders; Egypt had imposed a naval blockade on the Straits of Tiran, Israel’s shipping route to the east. Eban’s request of President Lyndon Johnson was that America honor its commitment to back military action if Egypt blocked the Straits of Tiran. That commitment had been made by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1957, to secure Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai desert following the 1956 Suez War. Only a declaration by Johnson that he intended to immediately open the straits to Israeli shipping even at the risk of war—one idea was for the U.S. to lead an international flotilla—could stop a unilateral Israeli strike. Though Johnson was viscerally pro-Israel, he proved unable or unwilling to honor Dulles’ commitment. Preoccupied with Vietnam, Johnson wasn’t ready to support another war, let alone initiate one.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Even if Barack Obama is truly the pro-Israel president his Jewish supporters claim he is, the Johnson precedent tells us that it may not matter. Like Johnson, Obama presides over a nation wary of another military adventure, especially in the Middle East. According to Israeli press reports, Netanyahu intends to ask Obama to state—beyond the vague formulation that all options are on the table—that the U.S. will use military force if Iran is about to go nuclear. But few here expect Obama to make that policy explicit.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">What the world remembers of the Six Day War era is Israel’s military victory in June 1967. But these days Israelis are recalling the vulnerability of May 1967, in the weeks that preceded the victory.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">To be sure, Israelis understand that, in several crucial ways, today is different from 1967. Then, Israel was entirely on its own in facing the threat on its borders. Today, by contrast, many countries, including in the Arab world, regard a nuclear Iran as a very real threat. In 1967, the war was localized, while this time the consequences of an Israeli preemptive strike will directly affect the international community and especially the United States—and perhaps not only economically. Iranian attacks against American targets—or Israeli difficulty in fighting a multi-front war—could draw America into conflict. And that could risk the stability of the American-Israeli relationship.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The Iranian nuclear threat could force Israel to choose between two of its essential national values. On the one hand, there is the commitment to Jewish self defense. On the other hand, there is the longing to be a respectable member of the international community. Allowing an enemy that constantly threatens Israel’s destruction to acquire the means to do so would negate Zionism’s promise to protect the Jewish people. And launching a preemptive strike without American backing could lead to Israel’s isolation and risk Zionism’s promise of restoring the Jews as a nation among nations.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In this excruciating dilemma, the question of whether Israel can trust the administration to act militarily against Iran becomes all the more crucial. Israeli leaders believe that their window of opportunity in launching a preemptive strike will be closing in the coming months. America, though, with its vastly superior firepower, could retain a military option even after Israel’s lapses. In other words: An Israeli decision not to strike this year will mean that it effectively ceded its self-defense—against a potentially existential threat—to America. When Obama tells Israel to give sanctions time, what he is really saying is: Trust me to stop Iran militarily when you no longer can.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Yet the message from Washington in the last few weeks has only reinforced Israeli suspicions that we are back in May 1967. The spate of administration leaks to the media questioning Israel’s military capability in confronting Iran has undermined Israeli confidence in American resolve. An adminstration serious about stopping Iran to the point of military intervention would convey messages that raise Iran’s anxiety, not Israel’s. By insisting that Israel’s military threat isn’t credible – without at the same time explicitly stating that America’s military threat <i></i>—the administration reassures Iran that it has little to fear from military action. The Israelis can’t and the Americans won’t. </div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Then there was the comment by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, to the effect that Iran hasn’t yet decided to build a bomb. If Dempsey’s point was to reassure Israel, he managed the opposite. Dempsey reinforced a long-standing Israeli fear that the administration is prepared to live with nuclear ambiguity—that is, a situation in which Iran could quickly assemble a bomb while choosing for the time being not to. According to this scenario, Obama would negotiate an agreement that would allow him to claim he’d stopped Iran while in fact ensuring its nuclear capability. For Israel—and for Arab countries—that outcome would hardly differ from an explicitly nuclear Iran. In either case Tehran could credibly threaten Israel and blackmail the Arab world.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In the last few days, in anticipation of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, Washington’s tone has finally begun to change. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that America’s goal is to prevent Iranian nuclear capability, period. And U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz announced that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have a detailed plan to strike Iranian nuclear sites should that become necessary.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">While those statements help ease the tension between Washington and Jerusalem, they don’t go anywhere far enough. Israel needs a public, unambiguous warning from Obama to Iran that, if sanctions fail, America will use military force—that a nuclear Iran is as much a red line for this administration as, say, an Iranian blockade of the Straits of Hormouz. Only that kind of threat has the chance of restoring American credibility—not only for Israel, but also for the Arab world and, not least, for Iran.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Given that Obama is unlikely to make that threat, Israel will hope, at least, for a change in the administration’s signals about an Israeli strike. Iranian leaders need to hear from Obama that Israel has the right to defend itself against a nuclear threat.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">And if that message, too, is not forthcoming? Faced with an imminent existential dilemma, Israel will probably opt for preemptive self-defense, even if that means risking its special relationship with America—a different kind of existential threat.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The precedent of the two Israeli attacks against Arab nuclear facilities—in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007—reinforces Israeli determination to stop Iran, unilaterally if necessary. Israel, after all, prevented a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein and a nuclear-armed Bashar Assad. And it did so without asking America’s permission. Yet the administration can credibly counter that in neither case did Israeli unilateralism threaten to draw America into an armed conflict, as it does now.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In the end the dilemma for both Israel and the U.S. isn’t only strategic but ethical. Israel has a moral responsibility not to surprise its closest friend with an initiative that could drastically affect American well-being. And the U.S. has a moral responsibility not to pressure its closest Middle East ally into forfeiting its right to self-defense against a potentially genocidal enemy.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">In better times, the two allies might have been able to navigate these conflicting needs. But in the absence of mutual trust, what could remain are conflicting perceptions of interest.</div><div style="font-size: 1.3em; line-height: 1.4em; margin-bottom: 1em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><i>Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor for </i>The New Republic<i> and a fellow of the Engaging Israel Project of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerualem. He is completing a book about the Israeli paratroopers who fought in Jerusalem in the Six Day War.</i><i> </i></div></div></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-22157799573202249622012-02-04T18:18:00.000-08:002012-02-05T14:38:42.746-08:00"Immortal Bird": Doron Weber's Tribute & Celebration of Damon the Miraculous<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/05/books/review/05BROWN1/05BROWN1-articleLarge.jpg" /> <br />
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<img src="http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/02/05/books/review/05BROWN2/05BROWN2-articleInline.jpg" /> <br />
<i><b>Son and Father above</b></i> <br />
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What can I say? As one who was privy to so many of the stories (either directly or in the telling) of this masterwork of prose, I still hung on every word, in each iteration that I had the privilege to read. Doron is my dearest, lifelong friend, and it is the bitterest of ironies that his emergence onto the stage of world literature, must perforce be in the service of immortalizing his most cherished, now departed son. But thanks to Doron's devotion, Damon lives on.<br />
The book speaks for itself, and read it you must. It will be through a vale of tears, but you will emerge the richer for having had the opportunity to get to know the shining light that is Damon, and along the way, learn about a most extraordinary family and their enduring love for their remarkable son.<br />
<br />
Dava Sobel, author of <i>Galileo's Daughter </i>and <i>Longitude</i>, had this to say:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b>Damon, whose life is delimited by his damaged heart, emerges here as the grandest spirit in a small body since Antoine de Saint-Exupery imagined <i>The Little Prince</i>.</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>Immortal Bird </i>is a transcendent work of art. It, and Damon, will indeed achieve immortality.</div><div style="text-align: left;">David in Seattle</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="vspib" style="background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-origin: initial; bottom: 0px; color: #222222; cursor: default; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; height: auto; line-height: 15px; margin: 0px; min-height: 40px; padding-left: 9px; padding-right: 4px; position: absolute; right: -37px; top: -2px; width: 28px; z-index: 3;"><div class="vspii" style="-webkit-user-select: none; background-color: whitesmoke; border-bottom-left-radius: 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px; border-bottom: rgb(220,220,220) 1px solid; border-left: rgb(220,220,220) 1px solid; border-right: rgb(220,220,220) 1px solid; border-top-left-radius: 2px; border-top-right-radius: 2px; border-top: rgb(220,220,220) 1px solid; cursor: default; height: 70px; position: relative; visibility: hidden;"><div class="vspiic" style="background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: -23px -260px; height: 13px; margin-left: 6px; margin-top: -7px; position: absolute; top: 50%; width: 15px;"></div></div></div><div class="s" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; max-width: 42em;"><div class="f kv" style="color: #666666; line-height: 15px; margin-bottom: 1px;"><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Immortal-Bird-Family-Doron-Weber/dp/1451618069">Immortal Bird</a></span><button class="gbil esw eswd" style="background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px -243px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; cursor: pointer; display: inline; height: 15px; margin-left: 5px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; vertical-align: text-bottom; visibility: hidden; width: 24px;" title="Recommend this page" type="submit"></button></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 1.24;">“</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.24;">A powerful and lyric portrait of a son and a vibrant family.”—Toni Morrison “I was seized by </span><em style="background-color: white; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.24;">Doron Weber's</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.24;"> prose….We've gained a book of rare passion</span> </div><br />
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</h3></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-43988159464011155282012-01-16T20:24:00.000-08:002012-01-16T20:25:03.423-08:00An Eloquent Answer to the Obtuseness of Those Who Feign Incomprehension at Israeli Concern Over Iran's Nuclear Ambitions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Jeffrey Goldberg, in his Goldblog piece a couple of days ago<br />
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<a href="http://what%20could%20possibly%20motivate%20israel%20to%20kill%20iranian%20nuclear%20scientists/?'">What Could Possibly Motivate Israel to Kill Iranian Nuclear Scientists?'</a><br />
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A Goldblog reader writes:<br />
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You have to explain to me why the Zionists are so committed to picking a fight with Iran? What could possibly motivate Israel to kill Iranian nuclear scientists? It makes no sense, unless Israel is looking to start a war to extend its military domination of the Middle East (everyone knows Israel has the strongest military in the Middle East). So you'll have to explain this to me, please.<br />
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<strong>There seems to be an epidemic of thickness on this question. Let me be clear: Just because I think an attack on Iran's nuclear complex is a bad idea doesn't mean I think Iran poses no threat to Israel. Do you want to know why Israel is taking the actions it may be taking against Iran? Because Iran has been engaged in full-blown but subterranean war against Israel for almost three decades. The Iranian regime is committed to the physical elimination of Israel. That's right -- a member-state of the U.N. is advocating the complete destruction of another member-state. The Iranian leadership regularly uses Nazi-style rhetoric against Israel and Jews, frequently resorting to epidemiological metaphors -- Israel is a cancer, Israel is a tumor, language that smacks of Mein Kampf.</strong><br />
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<strong>But more important than Iran's eliminationist rhetoric is Iran's actions: Iran is the prime sponsor of Hezbollah, an avowedly-antisemitic terrorist organization that seeks to kill Israeli civilians. Iran is also a prime supporter of Hamas, which also seeks out Israeli civilians to kill (and it even brags about the number of Israeli civilians it has murdered). Hezbollah and Hamas, just like Iran, seek the physical elimination of Israel. Their agenda isn't to create a Palestinian state in Gaza and on the West Bank; their agenda is to replace a Jewish state with an Arab-Muslim state. If you were an Israeli leader, and you understood that Iran works assiduously to murder your civilians, and to bring about an end to your people's collective existence, and then you learned that Iran may be trying to build a nuclear weapon, well, is it so unreasonable to think that Israel might choose to fight back?</strong><br />
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Which brings me to another letter just received in the Goldblog inbox:<br />
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Why shouldn't Iran have a nuclear weapon? Israel has it. Why does Israel think it needs a nuclear weapon and Iran doesn't. Why should Israel have nukes in the first place?<br />
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<strong>This letter-writer, it seems to me, lacks imagination. Why shouldn't Iran have a nuclear weapon? Well, because it's an anti-democratic theocracy that menaces its neighbors, oppresses its own people, and calls for the destruction of another Middle Eastern state. It is profoundly anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Sunni. It is in the American national interest to see Iran denied nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are dangerous. They are especially dangerous in the hands of totalitarian regimes, and so these regimes should be discouraged from acquiring them. </strong><br />
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<strong>And why does Israel think it needs nuclear weapons in the first place? Well, Israel was founded shortly after one-third of the world's Jews were murdered in the Shoah. The Shoah, if nothing else, was an object lesson on the perils of defenselessness. Israel was, at independence, set upon by its neighbors. It continues to battle countries and organizations that seek its destruction. Here is a real failure of imagination: I'm not arguing that you have to endorse Israel's nuclearization, but if you can't understand this from Israel's perspective, then you're just not trying. By the way, I understand why Iran's unelected supreme leader might believe that nuclear weapons are in his country's best interests. I don't agree that he should have them, but I understand why he would want them. </strong><br />
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Well said. Thanks to Goldberg for this public service! The fact that this question still even looms in the thinking of intelligent people boggles the mind<br />
brumsky</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-14464621323845226272012-01-12T17:30:00.000-08:002012-01-16T20:15:42.596-08:00Thomas Friedman: Wrong Again: Misreading the Egyptian Elections & Failing to Heed the Lessons of Turkey, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Politics of Islamism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
<div id="BlogTitle" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 16px; margin-bottom: 5px;">Also see my earlier post on Friedman and the <i>Times<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1892922950"> </a></i><a href="http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-york-times-all-news-thats-unfit-to.html">here</a></div><div id="BlogTitle" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 5px;"><br />
</div><div id="BlogTitle" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 5px;"><a href="http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/01/11/friedman-cheers-as-egyptians-are-enslaved/">Friedman Cheers as Egyptians Are Enslaved</a></div><div id="BlogDate" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 5px;">By <u>Barry Rubin</u> <u></u></div><div id="BlogContent" style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Tahoma; font-size: 12px; margin-top: 10px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 10px;"><blockquote><strong>Professor:</strong> [A<em>s the Martian ambassador starts disintegrating congressmen with his ray gun</em>]: “Mr. Ambassador, please! What are you doing? This doesn’t make sense! It’s not logical! It’s not !” – <em>Mars Attacks</em></blockquote>It is distasteful when Western intellectuals, politicians, and journalists who pride themselves on their enlightened, humanitarian views watch people abroad fall subject to ruthless forces of dictatorship and dogma. When these same people actually cheer the new tyrannies, put their arms around the shoulders of those who despise them, and tell everyone else that there’s nothing to worry about, that’s actively disgusting.<br />
Many in the West have so acted toward Egypt during the last year. They have previously done so toward the Gaza Strip, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey. Perhaps no one has touted these ideas and policies more loudly and enthusiastically than Thomas Friedman has been one of them but In doing so, of course, he has echoed U.S. government policy.<br />
Now, Friedman goes all-out to explain that the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t radical, isn’t a threat, in fact is a good thing, and will only become even more moderate once it is in power.<br />
In a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/friedman-watching-elephants-fly.html?_r=1">column</a> called “Watching Elephants Fly” — obviously a reference to seeing something impossible happen — Friedman writes,<br />
<blockquote>Here is what was so striking: virtually all the women we interviewed after the voting — all of whom were veiled, some with only slits for their eyes — said that they had voted for either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Salafists. But almost none said they had voted that way for religious reasons.<br />
Many said they voted for Islamists because they were neighbors, people they knew, while secular liberal candidates had never once visited. Some illiterate elderly women confided that they could not read the ballot and just voted where their kids told them to. But practically all of them said they had voted for the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafist candidates because they expected them to deliver better, more honest government — not more mosques or liquor bans.</blockquote><b>My reaction is, “So what?” They voted for an authoritarian, Sharia regime (and let’s remember a hardline interpretation of Sharia, not the interpretation of Sharia offered by <em>New York Times</em>reporters). That’s what’s important. People also had diverse reasons for supporting Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. Indeed, they always voted for such regimes because “they expected them to deliver better, more honest government.” Hasn’t Friedman ever heard that Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler built the autobahns, and the Communists promised to give land to the peasants?</b><br />
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<b>But there’s even more irony here. These women are already living lives governed by Sharia and, as traditionalists, are happy (and told to be happy) with that situation. Thus, they have ample reason for supporting Islamists. There is nothing surprising in their political behavior, except to people like Friedman who predicted last year they would back liberal, Westernized Facebook kids.</b><br />
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Once again, Friedman shows a striking inability to think logically. If women were voting on the basis of family orders — I’d bet on the husbands and fathers rather than the children so instructing them — how can he then say that they voted because of specific personal motives or (after reporting they were told what to do!) claim that their vote is a sign of freedom?<br />
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Why are all their neighbors Islamists? Because there are so few secular liberals they’ve never actually met one. A large portion of the voters for non-Islamist parties were Christians, who they’d never socialize with. And their Brotherhood and Salafist neighbors want an Islamist dictator?<br />
As for “more mosques” being the supposed Islamist demand that they “reject” it shows ignorance on the author’s part. Egypt has plenty of mosques and the Brotherhood and Salafists don’t make mosque-building a top priority. The question is what will be taught in those mosques and how it will direct society.<br />
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<b>Why is Friedman dishonest? Because if he claimed that these women weren’t interested in enforcing an “Islamic” lifestyle or destroying Israel or spreading Islamism elsewhere or enforcing on all Egyptian women the dress code they follow, then readers would see through such an argument and view it as ridiculous. So he must create silly demands for the Islamists so he can claim that the people don’t want those things.</b><br />
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The same point applies on the supposed disinterest in bans on liquor sales. How many of these people have ever seen a liquor store? There are already proportionately few in Egypt and they cater overwhelmingly to Christians and tourists. Such a ban would not affect their lives but would make them feel that Egypt was a moral, Islamically correct county.<br />
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Again, these are trivial issues. We can all think of far more serious ones that the Islamists and their supporters do focus on.<br />
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<b>An aspect of Friedman’s work that makes it so popular is that he constantly invents simple new theories and catch phrases to explain Middle East politics. After reading his column it is possible to believe that one has easily achieved understanding of the region. Of course, the reason that he must come up with so many theories is that they almost always fail.</b><br />
<b>Now he has<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/friedman-political-islam-without-oil.html"> a new, materialistic explanation</a><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/friedman-political-islam-without-oil.html"> </a>for why Islamists will become moderate: they need the money. He cites how Egyptian Islamists have issued conflicting statements about allowing tourists to have alcohol and bikinis as proving that they must make lots of accommodations with reality. No oil money, you see.</b><br />
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</b><br />
<b>But I heard similar things about Iran in the late 1970s — they’ll have to be moderate because they need to sell the oil — and about Yasir Arafat at the start of the peace process in the early 1980s — he’ll have to be moderate because the Palestinians he rules will demand garbage collection and decent schools. One might just as well have posited that the Turkish government would never turn against Israel because Israeli tourists brought in so much money.</b><br />
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Read the continuation <a href="http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/01/11/friedman-cheers-as-egyptians-are-enslaved/">here</a> </div></div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-57739434254113091132011-12-25T14:56:00.000-08:002011-12-25T14:56:06.329-08:00Balancing Very Real External Threats with the Equally Real--and Destructive--Internal Threats: Daniel Gordis and the JPost on 'Gender Insanity' & Haredi Fanaticism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">It's been said that the parts of the Arab/Persian world that wish for our destruction might do better to sip their tea and let us do the heavy lifting. Below, two pieces that point that to our own overly developed internecine tendencies. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=250908#">Gender insanity</a></span> <br />
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By JPOST EDITORIAL<br />
25/12/2011 <br />
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<strong>Discrimination and violence against women – purportedly motivated by religious sensibilities – have spiraled out of control. </strong><br />
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<strong>In recent weeks, we have been witness to women attacked for refusing to move to the back of the bus to uphold a policy of gender segregation; women forced out of a venue where elections in a Jerusalem neighborhood were being held; women denied the right to come on stage to receive an official Health Ministry prize for research into the relationship between Halacha and medicine; women banned from a Jerusalem ad campaign to encourage organ donations; and women prevented from serving in key IDF positions due to the opposition of a growing, increasingly vocal group of religious male soldiers and officers. And this list is by no means exhaustive.</strong><br />
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These incidents have generated a debate over what has been euphemistically referred to as the “banishing” of women from the public sphere. But chauvinism, discrimination or downright violence would more accurately describe this behavior.<br />
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On Saturday night, a young haredi man was arrested on suspicion of spitting at a woman helping girls onto a school bus at a religious-Zionist elementary school in Beit Shemesh.<br />
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The recent spate of incidents is so severe that it brought the issue of gender discrimination to the center of public discourse. Significantly, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who opened Sunday’s cabinet meeting by denouncing discrimination against women, has called on haredi legislators to speak out publicly against the phenomenon and ask their spiritual leaders to do so as well.<br />
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<strong>In recent years, a rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox community has adopted more extremist positions, especially with regard to questions of female modesty, known as tzniut in Hebrew. Women’s physical proximity, no matter how perfunctory, has been transformed by radical haredi men into an insurmountable hurdle.</strong><br />
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The inner dynamics of the ultra-Orthodox community allow these men to leverage their influence. Moderation is viewed with disdain as a weakness. The result has been an unrivaled push for the radical revamping of the public domain.<br />
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<strong>Much has changed since Rabbi Moshe Feinstein (1895- 1986), the most important halachic authority in America, permitted men to commute to work on subways and buses because “unavoidable and unintentional physical contact is devoid of sexual connotations.”</strong><br />
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Today, in contrast, where the zealots have a say, women simply do not exist. You can search in vain for a female presence in the ultra-Orthodox press. Pictures of women are taboo, even when the subject is an infant. If there is a doubt regarding the gender of a baby – say in a diaper ad – sidelocks or a kippa are added. Female names are even abbreviated.<br />
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This hyper-puritanical world view is, furthermore, being accommodated outside strictly ultra-Orthodox circles. As The Jerusalem Post’s health reporter Judy Siegel reports in today’s paper, at least two state-funded health funds – Clalit and Meuhedet – have published special brochures in deference to ultra-Orthodox sensitivities.<br />
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Neither “breast” nor “cancer” is mentioned in these brochures. Instead, code words are used. And even the most innocent photos of women or young girls are vigilantly removed. Faced with the prospect that segments of the ultra-Orthodox community would refuse to read these “sexy” brochures – and thus endanger women’s lives by failing to detect breast cancer early – the heads of the health funds apparently felt compelled to make these modifications.<br />
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Similarly, public bus companies, apparently motivated by economic considerations, have allowed haredi activists to enforce gender segregation. By caving in to these unreasonable demands, the bus companies and health funds are giving them legitimacy. And the inevitable side effect is a feeling of entitlement and self-righteousness that emboldens some particularly extreme haredi men to aggressively confront women – whether on the bus, in the streets of Beit Shemesh or elsewhere.<br />
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<strong>According to a recently released CBS report, by the year 2059, haredim – who currently make up 10 percent of the population – will grow by 580% and represent a third of Israelis. As it grows, the need for haredim to integrate into mainstream Israeli society and transform themselves from a parochial enclave to a full-fledged partner in the flourishing of a healthy Jewish state will grow as well.</strong><br />
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<strong>What is desperately needed today in the ultra-Orthodox community is the sort of reasonable, pragmatic spiritual leadership personified by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that would enable such integration. Otherwise, coexistence will inevitably become more and more difficult. </strong><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=250561">Before we preach to Israelis living abroad </a></span><br />
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By DANIEL GORDIS<br />
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<strong>Are we so desperately afraid of our external enemies that we’ll support at all costs a government that just watches as the country rots from within?</strong><br />
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Kamal Subhi, formerly on the faculty of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University, recently joined other clerics in warning that if the Saudi ban on women driving is lifted, mixing of genders will increase and that, in turn, will encourage premarital relations. If women are allowed to drive, he said, in 10 years’ time the kingdom will have no virgins left. “The virgin dearth,” I guess we could call it. In Europe – and I’m not making this up – a Muslim cleric ruled that women should not touch or be proximate to bananas and cucumbers, in order to avoid “sexual thoughts.” Their fathers or husbands should chop them before they eat them, he suggested. Ouch.<br />
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<strong>It’s tempting to laugh, of course, to point to the absurdity that can result when a religious tradition develops thoroughly unfettered by any contact with or influence from the outside world, guided by clerics with the narrowest intellectual training imaginable. But before we point with derision to Saudi Arabia and some dark corners of Europe, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look around and remind ourselves of what’s unfolding right here at home.</strong><br />
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<strong>Israel, our perky start-up nation, now has another credit of which to boast. We have our very own Rosa Parks. Her name is Tania Rosenblit; she’s the young woman who refused to move to the back of the bus when instructed to do so by haredi passengers on a bus from Ashdod to Jerusalem. It’s almost 2012 – practically 99 years since Rosa Parks was born. But parts of the Jewish state are still struggling to enter the 20th century, which, of course, ended over a decade ago.</strong><br />
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Thankfully, and none too soon, Israel’s Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, rushed to condemn the segregation of men and women on public buses. “We [the ultra-Orthodox] don’t have the authority to force our ideas on others,” he asserted. “This state does not belong to the haredi community.”<br />
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<strong>Ah, so there’s the problem. The issue is not that it’s wrong to relegate women to the back of the bus (why don’t the men go to the back of the bus and let the women sit up front if they’re so worried?) or that the segregation of men and women on buses is absurd (does insurmountable temptation really lurk at every stop?) but simply because the haredim don’t (yet?) have the political power they need to enforce this. Metzger’s concern was only tactical – the haredim were over-reaching. Not a word about the shamefulness of a society in which men and women cannot respectfully and properly occupy the same public space or how similar to Saudi Arabia we seem intent on becoming. Will there be a separate section on the bus for women carrying uncut fruit? </strong><br />
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Buses are far from the full extent of it, of course. Now we learn that the Karmiel Employment Bureau has assigned different days for men and women seeking unemployment compensation. But lest we worry that this is fundamentalism-creep, rest assured, it’s only an administrative nicety. It is “more convenient” for men and women to use the office’s services on different days, the office explained to Ynet. “It prevents stress and chaos in the waiting room and is more aesthetic.” Aesthetic? How’s that, exactly? <br />
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<strong>And let’s not forget the still-simmering controversy over women singing at army ceremonies. Since halachic rulings are apparently immutable, Israel’s noble political leaders are resorting to – what else? – technology. That, after all, is where we Israelis shine. Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar has a brilliant solution: he simply puts his fingers in his ears when women sing at army events. (I would pay for a photograph of that.) </strong><br />
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</strong><br />
Not to be outdone, and perhaps in order not to offend those singing young women (who are actually in the army serving their country – yes, some people still do that, apparently) who might find the sight of the state’s chief rabbi with his fingers stuck in his ears somewhat disconcerting or even offensive, Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev has a much better idea: religious men should simply use earplugs when women sing. Brilliant. One only hopes that they remember to remove them before heading into battle. I’m told that being able to hear your commander can increase effectiveness in combat. Unless you had no intention of obeying his orders in the first place, I guess.<br />
<br />
<strong>And we have, infinitely worse, the burning of mosques, vicious and violent attacks on Israeli soldiers by radicalized settlers and an emerging national debate as to whether (or when) the army is going to have to start shooting them. And our government? It’s tiptoeing around, doing nothing and saying little, its only genuine concern that the coalition not be weakened.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>AH, the joys of Jewish sovereignty, the nobility of Jewish independence. A.D. Gordon, Ahad Ha’am, Ze’ev Jabotinsky and David Ben-Gurion may have all disagreed in life, but now they have one thing in common – they are undoubtedly turning in their graves. That, by the way, was the real absurdity of those much-discussed ads begging Israelis abroad to come home. Those pot-shots at Jewish life in America (gratuitous and simplistic, a bit offensive and not entirely wrong) utterly missed the point – maybe those Israelis live in America because what’s unfolding in Israel is so thoroughly unappealing to them. Maybe they’ve noticed that back “home” in Israel the pockets of outrage against all of this violence and medievalism are tiny, virtually muted.</strong><br />
<br />
It’s Hanukka, our collective reminder that in an era of darkness, Jews struggle to create more light. Do those of us unafraid of cucumbers or mixed buses, those of us who believe that women serving their country ought to be able to sing, those of us who are ashamed of a country that takes only the feeblest action against Jews who do to mosques what anti- Semites did to our synagogues not that long ago, possess the courage of which this holiday is a reminder? Will we, like the Maccabees, take our country back before it’s too late? <br />
It’s hard to know. So far, it seems we are so desperately afraid of our external enemies that we’ll support at all costs a government that just watches as the country rots from within.<br />
<br />
<strong>At moments like this, it’s hard not to think about the Altalena affair. Tragic though it was, it was the defining moment at which Ben-Gurion made it clear to all that there would be one central authority in the Jewish state. Those who sought to subvert it would be treated in accordance with what they were – threats to the state’s very existence. One prays that some progress can be made here without the use of force. But if it cannot, it’s worth remembering that we once had a prime minister who knew what had to be done.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>But then, of course, it’s been a very long time since we’ve had a leader with that character, that confidence, those deeply held commitments. These days, with Hanukka reminding us of the enormous power of convictions, it would be nice to have some leadership with any principles at all.</strong><br />
<br />
Daniel Gordis is president of the Shalem Foundation and senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War that May Never End (Wiley), won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. His next book, The Promise of Israel: Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness is Actually Its Greatest Strength, will be published this August.<br />
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-54053284564977068682011-12-16T12:00:00.000-08:002011-12-16T14:21:27.930-08:00The New York Times: All the News That's "Unfit" to Print about Israel: Why Bibi Declines to Pen an Op-Ed & Why Tom Friedman is Wrong: Again & Again & Again<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">A common refrain amongst <em>New York Times</em> cognoscenti (including a healthy smattering of liberal American Jewry): "Have you read Friedman's piece today in the <em>Times?"</em> The knowing smiles, cooing and then the tsk, tsking about how Israel is falling into the abyss of fascism, theocracy and how the settlements are the root of all evil. Followed by the obligatory Bibi-bashing. Except it turns out that Friedman is wrong in his presumptions, misreads Israel and the Middle East time and again, yet never tires of smugly "informing" Israelis about what's really best for them, and what they should do to achieve peace and save their soul. Because that's what friends do for each other.<br />
He's been writing virtually the same article for several years now. Never mind that realities in the Middle East change on a dime. But for Friedman, time stands still. It's the settlements, Israeli intransigence, and of course, Bibi that is to blame for the ongoing impasse. <br />
But Friedman reached a new low this week when he averred:<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><em>I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/friedman-newt-mitt-bibi-and-vladimir.html?_r=1&ref=thomaslfriedman">Israel lobby</a>. </em></div><div align="center"><br />
</div>This now puts him somewhere between Patrick Buchanan:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em>"Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory." 1990</em></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">and Walt and Mearsheimer: <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby">The Israel Lobby</a> 2006</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
The plainer, more mundane truth is that the U.S. Congress and the American people, support Israel by overwhelming majorities because of shared values like democracy and religious sensibilities and shared experiences like victimization by jihadist movements, including terrorism. See Walter Russell Mead: <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/04/05/why-aipac-is-good-for-the-jews-and-for-everyone-else/">Why AIPAC Is Good For The Jews — and For Everyone Else</a> & <a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/11/the-israel-lobby-and-gentile-power/">The Israel Lobby and Gentile Power</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>I’ve </em></span><a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/12/is-this-lobby-different-from-all-others/"><span style="color: #3668ba; font-size: x-small;"><em>shared my opinion</em></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em> that AIPAC is powerful less because of the money and energy that its (mostly Jewish) members bring to the table than because of the widespread sense in Washington that being </em></span><a href="http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/03/11/the-israel-lobby-and-gentile-power/"><span style="color: #3668ba; font-size: x-small;"><em>pro-Israel is the popular position in the United States</em></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>, and that if AIPAC blasts you as anti-Israel, the charge tends to stick. If you think US Middle Eastern policy should be less pro-Israel, attacking and bemoaning AIPAC won’t get you anywhere. There’s not even much point in trying to persuade the Jews; American Jews tend to be more liberal on US-Israel policy than most gentiles already. <strong>It’s the 98 percent of Americans who aren’t Jewish that you need to persuade; if the broad </strong></em></span><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/126116/canada-places-first-image-contest-iran-last.aspx"><span style="color: #3668ba; font-size: x-small;"><em><strong>American majority</strong></em></span></a><span style="font-size: x-small;"><em><strong> ever decides that backing Israel as much as we do is a bad thing, then policy will gradually but decisively change</strong> — no matter what AIPAC does or how much money it works.</em></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Of course, Friedman isn't the only <em>Times </em>journalist with a major ax to grind when it comes to Israel. Roger Cohen continues to pen articles lambasting the Jewish state: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/opinion/06iht-edcohen06.html">Israel Isolates Itself</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Nicholas Kristof keeps blaming Israel for its predicament: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/kristof-is-israel-its-own-worst-enemy.html">Is Israel Its Own Worst Enemy?</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">and the editorial board has turned Bibi-bashing into a spectator sport, making it unsurprising that </div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://bigjournalism.com/jpollak/2011/12/16/benjamin-netanyahu-rejects-the-new-york-times/">Benjamin Netanyahu Rejects New York Times</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
Also, see Herb Keinon's piece below</div><div style="text-align: left;">david in Seattle</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=249685">Friedman is wrong </a></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong><em>His misunderstanding of Israel is evident in his underlying assumption that appears in his columns repeatedly: that were Israel to just leave the settlements, peace would flow like a river. </em></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<strong><em></em></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>For the past several years, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, that guru for American Jewish liberals, has shown that he doesn’t really understand Israel or the region.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">His misunderstanding of Israel is evident in his underlying assumption that appears in his columns repeatedly: that were Israel to just leave the settlements, peace would flow like a river.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Well, Israel uprooted all 21 settlements from Gaza in 2005, but instead of peace, received an unending barrage of missiles in return.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>The settlements are a consequence of the conflict, not its cause. The PLO, if anyone has forgotten, was established in 1964, three years before the Six Day War and any thought of a West Bank settlement.</strong></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>As for Friedman’s failure to understand the region, readers need look no further than his breathless “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/opinion/13-friedman-Web-cairo.html?pagewanted=all">Postcard from Cairo</a>” columns at the outset of the Arab Spring last February. To have read Friedman then was to believe this was 1989 all over again, and that Hosni Mubarak would be deposed and replaced by the Egyptian version of Vaclav Havel.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">In one piece, he castigated Israel for not being more supportive of the protesters in Tahrir Square. “The children of Egypt were having their liberation moment,” he wrote, “and the children of Israel decided to side with Pharaoh – right to the very end.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Wrong. Israel wasn’t supporting Pharaoh, but rather deeply concerned that following the Egyptian revolution, Sinai would turn into a terrorist base, the Egypt-Israel gas pipeline would be a constant target of attack, the Israeli Embassy in Cairo would be ransacked, and the Muslim Brotherhood – and Salafists to their right – would win the country’s parliamentary election.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Now, in his latest piece on Israel that appeared Wednesday entitled “Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir,” Friedman demonstrated that he also doesn’t know America.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>In a line that could have come straight from the pens of AIPAC-bashers Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Friedman wrote that he hoped Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whom he loathes, understood that the standing ovation he got in Congress earlier this year was not for his politics, but rather one that was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">That’s right – that wicked, despicable Israel lobby.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>According to Friedman, anybody who supports Israel must be on the nefarious Jewish lobby’s payroll. Otherwise, how could they dare? Maybe Friedman should consider the possibility that the ovation was the result of America’s elected officials – in tune with the feelings of their constituents – seeing in Israel a plucky little country that shares their own basic values and is trying to survive in an awfully bad neighborhood.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Maybe Friedman should consider that the ovation was the result of politicians understanding that this conflict is not about one settlement, or one Jerusalem neighborhood, but rather over the Jewish people’s right to a homeland.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">No, that can’t be. In fact, writes Friedman – always concerned about Israel’s soul – were Netanyahu to go to the University of Wisconsin, many students, including Jews, would stay away because they are confused by Israeli policies: the current spate of right-wing Knesset legislation, the segregation of women on buses, the settlements.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>And then came the kicker. Friedman’s proof that Israel is merrily heading down the path toward the abyss is that radical left-wing Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy says so.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Dubbing Levy a “powerful liberal voice, writing in Haaretz,” Friedman quotes from a recent Levy column: “What we are witnessing is w-a-r. This fall a culture war, no less, broke out in Israel, and it is being waged on many more, and deeper, fronts than are apparent. It is not only the government, as important as that is, that hangs in the balance, but also the very character of the state.”</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>Friedman’s use of an extremist such as Levy to prove his point is akin to taking the writings of America-bashing left-wing linguist Noam Chomsky as proof that America is bad.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<strong>The problem with Friedman and those sharing his sentiments about Israel is that they take an exception and make it the rule.</strong><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>This school of thought takes a sex-segregated bus in Mea She’arim and turns the whole country into Iran; takes rocks thrown by bad, misguided youth at an IDF base and turns Israel into a country on the brink of civil war; and takes the government’s refusal to bail out a failing commercial television station as putting Israel on the fast track to Soviet Russia.</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />
<strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><strong>What is needed is some proportion. The burning of mosques by Jewish hooligans is deplorable, but it is no more representative of the country – or the direction it is going – than Florida Pastor Terry Jones’ burning of a Koran in May was a reflection of America. Friedman should know this. </strong></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=249718">Netanyahu to ‘New York Times’: Take a hike </a></span><br />
By HERB KEINON<br />
<br />
<strong>Prime minister "respectfully declines" to pen an op-ed piece for 'NYT' citing newspapers negative spin on Netanyahu government. </strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for The New York Times, signaling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper’s editorial policy on Israel.<br />
<br />
In a letter to the Times obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Netanyahu’s senior adviser Ron Dermer – in response to the paper’s request that Netanyahu write an op-ed – wrote that the prime minister would “respectfully decline.”<br />
<br />
<strong>Dermer made clear that this had much to do with the fact that 19 of the paper’s 20 op-ed pieces on Israel since September were negative.</strong><br />
<strong>Ironically, the one positive piece was written by Richard Goldstone – chairman of the UN’s Goldstone Commission Report – defending Israel against charges of apartheid.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
“We wouldn’t want to be seen as ‘Bibiwashing’ the op-ed page of The New York Times,” Dermer said, in reference to a piece called “Israel and Pinkwashing” from November. In that piece, a City University of New York humanities professor lambasted Israel for, as Dermer wrote, “having the temerity to champion its record on gay rights.”<br />
<br />
That piece, he wrote, “set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.”<br />
<br />
<strong>Dermer’s letter came a day after NYT columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the resounding ovation Netanyahu received in Congress when he spoke there in May had been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby</strong>.”<br />
<br />
With Friedman clearly – but not solely – among those in mind, Dermer wrote that “the opinions of some of your regular columnists regarding Israel are well known. They constantly distort the positions of our government and ignore the steps it has taken to advance peace. They cavalierly defame our country by suggesting that marginal phenomena condemned by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and virtually every Israeli official, somehow reflect government policy or Israeli society as a whole.”<br />
<br />
<strong>Dermer also took the paper to task for running an op-ed piece by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in May that asserted that shortly after the UN voted for the partition of Palestine in November 1947, “Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened. War and further expulsions ensued.”</strong><br />
<strong>Those lines, Dermer wrote, “effectively turn on its head an event within living memory in which the Palestinians rejected the UN partition plan accepted by the Jews, and then joined five Arab states in launching a war to annihilate the embryonic Jewish state. It should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact-checking.”</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
That it did find its way into the op-ed pages of the “paper of record,” he wrote, showed the degree to which the paper had not internalized former senator Daniel Moynihan’s admonition that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but... no one is entitled to their own facts.”<br />
<br />
Furthermore, Dermer wrote, the paper’s sole positive piece about Israel since September – the Goldstone piece rejecting the apartheid charges – “came a few months after your paper reportedly rejected Goldstone’s previous submission. In that earlier piece, which was ultimately published in The Washington Post, the man who was quoted the world over for alleging that Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza fundamentally changed his position. According to The New York Times op-ed page, that was apparently news unfit to print.”<br />
<br />
<strong>Dermer wrote that the paper’s refusal to run positive pieces about Israel was not because they were in short supply. In fact, he said he understood that in September the paper had turned down a piece cowritten by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), expressing bipartisan support for direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and opposition to the PA’s statehood gambit at the UN.</strong><br />
<br />
“In an age of intense partisanship, one would have thought that strong bipartisan support for Israel on such a timely issue would have made your cut,” he wrote.<br />
<br />
<strong>Meanwhile, Rep. Steve Rothman (D-New Jersey) called on Friedman to apologize for saying the congressional ovation Netanyahu received in May was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”</strong><br />
<strong>Rothman said he gave Netanyahu a standing ovation not because of “any nefarious lobby,” but because it is in the US’s vital strategic interest to support Israel.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>“Thomas Friedman’s defamation against the vast majority of Americans who support the Jewish state of Israel is scurrilous, destructive and harmful to Israel and her advocates in the US,” Rothman said. “Friedman is not only wrong, but he’s aiding and abetting a dangerous narrative about the US-Israel relationship and its American supporters.” </strong><br />
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-33264601096823378982011-12-15T12:27:00.000-08:002011-12-15T12:27:07.309-08:00Robert Satloff's Astute Observations on the Implications of the Arab "Intifadat" (the more apt term than either 'Arab Spring' or 'Arab Awakening')<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=249506">The Arab uprisings, one year on </a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
By ROBERT SATLOFF<br />
<strong>Seve</strong>r<strong>al dictators deposed in 2011, but much remains the same in the Arab world. </strong><br />
<br />
It is now commonplace to note that, like 1948, 1967 and 1979, the year that was – 2011 – will go down as a year of seismic change in the Middle East. But what sort of change will it leave in its wake? <br />
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<strong>The term most often associated with the events of the last year – the “Arab Spring” – provides virtually no clue. That phrase, borrowed from a hopeful moment in Prague that was crushed by Soviet tanks more than a generation ago, was first used in the Middle East context in 2005. That was when the assassination of Rafik Hariri triggered an outpouring of Lebanese “people power” that drove Syrian troops out of that country and raised hopes of a truly new dawn in Lebanon after its bloody 30-year war.</strong><br />
<br />
In retrospect, its usage was tragically apt, in that Hezbollah – like the Soviets – eventually triumphed, putting off until another day the potential for truly positive change. One doubts that the Facebookers and Twitterati who celebrate the Arab Spring of 2011 recall this unhappy history.<br />
<br />
“Arab Awakening” is the second term whose use is increasing – not least because commentators have been told that many Middle Eastern countries, especially Egypt, have only two real seasons, neither of which is spring. News outlets as disparate as <strong>The Economist and Al Jazeera have begun to use “Arab Awakening” to describe the volcanic eruptions across the region</strong> sparked by the iconic selfimmolation of a Tunisian street vendor last December.<br />
<br />
<strong>This term, too, has an historical antecedent, one that is actually rooted in the Middle East, which is a plus. It harkens back to the landmark 1938 book of the same title by George Antonius, a Greek Orthodox Lebanese and onetime British mandatory official in Palestine who extolled the rising of a renewed pan-Arab political and cultural consciousness after decades of European, principally British, machination and domination. But setting aside the ahistorical elements of Antonius’ original work, “Arab awakening” conjures up precisely the wrong imagery for what has been happening in Arab countries over the past year.</strong><br />
<strong>First, Antonius’ book was designed, in large part, to rally Arabs to the Palestine cause. In contrast, the changes of 2011 were, at their core, a sharp riposte to ideologues who contend that Arabs only, principally or even mostly care about Palestine. And second, while Antonius’ Arab Awakening was a clarion call for pan-Arab nationalism – the idea that Arabs from the Atlantic to the Gulf share a linguistic, cultural, social and even political patrimony – the events of 2011 have been national, not pan-Arab, phenomena, with Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis, Syrians and others celebrating their specific local nationalisms, not some abstract trans-regional ideology. So, like the romantic term “Arab Spring,” the equally romantic term “Arab Awakening” obscures more than it explains.</strong><br />
<br />
There is, in my view, a widely used Arabic term of recent vintage that comes closer than either of these more popular phrases to capturing the explosiveness, the challenge and the uncertainty of what has occurred across the region over the past year. While this term is most closely associated with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the fact that it is linked in political consciousness to a single national experience makes it appropriate to use, in its plural form, to apply to the variety of national experiences witnessed in 2011.<br />
<br />
<strong>The word is “intifada,” whose Arabic original meaning is “shaking off” and has come to be used as the Arabic translation of “uprising.” What the world has seen over the past year is a series of “Arab uprisings,” i.e., popular efforts – some more peaceful than others – to shake off traditional authority. Like their Palestinian namesakes, these uprising reminded the world that mass action can sometimes play as important a role in Arab politics as elite behavior. And like those earlier “intifadat” – plural of intifada – the outcome of these uprisings is decidedly uncertain</strong>.<br />
<br />
HAVING DECIDED the “what” (what to call the events of the past year) the next task is to determine the “so what” (what do these events really mean). This is even trickier. Identifying winners (Sunni Islamists) and losers (Israel and Iran) of these uprisings has become a favorite parlor game, but after just one year, it is far too early to judge if the events of 2011 will have truly lasting impact, where that lasting impact will be felt most, and how will it affect issues of strategic import, such as whether Iran will persist with slow-motion development of a nuclear weapon capability or jump to a breakout strategy.<br />
<br />
Indeed, while leaders have been driven from power in four Arab countries – Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Libya – only in one of these (Libya) can one say conclusively that the regimes they led have been driven from power, too. In Tunisia and Egypt, the key institution that facilitated the original transfer of power – the army – remains intact; in Yemen, the deposed leader has not really even gone away.<br />
<br />
One additional Arab republic, Syria, teeters on the brink of all-out civil war; while four-and-a-half others – Sudan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority – have barely been touched by the “uprising” tsunami. Elsewhere, one monarchy fought back against its uprising and appears to have triumphed (Bahrain) while other monarchies employed a rope-adope strategy of reform to absorb the challenge of uprising and have, so far, avoided any significant unrest. The variety of national experience is itself the dominant motif.<br />
<br />
Despite all this, the events of the past year – no matter how they ultimately turn out – have already had a profound impact, not so much in shaping a new Middle East but in demolishing several long-held assumptions about the old Middle East. Here are five.<br />
<br />
• <strong>FIRST, NO longer valid is the idea that competition among elites, rather than the influence of popular will, determines the rise and fall of Arab regimes. For four decades – from the mass outpouring of Egyptians who rejected Gamal Abdel Nasser’s resignation in the wake of the catastrophic 1967 war to the mass outpouring of Egyptians who demanded Mubarak’s resignation after 30 years of peace with Israel – the Arab street was largely irrelevant to assessments of the region’s politics. Tahrir Square brought that chapter to a close. This does not mean the mob will always determine the fate of Arab nations but it is an actor on the Arab stage once again.</strong><br />
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• <strong>SECOND, NO longer valid is the idea that authoritarian regimes can and will use the full power of the state to retain their control. For two generations, the spectre of the omnipotent state cast a dark shadow across the region’s politics, stifling the development of any real opposition worthy of the name. The might and power of these regimes grew meteorically in recent decades, as many leaders looked at the frightening collapse of the Shah of Iran and decided to pour every marginal dollar (or pound, lira or riyal) into their manifold security and intelligence apparatuses.</strong><br />
Over time, however, the rot of corruption and a preening sense of invincibility ate away at these regimes from within. The result was that the former commander of the Egyptian Air Force, a hero of the Suez crossing against mighty Israel, was forced to dispatch machete-armed camel riders in a last-ditch effort to salvage his rule. This decrepitude has not been the case everywhere, of course, as the brutality of the Libyan and Syrian sagas shows, but the rapid demise of authoritarianism in Tunisia and Egypt underscores the limits of presumed omnipotence.<br />
<br />
• <strong>THIRD, NO longer valid is the idea that the main threat to moderate, pro- West regimes across the Levant emanates from the emergence of an Iran-dominated “Shi’ite crescent.” In its place is the potentially greater fear that a “Sunni crescent” of regimes led or influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood – regimes that espouse Osama bin Ladin’s anti-American, anti-Western and anti-Israel objectives without his radically violent and urgent means – will stretch from Morocco to the Gulf.</strong><br />
Already, Ikhwan-related prime ministers are or are poised to be in office from Rabat to Gaza, with the exception of Algiers, and they are likely to be joined by colleagues in Damascus and perhaps Amman before 2012 is over.<br />
<strong>Some will see in this an antidote to the destructive message of al-Qaida and welcome this as a more evolutionary and authentic trend, but their optimism is almost surely misplaced. (The canary in the Islamist coalmine will be the local Christian communities. The pace of Christian, especially Coptic, emigration, will be an especially useful bellwether. After two millennia, predictions that half of the current Arab Christian population will be gone within the next decade are not fantastical.)</strong><br />
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• <strong>FOURTH, NO longer valid is the idea that the Saudi gerontocracy lacks the energy and vision to do anything but pay off enemies or count on America for its preservation. To the contrary, the year of “Arab uprisings” – which has paralleled a year of unusual travails for the Saudi royal family – has witnessed an unusually bold and assertive Saudi penchant for self-preservation, exemplified by the deployment of Saudi and other Gulf forces in Bahrain. This even led to the enunciation of Riyadh’s version of the Monroe Doctrine, i.e., that no neighboring monarchy should be permitted to experiment with, let alone succumb to the allures of, liberal democracy. The Wahhabis of the Nejd, it seems, aren’t going down without a fight – and aren’t about to let their royalist neighbors go down either.</strong><br />
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• <strong>FIFTH, NO longer valid is the idea that the United States will always prioritize preservation of “the devil we know” over the uncertainty and inherent instability of “the devil we don’t.” To be sure, official Washington believed that the intercession of the Egyptian army to ease transition to a post-Mubarak future was a way to safeguard its diminishing equities, not a way to throw its lot in with the throngs of street protestors.</strong><br />
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But in less than a year, an administration consumed with domestic woes and eager to shed foreign entanglements has already begun to reconcile itself to a new, Islamist-dominated Middle East. <strong>While neither unchangeable nor irretrievable, the speed with which America made a strategic pivot in the Middle East, in the process making peace with the idea that elections, not institutions, build democracy, is nothing short of astounding.</strong><br />
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It is too early to define a new set of assumptions that will explain the ways of the Middle East in the next few decades with as much acuity and precision as the old assumptions helpfully guided us through the last half century. But we begin 2012 much as Middle Easterners began 1949, 1968 and 1980 – confident only that uncertainty is the new norm.<br />
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The writer is the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. <br />
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-61927660556279414912011-12-13T08:47:00.000-08:002011-12-13T08:49:16.843-08:00Two Perspectives on the West's Myopia when it Comes to All Things Israel: Gil Troy on Hilary's 'Iraneous/Erroneous POV and Mamet on Israel as the West's Modern Sacrifice<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />
You'd think that the worldly, sophisticated U.S. Secretary of State would know better than to compare democratic Israel, for all its imperfections, to theocratic Iran. Apparently, you'd be wrong. Of course, you'd also expect that a Pulitzer Prize winning (twice) journalist for the <em>Times, </em>Nicholas Kristof, would dig a little deeper than sipping tea with some apparently moderate spokespeople for the Muslim Brotherhood before he blithely gives the Islamist group his hopeful <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/opinion/kristof-joining-a-dinner-in-a-muslim-brotherhood-home.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">seal of approval</a>.<br />
When it comes to the Middle East in general and Israel in particular, it seems all bets are off. The only surety is that when it comes to Israel, the West is ready to sacrifice Israel, under the illusion that if you feed the beast what it wants, you'll be spared. Of course, it only means you'll be eaten last.<br />
david in Seattle<br />
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<a href="http://blogs.jpost.com/content/hillary%E2%80%99s-iraneouserroneous-view-israel-undiplomatic-and-offensive">Hillary’s Iraneous/Erroneous View of Israel: Undiplomatic and Offensive</a><br />
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<strong>Last week, rather than mounting some constructive diplomatic offensive, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton simply was undiplomatic and offensive. In the Obama Administration’s latest insult to the Jewish State, Clinton compared democratic Israel to theocratic Iran and the segregated South. Secretary Clinton claimed the walkout of some Israeli male soldiers when some female soldiers started singing paralleled life in Iran. She also claimed the informal, illegal, gender segregation on some Jerusalem buses evoked Rosa Parks, who refused to sit in the back of the bus. Beyond confusing individual lapses with state practices, Clinton demonstrated Middle East discourse’s broken barometer. Somehow, when talking about Israel, too many people exaggerate wildly, caricaturing Israel crudely – and delighting the delegitimizers. </strong><br />
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Even sophisticated players like Hillary Clinton only see Israel through hysterical headlines; they have no clue what really happens. When she visits, Clinton and other dignitaries should go beyond the usual Y2K package – Yad Vashem, the Knesset, and the Kotel, the Western Wall -- to experience the real Israel, a dynamic, chaotic, pluralistic, modern democracy which is no Iran.<br />
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<strong>Had Clinton visited Israel last week, she would have witnessed the intense debate surrounding the latest round of proposed Knesset laws. She would have heard Attorney General Yehudah Weinstein vow that, even if it passed, he would never defend the law limiting foreign government donations to NGOs before the Supreme Court. Golda Meir’s spirit lives: Israel’s incredibly activist Supreme Court is headed by a woman, as are the Kadima and Labor opposition parties. Hearing the din, Clinton could give Israeli democracy the highest grade in Natan Sharansky’s public square test – Israelis denounce the government publicly, shrilly, very regularly, without suffering government harassment. </strong><br />
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Last week, Clinton also would have read about Israel’s former President Moshe Katsav going to jail. Beyond learning that in this democracy no one is above the law, she could compare the punishment Israel’s president received for imposing himself criminally on women, with the way a recent American president she knows well dodged punishment for similar crimes – although I doubt she would “go there,” as they say in shrink-speak. As a social reformer before she became an undiplomatic diplomat, she would be more likely to take interest in the “Torani” block where Israel’s most famous new convict now lives. Inmates wake up at 4:30 AM to study Jewish texts all day. These Jewish jailbirds are participating in a fascinating experiment to fight recidivism with Judaism. This is the kind of old-new, Jewish-modern synergy that characterizes life in the Jewish state.<br />
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<strong>Two nights later, Hillary Clinton could have heard the Israeli pop icon David Broza in concert. Even a casual listener could discern the symphony of sounds and influences – the echoes of bluegrass and salsa, of rock and folk – blended into his uniquely Israeli beat. Broza – who days later was in Dohar attending a UN Alliance of Civilizations Forum with 2500 other civil society activists – told me from Qatar that this Jewish cosmopolitan mix is what makes Israel so artistically exciting for him. “It’s like eating kabob with ketchup,” Broza exclaimed, “Israel is the most cosmopolitan young, vibrant, and open-minded society I have ever seen. We can dance the debka while [the American blues legend] John Lee Hooker is playing in the background.”</strong><br />
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Broza believes that “because it’s bizarre it’s often misunderstood.” Israelis are “somebody.” They instinctively understand that “without an identity they are lost. Historically, in the Diaspora, we Jews always maintained our identity, our rituals, our tradition, our learning – that was our strength.” And now, “When you reinvent yourself you put all the elements in the pot and what you get is a new persona.”<br />
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<strong>“I don’t think Hillary Clinton sees this Israel,” Broza speculated. “All she meets is the political box, and the rhetoric. She misses the light side of people.”</strong><br />
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<strong>The week ended with an Israeli scientist Daniel Shechtman collecting his Nobel Prize for Chemistry in Stockholm. When Shechtman discovered quasicrystals in 1982, the famous scientist Linus Pauling scoffed: “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.” Those of us who know the rich, complex truth about Israel are equally isolated, often similarly mocked. We may not get Nobel Prizes for sticking to the truth, but we will enjoy other, sublime awards: the ability to delight in Israel’s cultural cosmopolitanism, as David Broza does; the opportunity to pioneer old-new expressions of Judaism, Zionism, democracy, as the Schechterites do, and the satisfaction of being right, even if it makes us unpopular.</strong><br />
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The writer is professor of history at McGill University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today and The History of American Presidential Elections. giltroy@gmail.com<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204826704577074241213222280.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion#printMode">Israel, Isaac and the Return of Human Sacrifice </a></span><br />
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<strong>Why have liberal Westerners turned their backs on the Jewish state?.</strong><br />
By DAVID MAMET <br />
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As Iran races toward the bomb, many observers seem to think the greater threat is the possibility that Israel might act against its nuclear program. Which raises the question: What should it mean if, God forbid, militant Islam through force of arms, and with the supine permission of the West, succeeds in the destruction of the Jewish State?<br />
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1) That the Jewish People would no longer have their ancestral home;<br />
2) That they should have no home.<br />
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At the Versailles Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson stated as an evident moral proposition that each people should have the right to national self-determination. The West, thereafter, fought not for empire, nor national expansion, but in self-defense, or in defense of this proposition. But, for the Jewish State, the Liberal West puts the proposition aside. <br />
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<strong>Since its foundation Israel has turned the other cheek. Eric Hoffer wrote that Israel is the only country the world expects to act like Christians. Some Jews say that the Arabs have a better public relations apparatus. They do not need one. For the Liberal West does not need convincing. It is thrilled merely to accept an excuse to rescind what it regards as a colossal error.</strong><br />
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The Liberal West has, for decades, indulged itself in an orgy of self-flagellation. We have enjoyed comfort and security, but these, in the absence of gratitude and patriotism, cause insecurity. This attempted cure for insecurity can be seen in protestations of our worthlessness, and the indictment of private property.<br />
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But no one in the affluent West and no one among the various protesters of various supposed injustices is prepared to act in accordance with his protestations. The opponent of "The Corporation" is still going to use the iPhone which permits him to mass with his like. The celebrities acting out at Occupy meetings will still invest their surplus capital, and the supposed champion of the dispossessed in the Levant will not only scoff at American Indian claims to land he has come to understand as his—he will lobby the City Council to have the homeless shelter built anywhere but on his block.<br />
The brave preceptors who would like to end Poverty, War, Exploitation, Colonialism, Inequality and so on, stop at the proclamation. How may they synchronize their wise fervor with their inaction?<br />
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<strong>How may they still the resultant anxiety? The Left's answer is the oldest in the world: by appeal to The Gods. But how may The Gods be appeased? The immemorial answer is: By human sacrifice.</strong><br />
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What is the essence of the Torah? It is not the Ten Commandments, these were known, and the practice of most aspired to by every civilization. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner teaches they are merely a Calling Card; to wit: "remember me . . . ?"<br />
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<strong>The essence of the Torah is the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac. The God of Hosts spoke to Abraham, as the various desert gods had spoken to the nomads for thousands of years: "If you wish me to relieve your anxiety, give me the most precious thing you have."</strong><br />
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So God's call to Abraham was neither unusual nor, perhaps, unexpected. God had told Abraham to leave his people and his home, and go to the place which God would point out to him. And God told Abraham to take his son up the mountain and kill him, as humans had done for tens of thousands of years.<br />
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<strong>Now, however, for the first time in history, the narrative changed. The sacrifice, Isaac, spoke back. He asked his father, "Where is the Goat we are to sacrifice?" This was the voice of conscience, and Abraham's hand, as it descended with the knife, was stayed. This was the Birth of the West, and the birth of the West's burden, which is conscience</strong>.<br />
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Previously the anxiety and fear attendant upon all human life was understood as Fear of the Gods, and dealt with by propitiation, which is to say by sacrifice. Now, however, the human burden was not to give The Gods what one imagined, in one's fear, that they might want, but do, in conscience, those things one understood God to require. <br />
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<strong>In abandonment of the state of Israel, the West reverts to pagan sacrifice, once again, making a burnt offering not of that which one possesses, but of that which is another's. As Realpolitik, the Liberal West's anti-Semitism can be understood as like Chamberlain's offering of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, a sop thrown to terrorism. On the level of conscience, it is a renewal of the debate on human sacrifice.</strong><br />
Mr. Mamet is a playwright and screenwriter. <br />
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</div>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-75765426575492106722011-11-10T12:38:00.000-08:002011-11-10T13:07:06.337-08:00Yossi Klein Halevi on the Challenge of Delegitimization & Tal Becker on Rabin's Legacy and the Trouble with "Peace"Halevi gives a stirring talk at the David Project, tackling the existential challenges of delegitimization, articulating our right to Defend and Define ourselves, the importance of strengthening Israeli institutions of democracy as a powerful weapon against delegitimizers, refreshes our memories about the collective "amnesia" surrounding the 2nd Intifada (more aptly understood as The Terror War), challenges the NIF to better define and enforce red lines against delegitimizers, and identifies our strengths and why we will ultimately prevail.<br />Most worthy of listening to the full 50 minutes...<br /><br />And Tal Becker offers a thoughtful analysis of the lack of present prospects for an authentic peace, but makes the case for accepting current limitations as what sovereign states do to shape their destinies, rather than living in the exilic language of Messianic pretension. By invoking the pragmatic, yet visionary approach of Rabin, z"l, Becker offers a window into the possible. To see how "<em>the perfect can be the enemy of the good, but also because the good can be the enemy of the simply preferable</em>," read his insightful essay below.<br />david in Seattle<br /><br /><a href="http://www.thedavidproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=140&Itemid=167">The Delegitimization Challenge</a><br />Yossi Klein Halevi at the David Project<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.hartman.org.il/Blogs_View.asp?Article_Id=846&Cat_Id=275&Cat_Type=Blogs">Rabin’s Legacy and the Trouble with “Peace”<br /></a>By TAL BECKER<br /><br />Yitzhak Rabin, z”l, whose assassination we commemorate this week, was a reluctant peacemaker. The image of his grudging, almost pained, handshake with Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn in 1993 said much about the man. Many attribute to him larger than life qualities, and are convinced that but for his death we would now be living in a new, peaceful Middle East. But I am not sure Rabin would have shared that conviction.<br /><br /><strong>What was apparent, to me at least, about Rabin as a man was precisely his rootedness in Middle East reality, and his suspicion for that brand of breathless optimism that imagines that the region can be transformed instantly. What was most striking about Rabin as a leader was that his realism and hard experience as a military man was not a barrier to diplomatic action and decision; it was almost an impetus for it. For him, the determined pursuit of negotiated agreements seemed to have more to do with better positioning Israel for the rise of Iran and extremism, than with a deeply held belief in the prospect of coexistence.<br /><br />I connect with this side of Rabin because - though this is one of the less popular things for an Israeli to admit - I sometimes find the word “peace” quite irritating. It seems to conjure up a vision in people’s minds of a reality that for the foreseeable future may just not be within reach. As much as we may wish it to be different, it is difficult to read the headlines about Iran and terrorism, the empowerment of extremists and zero-sum diplomacy, and sustain the belief that true peace will break out any time soon. And this idea that a document on paper, however well-crafted, will usher in some utopian era in practice seems fanciful.<br /><br /></strong>We live in a region with powerful militant actors, dysfunctional governments, and deep, systemic problems. To speak of a “peace agreement” as a kind of cure-all is to create expectations that cannot be met. If there is a case to be made for agreements with our neighbors - and there is - it is unfortunately not because it will produce the kind of peace enjoyed on the U.S.-Canadian border. It can only be because - assuming the right agreement can be reached - it offers a chance for a reality, and a future, better than the one we know.<br /><br />In fact, most “peace agreements” do not really presume to establish peace in its broader sense. They do not try to reconcile grand historical narratives or produce deep bonds of friendship and cooperation between erstwhile warring peoples. Generally, they are technical documents. They focus on things like the military redeployment of troops, the composition of constituent assemblies, or the demarcation of a border. Even when done right, they tend to be less like exhilarating marriage ceremonies than unsatisfying divorce agreements, where bitter and scarred parents try, against odds, to make things less painful for their children.<br /><br />We place too much weight on these negotiated agreements, and on the shoulders of the negotiators themselves, if we expect some form of words on paper to deliver salvation. Even at best, an agreement does not create peace; it creates the space for peace to grow. It creates a framework for the real potential engineers of peace - the teachers, the parents, the spiritual leaders, the children - to fashion a new reality and mindset over time; and for the extremists to gradually become unappealing and marginalized.<br /><br />This is, of course, not the way leaders generally talk about negotiated settlements. <strong>More often than not, we are promised the dawn of some new age. The disillusionment associated with what can actually be reached and the rejection of what is on offer often follows.<br /><br />Rabin’s legacy suggests that we may do well to shed this Messianic pretension. This language belongs to the age of Exile. When shaping your destiny is out of your hands, you can allow for the comfort of grand, unreachable visions to ease the long dull ache of your current predicament. But the real work of a sovereign State has more to do with improving the lot of its people than with revolutionizing it. And an imagination that is not grounded in reality can act as an obstacle to quality decisions, not just because the perfect can be the enemy of the good, but also because the good can be the enemy of the simply preferable.<br /><br /></strong>This is not to say that agreements we reach with our neighbors should not bring real dividends. These agreements must produce, and must be seen to produce, a net advance in our interests and values (relative to the status quo). They must link somehow to our higher aspirations and our long-term prayers for a true peace. But they need not be all things to all people. They need not live up to some Romantic ideal that dreams can become realities overnight. They can and will be messy and sub-optimal even when they are the best alternative available.<br /><br /><strong>It is said that at the conclusion of the Dayton Accords that brought an end to the war in Yugoslavia, the Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegović, gave a speech in which he sought to justify the agreement to his people. But he did not try to convince them that some epic peace had been achieved. “This may not be a just peace”, he conceded, “but it is more just than the continuation of war.” In this same spirit, Rabin’s legacy suggests both that we must believe in the promise of peace, but also that we must make that promise believable. In honoring his memory, and advancing Israel’s interests, we could do worse</strong> than give more space for this kind of sentiment in our discourse and our decisions.David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-36075387947392259042011-10-30T11:13:00.000-07:002011-10-30T12:02:54.715-07:00A Rediscovered Abundance of Goodness & Living with Missiles: The Complexities & Challenges of Aspirational ZionismTwo powerful articles by two leading rabbis and important voices in modern Israel.<br />Daniel Gordis exhorts the Prime Minister to seize the moment and exploit Gilad Schalit's release to unleash all the good (and stamp out much of the evil) bubbling under the surface of a hardened Israeli society.<br />Donniel Hartman encourages us to meet the challenges of living in an abnormal world (and neighborhood) by aspiring to the best of Jewish values, Jewish intelligence, and Jewish humanity.<br /><br /><em><strong>"We defeat terror when we continue to build a society of values, when we not only worry about whether we will be, but about who we will be. When issues of social justice, loyalty, and kindness, democracy, and Jewish identity reverberate throughout our public conversation and policies we are building foundations of strength which no terrorist can destroy." </strong></em><br /><em>Donniel Hartman<br /><br /><br /></em><br /><a href="http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=243419#">A rediscovered abundance of goodness<br /></a>DANIEL GORDIS<br /><br /><strong><em>A letter to the Prime Minister regarding Schalit's release</em></strong>.<br /><br />Mr. Prime Minister, Before the Schalit deal fades entirely from view, many of us are hoping that you have noticed what you unwittingly unleashed. I don’t mean the next wave of terror or the terrible decisions that Israel must make before the next kidnapping. We knew about those even before last week. But last Tuesday, all of us – those opposed as well as those in favor (and there were persuasive arguments on both sides) – rediscovered something magnificent about this country.<br /><br />It would be tragic if we returned to business as usual without pausing to take note.<br /><br /><strong>In addition to Gilad Schalit, we received one more thing that few of us could have expected; we got a reminder of the abundant goodness that still resides at the very core of this society. It could be seen everywhere.<br /><br /></strong>Compare the speeches on our side, celebrating life and freedom, to the bloodthirsty Palestinian harangues calling for renewed terror and additional kidnappings.<br /><br />Compare the respectful restraint of our press to newscaster Shahira Amin’s immoral and abusive interview in Egypt. But more than anything, we saw this reservoir of goodness in the streets – in the people so moved that they could hide neither the tears in their eyes nor the lumps in their throats. We saw it in the throngs in the streets, people who wanted Schalit to know that they, too, celebrated his long overdue freedom. And we saw it in the hundreds of people in his hometown of Mitzpe Hila who continued dancing long after he’d entered his house and closed the door.<br /><br /><strong>We all felt it. It was innocent, pure and thoroughly decent. We were witness that day to an entire country believing in something again. Those young people outside the Schalit home were singing not only about Schalit, but about this land, this people and about a future in which they still believe. Did you see them? Women and men, religious and secular dancing with abandon in celebration of freedom? Did you hear them singing “Anahnu Ma’aminim Bnei Ma’aminim…” “We are believers, the children of believers, and we have no one on whom to depend other than our Father in heaven”? You didn’t miss it, did you? Hundreds of people from all walks of Israeli life, proclaiming without hesitation their belief in something bigger than themselves? The reason that the prisoner trade was so wildly popular, Mr. Prime Minister, wasn’t ultimately about Gilad Schalit. It was about Israel. About a country desperate to transcend the cynicism, that still wants to believe that it’s worth believing. Shouldn’t we – and you – therefore ask ourselves what can we do next to justify people’s belief in this place? What will it take to make this a country that its citizens can love even when we’re not freeing a captive?<br /><br /></strong>How about if we start by eradicating evil? Take but one example and deal with it.<br /><br /><strong>There’s a small but vicious group of kids living over the Green Line who bring inestimable shame on the Jewish people. They burn mosques, tear down olive trees and sow fear everywhere – all with the implicit support of their rabbis. And they make many young Israelis deeply ashamed of this entire enterprise. Last week you showed us that you know how to take decisive action. So do it again. Rein them in. Arrest them. Cut off funding to their yeshivot. If you show this generation of Israelis that your government stands for goodness even when that means making tough domestic decisions, you’ll unleash a wave of Zionist passion like we haven’t felt here for a generation. It wouldn’t be any harder to do than what you just did, and it would do even more good for Israel than getting one soldier back.<br /><br />And beyond goodness, there’s also Jewishness. No, we shouldn’t make too much of that “Anahnu Ma’aminim Bnei Ma’aminim” song, but admit – it’s not what you expect to see lots of secular people singing. Yet they did. Because this is a strange and wondrous country; not so deep down, even “non-religious” people aren’t “non-religious.” Just like their observant counterparts, they’re searching, struggling, yearning – and at moments like that, they know that the well from which they hope to draw their nourishment is a Jewish well.<br /><br /></strong>That’s why it was wonderful that you quoted from Isaiah in your speech. It was your suggestion, I hope, that at its core, this society must be decent, but it must also be Jewish. <strong>You know what the main problem with the summer’s social justice protests was? It wasn’t the naïve embrace of high school socialism or the utter incoherence of the demands. It was the fact that there was simply nothing Jewish about their vision for Israel. Daphni Leef and her comrades could have given the same vacuous speeches at Occupy Wall Street. Or in Sweden, for that matter. Those inane speeches were testimony to the failure of our educational system and of Israel’s religious leadership.</strong><br /><br />The Yoram Kaniuk affair and the court’s willingness to let him declare himself “without religion” is a reflection not on him, but on the appallingly uninteresting variety of Judaism that the state has come to represent. Can you – or anyone else – name even one single powerful idea that’s come from any of Israel’s chief rabbis in the past decade or two? Me neither.<br /><br /><strong>But lo and behold, it turns out that Israel’s young people still want to believe in something. We haven’t given them the tools to articulate it, but they still intuit that whatever we become, it’s got to be Jewish. So ride that wave, too, Mr. Prime Minister.</strong><br /><br />What would it take to shape a country where the profundity<strong> </strong>at the core of Jewish tradition became once again the subject of discourse in our public square? Does Judaism in the 21st century suddenly have to become dull and backward, or can we restore the intellectual and moral excellence that once characterized it? Can you take this on, too? Appoint the right people? Build the right schools? Can you help make this a country that encourages those young people now searching for Jewish moral moorings? For or against the swap, hardly a single one of us is not thrilled that Gilad Schalit is home. He deserved his life back. But so, too, does this country. Schalit, hopefully, will now get better and stronger with each passing day. Israel must do the same. It needs to get better – we need to be honest about the evils lurking in our midst and we must exorcise them. And we must become stronger, which we can do only by engaging with the roots that brought us back home in the first place.<br /><br />Can you do this? Many of us hope so. Because if this fails, it will in the long run have made no difference that Gilad Schalit came home. But if it succeeds, we might just come to see his liberation as the turning point in our collective return to believing in ourselves.<br /><br />The writer is president of the Shalem Foundation and senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. His latest book, Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War that May Never End (Wiley), won the 2009 National Jewish Book Award. He is now writing a book on the defense of Israel and the nation-state, and blogs at <a href="http://danielgordis.org/">http://danielgordis.org/</a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.hartman.org.il/Blogs_View.asp?Article_Id=839&Cat_Id=273&Cat_Type=Blogs">Living with Miissiles<br /></a>DONNIEL HARTMAN<br /><br /><strong>It’s a strange thing, having to live with missiles. Even though it has happened so often, it just doesn’t feel normal. One would not expect that the citizens of a normal country would be subjected from time to time to a barrage of missiles which terrorize, maim, and sometimes kill. One would not expect that a country with Israel’s power would find its hands tied and unable to provide for its citizens the security that is their inalienable right.<br /><br /></strong>Terror has become “normal,” and when kept to a certain degree, tolerable, in modern society. We have come to learn that there are evil and deranged people and groups walking in our midst for whom the language of ethics and sanctity of life are meaningless. But we tolerate them mostly because we don’t know where they are. They emerge and inflict their harm, and what we tolerate is not so much them, but the price they extract from us.<br /><br />The case of the missiles being fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip has a bizarre twist, for the terrorists are neither hidden nor unknown. They hide in plain sight in the midst of a civilian population and cloak their evil under the mantle of the generic Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ongoing “cycle of violence.” They roam free, openly declare their intent, and from time to time, on the basis of a schedule known only to them, decide to spend a few hours terrorizing southern Israel.<br /><br /><strong>It’s not normal, and the situation is profoundly intolerable. How should we - the sovereign Jewish State of Israel - respond to this abnormality? On the one hand, sovereignty entails the acquiring of power and both the ability and right to exercise it in self-defense. Sovereignty provides us with a military option. The challenge of a sovereign people, however, is to distinguish between the right to use this option and when it is right to do so.<br /><br />The nature of asymmetrical war and a conflict not merely with a terrorist organization but also with a population which embraces terrorism is that one’s options are profoundly limited. Neither political overtures nor concessions, or conversely, sanctions will transform the population of Gaza from foe to friend. They have fed themselves a steady diet of evil ideology from which only they can free themselves. At the same time, a reoccupation of Gaza will not alter the reality on the ground but at best merely freeze it for a short time. When one has the power and confronts a situation in which one has the right to use it, it takes great strength to avoid the temptation of succumbing to the short-term comfort associated with using it and the just feeling of revenge which it provides. We come from a tradition</strong> <strong>which has taught that true strength is sometimes to be found in self-control.<br /></strong><br />So, where does that leave us, we the sovereign Jewish State, with our powerful army and a just cause?<br /><br />I don’t know. But what I do know is that when one doesn’t know, it’s best not to pretend that one does. This has been the policy of the Israeli government over the last number of years, and despite my frustration, I commend it for having the ongoing wisdom that it has exhibited in not pretending that it possesses a magic bullet.<br /><br /><strong>While I don’t know, I wonder whether a policy of targeted assassinations of leadership would not move the status quo slightly in our favor. I mention this consideration only because it is self-evident that neither Hamas nor Islamic Jihad, nor other rogue terrorist groups that call Gaza their home, are potential peace partners. The same logic, which guides the United States policy against al-Qaeda, should be assessed as to whether it would be constructive here.<br /><br />Israeli society must double and triple its efforts to ensure that those in harm’s way feel that their danger and pain is shared by us all. The citizens of the south do not need empty gestures of solidarity but the real allocation of all the resources necessary in order to ensure their safety to the best of our ability and significant financial compensation to offset the hazard under which they find themselves on an ongoing basis. If life in the south is precarious, then those living in the south must be treated as the pioneers and heroes that they are.<br /><br /></strong>If we cannot destroy our enemy, let’s isolate them. An Israel which initiates peace discussions with those Palestinians who can be peace partners strengthens them, marginalizes the terrorists, and creates a political environment in which Israel has more resources at its disposal to protect itself. Allowing the terrorist reality which is Gaza to define our perspective on our neighborhood is to give them a victory they neither deserve nor warrant.<br /><br /><strong>We need to learn to live in an abnormal world. Our people’s embracing of sovereignty entails a willingness to live within the realities of realpolitik and alas, terror is a part of this reality. To be either passive on the one hand, or to succumb to the fantasy that for every problem there is a military solution, is to perpetuate the childlike naivete of our pre-sovereign existence. Sovereignty has its gifts and its challenges, and as a mature people we have to embrace both.<br /><br /></strong>We need to learn to live in the Middle East. By live, I mean that we cannot allow our neighborhood to define or control our world. While we must learn to respond to their dictates, our priorities and values cannot be exhausted by them. We prevent terror every time our technology knocks one of the missiles out of the sky. <strong>We defeat terror when we continue to build a society of values, when we not only worry about whether we will be, but about who we will be. When issues of social justice, loyalty, and kindness, democracy, and Jewish identity reverberate throughout our public conversation and policies we are building foundations</strong> of strength which no terrorist can destroy.<br /><br />It’s a strange thing, having to live with missiles, but live we will.David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-69089369996742863012011-10-14T11:23:00.000-07:002011-10-14T11:41:59.223-07:00The Gilad Shalit Dilemma: Two Moving Pieces that Epitomize the Ambivalent Sentiments of Israelis, and Why We Should be Proud<em>This will be a glorious holiday for the Shalit family, and for all of us, all around the world, who have worked so hard with this family on behalf of their son.Let us rejoice in his return, and let us pray with all our hearts that this glorious day not be spoiled by future heartaches. Let us be proud of Israel for having gambled on the side of compassion this time. Let us be proud of Israel which values every human life so much, as it has demonstrated this week. And let us hope and pray that the gamble does not turn out--- God forbid, God forbid, God forbid---to be wrong. --Rabbi Jack Riemer</em><br /><br /><p>Two moving, thoughtful pieces that express the profundity of the dilemma Israel faced regarding Gilad Shalit, and why, despite any well-founded misgivings we may have about the decision, we can and should all be immensely proud and grateful to be part of a people that places such a premium on the ultimate sanctity of life! </p><br /><p>Chag Sameach</p><br /><p>david in Seattle</p><br /><strong><a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/80719/everyone%e2%80%99s-son/">Everyone’s Son<br /></a></strong><em>In opposing the mass release of terrorists in exchange for Gilad Shalit’s freedom, I felt as if I was betraying my own son<br /></em><br />By Yossi Klein Halevi<br /><br />For the last five years I have tried not to think of Gilad Shalit. I avoided the newspaper photographs of his first months as an Israel Defense Forces draftee, a boy playing soldier in an ill-fitting uniform. Sometimes, despite myself, I’d imagine him in a Gaza cellar, bound, perhaps wired with explosives to thwart a rescue attempt. And then I would force myself to turn away.<br /><br />I tried not to think of Gilad because I felt guilty. Not only was I doing nothing to help the campaign to free him, I opposed its implicit demand that the Israeli government release as many terrorists as it takes to bring him home. Israel has no death penalty, and now we would lose the deterrence of prison: If the deal went through, any potential terrorist would know it was just a matter of time before he’d be freed in the next deal for the next kidnapped Israeli.<br /><br /><strong>But the argument could never be so neatly resolved. Each side was affirming a profound Jewish value: ransom the kidnapped, resist blackmail. And so any position one took was undermined by angst. What would you do, campaign activists challenged opponents, if he were your son? “He’s everyone’s son,” sang rocker Aviv Gefen.</strong><br /><br />One day I passed a rally for Gilad in a park in downtown Jerusalem. Several counter-demonstrators were holding signs opposing surrender to terrorism. “I happen to agree with you,” I said to one of them. “But don’t you feel uneasy protesting against the Shalit family?”<br /><br />“We’re not protesting against the Shalit family,” he replied. “We’re protesting to save future victims of freed terrorists. Those victims don’t have names yet. But they could be my son or your son.”<br /><br /><strong>Every debate over Gilad ended at the same point: your son.<br /></strong><br /><strong>We never referred to him as “Shalit,” always “Gilad.” The Gilad dilemma set our parental responsibilities against our responsibilities as Israelis—one protective instinct against another. The prime minister’s job is to resist emotional pressure and ensure the nation’s security; a father’s job is to try to save his son, regardless of the consequences.<br /><br /></strong>And so I tried, too, not to think of Gilad’s extraordinary parents, Noam and Aviva. Even when denouncing the government they spoke quietly, incapable of indignity. The best of Israel, as we say here, reminding ourselves that the best of Israel is the best of anywhere.<br /><br />For more than a year the Shalits have lived in a tent near the prime minister’s office. When I walked nearby I would avoid the protest encampment, ashamed to be opposing the campaign. This past Israeli Independence Day, though, I saw a crowd gathered around the tent, and wandered over. “GILAD IS STILL ALIVE,” banners reminded: It’s not too late to save him. Inside the tent, Noam and Aviva were sitting with family and friends, singing the old Zionist songs. I wanted to shake Noam’s hand, tell him to be strong, but I resisted the urge. I didn’t deserve the privilege of comforting him.<br /><br /><strong>I wanted to tell Noam what we shared. As it happens, my son served in the same tank unit as Gilad, two years after he was kidnapped. I wanted to tell Noam that that was the real reason I couldn’t bear thinking about his family. That in opposing the mass release of terrorists for Gilad, it was my son I was betraying.<br /></strong><br />Now, inevitably, the government has given in to the emotional pressure. Inevitably, because we all knew it would—must—end this way. A few months ago, as part of its psychological war against the Israeli public, Hamas released an animated film depicting Gilad as an elderly gray-haired man, still a prisoner in Gaza. No image tormented us more.<br /><br />Still, there are few celebrations here today. Even those who supported the campaign to free Gilad must be sobered by the erosion of Israeli deterrence. And those who opposed the campaign are grieving for Gilad’s lost years. All of us share the same unspoken fear: In what condition will he be returned to us? What have these years done to him?<br /><br /><strong>Hamas leaders are boasting of victory. If so, it is a victory of shame. Hamas is celebrating the release of symbols of “resistance,” not of human beings. Hamas’ victory is an expression of the Arab crisis. The Arab world’s challenge is to shift from a culture that sanctifies honor to a culture that sanctifies dignity. Honor is about pride; dignity is about human value. Hamas may have upheld its honor; but Israel affirmed the dignity of a solitary human life.<br /><br /></strong>In recent months the campaign to free Gilad demanded that the government worsen conditions for convicted terrorists in Israeli jails, to psychologically pressure the Palestinian public. So long as Gilad was being held incommunicado, activists argued, Palestinian families should be barred from visiting their imprisoned sons. While Gilad’s youth was wasting away, terrorists shouldn’t be allowed to study for college degrees.<br /><br />The government promised to oblige. But as it turned out, there were legal complications. A newspaper article the other day noted the results of the government’s get-tough policy: Imprisoned terrorists would no longer be provided with the Middle Eastern delicacy of stuffed vegetables.<br /><br />How is it possible, Israelis ask themselves, that so-called progressives around the world champion Hamas and Hezbollah against the Jewish state? Perhaps it’s because we’re too complicated, too messy: a democracy that is also an occupier, a consumerist society living under a permanent death sentence. Perhaps those pure progressives fear a contagion of Israeli ambivalence.<br /><br />For all my anxieties about the deal, I feel no ambivalence at this moment, only gratitude and relief. Gratitude that I live in a country whose hard leaders cannot resist the emotional pressure of a soldier’s parents. And relief that I no longer have to choose between the well-being of my country and the well-being of my son.<br /><br />WERE THE ISRAELIS RIGHT OR NOT IN WHAT THEY DID?<br /><br /><strong>Some Reflections as we await the return of Gilad Shalit and As We Celebrate the Holiday of Our Joy<br /><br /></strong>Rabbi Jack Riemer<br /><br />There is a strange mood in our hearts and in the hearts of the people of Israel today. On the one hand, we are ecstatic at the news that Gilad Shalit is coming home at last. For more than five and a half long years, this brave young man has rotted somewhere in Gaza. His parents have moved heaven and earth in an effort to bring him home. They set up a tent at the entrance to the Prime Ministers home in Jerusalem so that anyone and everyone who entered that home would be reminded at his coming in and at his going out that their child was a prisoner in Gaza.<br /><br />They went to Europe and knocked on the doors of every head of state there, begging them to intercede on behalf of their child. They went to America; they went to the United Nations; they went anywhere and everywhere they could in the hope of arousing world public opinion on behalf of their son. And all of us who watched them work so passionately and so patiently had to be moved by their determination and their devotion. How could you not feel for these parents?<br /><br />And yet, happy as we are to see him coming home at last, part of us worries that the price that Israel has had to pay for rescuing him may be too high. The details of the agreement have not yet been released. They may never be released in their entirety. But preliminary reports indicate that approximately a thousand terrorists, killers who have the blood of innocent people on their hands, are being released by Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit.<br /><br />I believe that one of them is the terrorist who entered the home of an Israeli family in the middle of the night, and killed the father, and then the mother, and then took his rifle and smashed it over the head of their young, innocent child, and killed her too. Israelis shiver to think that this person was first on the list of those that Hamas demanded be released, and that, the Israeli government evidentially agreed to let him go, in order to get Gilad Shalit back.<br /><br />Israelis worry---and understandably so---about what these thousand murderers will do when they get back to Gaza. They will be given a heros welcome, and they will be praised for the acts of brutality that they committed. And then what? Will they go back to killing innocent Jews once again? And if they do, then will the price that Israel has paid for getting Gilad Shalit back end up being too high?<br /><br />Prime Minister Netanyahu put it very simply in the announcement that he made on television this week. He told the people of Israel that the price that the government of Israel has agreed to pay in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit was a high one, a very high one. But he said it was the best deal we could get, and that, if we did not agree to it, if we let the deal fall through, there was no way of knowing whether the opportunity to save Gilad Shalit would ever come back again.<br /><br /><strong>I ask you: What would you have done if you were in Prime Minister Netanyahus shoes this week?<br /><br />I can only say that I am glad that I was not him, for how do you make such an awfully difficult decision? How do you decide to save one lifewhen Judaism teaches that he who saves one life, it is as if you have saved a whole world---How do you save one life at the cost of risking many, many lives? How would you feel if you were him and you refused to accept these terms, and you went to sleep each night, knowing that, by your decision, you had condemned Gilat Shalit to another night in Hell? And how would you feel if you were him, and you accepted these terms in order to win his freedom, and you went to sleep each night knowing that by your decision, you had endangered every other Jewish soldier who may now become a tempting target for kidnapping, and that, by your decision, you had endangered every single Israeli who may now become the target of these murderers?<br /><br /></strong>I dont envy the prime minister who had to make this decision, and I am glad that I was not him, for pick a side, and I can give you the arguments for the other side.<br /><br />I can tell you, for example, about the long and the sacred Jewish tradition of Pidyon Shvuim, of rescuing hostages. I think that you know how precious and how sacred the Torah Scroll is to Jews, and yet the law provides that, if you need money with which to rescue a hostage, you are permitted---no, I said that wrong---you are REQUIRED to sell a Sefer Torah in order to raise the money with which to rescue a hostage.<br /><br />And therefore, judging by this law, you could say that Judaism teaches that whatever the cost, whatever the price that must be paid, no matter what, the government of Israel did right in rescuing Gilad Shalit. They carried out the mitzvah of Pidyon Shvuim, which is one of the most important mitsvot in our religion. They demonstrated the core Jewish value of compassion. They sent a message to their soldiers that, if they are ever captured, they will not be forgotten or abandoned, but that their government will do whatever it has to do to bring them back.<br /><br />But that is only part of the Jewish tradition. If I am to be honest with you, I must also tell you the story of Rabbi Meir of Rothenerg. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg was one of the great scholars and teachers and leaders of the Jewish community in the Middle Ages. And therefore, the duke of the area in which he lived arrested him and put him into a dungeon. He did so, because he figured that the Jewish people would pay any price he demanded in order to rescue their teacher. And they would have---had Rabbi Meir not sent them a message from prison, FORBIDDING them to rescue him. He told them that if they paid an exorbitant figure to save him, then no rabbi and no leader and no teacher in the land would ever be safe. Whenever a cruel monarch needed funds, he would simply kidnap a Jewish leader and the Jews would pay any price to get him back.<br /><br />Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg was imprisoned for many years. The only humane condition that he was given was that once a month he was allowed a visitor. And so Jews would turn to him and ask him questions of Jewish Law while he was in prison, as they had done before. They gave their questions to the appointed visitor, who delivered them, and then a month later, when the visitor returned, Rabbi Meir would give him his decisions on these questions of Jewish Law. Working from his cell, and without the help of his books, Rabbi Meir answered complex questions of Jewish Law that came to him from many corners of the Jewish world during those years of his imprisonment.<br /><br />And during those years, he also wrote poems and prayers of great beauty, some of which are included in the High Holy Day Prayerbook, and which are recited to this day.<br /><br />When Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg died, the Jewish people of his community finally broke with his decision and they paid money so they could redeem his body and give it a proper burial.<br /><br />I ask you: Who was right---those like the Sages of the Talmud who taught us the importance of Pidyon Shvuim, or those like Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg who insisted that you do not do business with monsters or with greedy thugs, because if you do, you only encourage them to continue kidnapping and holding innocent people for hostage?<br /><br />Who was right---the Sages of the Talmud or Rabbi Meir?<br /><br /><strong>And who is right today---those who fought to rescue Gilad Shalit at any cost, or those who held to the belief that you dare not encourage murderers by giving in to their demands, and that, if you do, you encourage them to continue doing horriblel things?<br /><br />Let me give you my answer in three simple words: I DONT KNOW.<br /><br />I really dont. You are playing God either way. You are either endangering the life of one Jewish soldier if you decide one way or you are endangering the lives of who-knows-how-many Jews if you decide the other way. So how can any mortal, how can any human being, take the responsibility of making such an awesome decision?<br /><br /></strong>My friend and colleague, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, is a person whom I turn to for advice and counsel many times during the year, for he is a very wise man. He is a person who is totally devoted to the welfare of Israel and of the Jewish people. And he is also a person who has enormous compassion and kindness for individual human beings who are in trouble. And so, I thought he would be a good one to ask for advice on this question. And so I called him and asked him where he stood on this question---were the rescuers right or were those who did not want to trade murderers in order to rescue Gilad Shalit right---he answered me in a very surprising and unexpected way.<br /><br />He said to me: The holiday of Sukkot is coming in just a day or two. And on this holiday, what do we do? We take the Lulav, this tall, straight plant, and we take the etrog, this round yellow plant, and we hold them together as we recite a bracha. The Lulav represents strength; it is shaped like a backbone. And the Etrog represents compassion. It is shaped like a heart.<br /><br />Most years we hold the two of them, the Lulav and the Etrog, together; we hold them side by side as we make the blessing, as if to say that we hope to be able to live our lives with courage and with compassion, with justice and with mercy. And very often, we can. The Israeli army has fought its wars with an incredible combination of these two values. It has shown strength, and, at the same time, it has shown compassion. That is our glory.<br /><br /><strong>But what do you do---Rabbi Potasnik said to me---on those rare occasions when you cannot hold the two together? What do you do on those rare occasions in your life as an individual or in the life of your people when you must choose between the Etrog and the Lulav, between strength and compassion? This, he said to me, is such a moment.<br /><br /></strong>Strength says that making this trade is sentimental foolishness. Are you really willing to let a thousand killers go free, are you really willing to endanger every single person in Israel by letting these murderers loose so that they can kill and rape and pillage again?<br /><br />Strength says that this is a foolish and a dangerous trade, and that it should not be done.<br /><br />And can you fault its logic? I cant.<br /><br />But compassion makes a good case too. Are you really going to let a good young man stay in the hands of his captors forever? Is not the more than five years that he has already endured not enough? Are you really going to let his parents suffer forever, waiting and worrying and working to gain his release in vain? It seems to me that compassion makes a good case, a case as cogent as strength does.<br /><br />So what do you do when strength and compassion conflict, what do you do when the Lulav and the Etrog that usually stand together are unable to stand together?<br /><br /><strong>When that happens, you learn the hard and painful truth that there are some situations in life when there simply is no right answer. There are some hard and painful moments in life in which you simply must make a decision, knowing as you do that there is no decision available that can be upheld as clear and right.<br /><br /></strong>Who knows? Perhaps if the nations of the world had spoken up and said to the Palestinian Authority or to Hamas that this kind of kidnapping is simply intolerable in the civilized world, that, if you want to be heard at the United Nations, and if you want to be considered for membership in the United Nations, you must first remove the evil from your hands, and you must release this innocent young man at once. Who can say for sure? Perhaps if the nations of the world had spoken up that way, if they had spoken up with one voice, and said this, we might not be in the difficult situation we are in today. But they didnt. <strong>And so we must make a decision---an impossible decision---a decision between strength and compassiona decision between what the Lulav stands for and what the Etrog stands for---and that is what the government of Israel has done.<br /><br /></strong>And we can only pray that the decision that they have made, the decision to save the life of Gilad Shalit with all the risks that that entails will turn out to be a blessing for him, for his family, for all the soldiers who serve with the faith that their government will never abandon them, and for the people of the State of Israel. God, we await the arrival of Gilad Shalit back to his home. If he comes home during Sukkot, we will sing the words of the Hallel, the Psalms of Thanksgiving and Rejoicing, with great fervor and with great joy in our hearts. And God, we pray: May this Hallel never have to be followed by a Kaddish, and may no one else in Israel ever be endangered because of this decision. Please God, may this not be!<br /><br /><strong>When the service is over, we will go out into the Sukkah to make Kiddush. Look around at this Sukkah when you go in. It is such a frail building. It barely has three walls. It has flowers and pictures in it which will probably not last the week, which will fall down and be spoiled by the first rain we get. Look at the Sukkah and you will learn a fundamental law of life---which is that some things in this world are frail and fragile, and that there is nothing we can do about that, except learn to live with that fact. The Sukkah teaches us that some lives are frail and fragile structures, and that we cannot count on them lasting forever. That is just the way it is. That is the human situation.<br /></strong><br />There are questions that have no answers. There are situations that have no solutions. There are structures that are frail and fragile and liable to the howling wind. And it is our task, not to trade these huts in for sturdier buildings, but to learn how to live inside them, and to do the best we can within them.<br /><br /><strong>This will be a glorious holiday for the Shalit family, and for all of us, all around the world, who have worked so hard with this family on behalf of their son.Let us rejoice in his return, and let us pray with all our hearts that this glorious day not be spoiled by future heartaches. Let us be proud of Israel for having gambled on the side of compassion this time. Let us be proud of Israel which values every human life so much, as it has demonstrated this week. And let us hope and pray that the gamble does not turn out--- God forbid, God forbid, God forbid---to be wrong.<br /><br /></strong>And to this, let us all say---perhaps with a divided heart---but nevertheless, with as much hope and trust as we can muster---to this, let us all say: amen.David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-36951915764065515882011-10-04T09:27:00.000-07:002011-10-04T09:48:17.371-07:00A Liberal's Take on the Need for Pulpit Rabbis to Give Sermons on IsraelGil Troy eloquently demonstrates the importance of reminding us of Israel's centrality to the Jewish experience; during the High Holy Days and throughout the year. Israel is so much more than <em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">HaMatzav</span> </em>or <em>The Situation; </em>our history and the miracle of our re-emergence in our historical homeland, the heart of Zionism, transcends the politics of the day. We must reject being defined by the conflict with the Palestinians and instead give voice to <a href="http://brumspeak.blogspot.com/2011/06/towards-values-based-discourse-on.html">Aspirational Zionism</a>; redefining the ever evolving, organic nature of Zionism and how that dynamic manifests itself through the creativity, innovation, hope and optimism of our People, both within Israel and in the Diaspora. And let us remember the importance of <em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Ahavot</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">Yisrael</span> </em>during this sacred time of the <em>Days of Awe.</em><br /><em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">G'mar</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">Chatimah</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Tovah</span></em><br /><em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">david</span> in Seattle</em><br /><br /><a href="http://blogs.jpost.com/content/year-any-rabbis-afraid-talk-about-israel-their-congregations-%E2%80%93-should-quit">This Year, Any Rabbis Afraid to Talk About Israel to their Congregations – Should Quit</a><br />Gil Troy<br /><br /><strong>Word on the American Jewish street is that Israel has become such a divisive topic that some rabbis stopped giving sermons about Israel. A rabbi who avoids talking about Israel is like a presidential candidate who ignores the economy; dodging such a central issue eventually drains credibility regarding all subjects. Any rabbis afraid to talk about Israel to their</strong> <strong>congregations should quit – and retreat to the university which appreciates tunnel vision.<br /><br /></strong>When a rabbi avoids “Israel” as a topic, the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">delegitimizing</span> forces who oppose the Jewish state’s existence win. Israel – they rarely say “Israeli politics” – is divisive when it becomes compulsively politicized. Reducing every conversation about Israel to the Palestinian issue is not just a distortion but a perversion. It internalizes the systematic campaign to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">delegitimize</span> Israel, ignoring the many spiritual, ethical, ideological, intellectual, philosophical, and personal dimensions one can bring to a discussion about Israel without mentioning Bibi <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Netanyahu</span> or the Palestinians.<br /><br /><strong>The politicization of Israel has become so obsessive, so ubiquitous, that many dismiss conversations about these other dimensions or about Identity Zionism as attempts to evade the “real” issues. Left and right are equally guilty of overly politicizing the Israel conversation. Too many of the Israel-right-or-wrong, love-it-or-leave it crowd seem addicted to crisis, unable to talk about Israel without clamoring about the latest threat to Israel, the Jewish people, and Western civilization itself – we being, of course, the canaries in the coal mine. On the left, too many of the Israel’s-right-is-all-wrong crowd seem equally addicted to crisis, unable to talk about Israel without bemoaning Israel’s latest misstep – and Israel’s alleged original sin in being born. Viewing Israel through a radical Palestinian lens is like only seeing the US in black and white, as one big racial injustice. Decades of disproportionate attacks against Israel and Zionism have caused this damage, as the unreasonable, one-sided charges eclipse everything else.<br /><br />Rabbis are teachers. They should educate their congregations about the Land of Israel’s centrality in traditional Judaism as well as the State of Israel’s centrality in Jewish life today. This mission does not require stump speeches for <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Likud</span> or J Street. As one who opposed “Rabbis for Obama” for unnecessarily politicizing their pulpits, I want rabbis who engage Israel, talking knowledgeably and passionately about the Jewish state and its potential without dictating their particular peace plan from their plush suburban podiums.<br /><br /></strong>Rabbis are also leaders. Too many complacent, careerist CEO rabbis forget to lead, fearing – as I heard one rabbi admit at a rabbinic convention – that every interaction they have with a congregant might be that Jew’s last interaction with a rabbi. You cannot lead if you constantly seek applause or fear being fired. The great <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">Mussar</span> moralist, Rabbi Israel <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Salanter</span> taught: A rabbi who they don’t want to drive out of town deserves no respect; and a rabbi who lets himself be driven out has no self-respect.<br /><br /><strong>Rabbis today must push their congregations toward civility, carving out safe space for fellow Jews to discuss controversial matters, including Israeli politics. The first step toward civility is fostering humility – especially regarding Israel. So many Diaspora Jews are so sure they know what Israel should do. Admitting uncertainty, acknowledging complexity, approaching Israeli politics modestly while being more open to learning other ideas from Israel could cool tempers, nurture civility and educate effectively.<br /><br />This new year, as Jews gather in synagogues and look to their rabbis for guidance, I hope the rabbis lead, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">reframing</span> the conversation about Israel. Rabbis should champion Identity Zionism, explaining that Zionism is Jewish nationalism, a unifying <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">peoplehood</span> platform that can serve as a touchstone for a scattered people with diverse beliefs who remain bonded by a common heritage, homeland, and high ideals.</strong> They should learn from a recent Wesleyan graduate, Zoe <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">Jick</span>, that “pro-Israel” is a political term more emphasizing Israel’s actions, while “Zionism” – a term many Americans Jews dislike because it has been <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">delegitimized</span> – is the broader term denoting “belief in the Jewish national movement.”<br /><br /><strong>We need a Zionist conversation, unafraid of the topic – or the label – exploring the meaning of our dual religious-national base, appreciating the opportunity Jewish sovereignty gives us to live our ideals and build what we at Hartman’s Engaging Israel project call “Values Nation,” pondering the delights and challenges of living 24/7 Judaism in our old-new land. Let’s discuss the social protests –to learn how Judaism balances communal needs with individual prerogative, then apply that knowledge to every Western country’s socioeconomic dilemmas. Let’s analyze the Jewishness of the Jewish state, asking how we moderns express communal values and find meaning in a soul-crushing age. And let’s articulate that sense of familiarity and family many of us feel when wandering around Jerusalem, asking what existential need that satisfies.<br /><br /></strong>I recently asked some fellow Zionists what Zionist message they wish rabbis would give their congregants this <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">Rosh</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">Hashanah</span>. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error">Yoav</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error">Schaefer</span>, an American-born former-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">IDF</span> soldier studying at Harvard, suggested: “Zionism is not a noun. It is a verb—a living ideal constantly being redefined and re-imagined, an ever-evolving pursuit toward perfection. It symbolizes optimism and potential, a hope for a better and more just society, the dream of a country that exemplifies the values and aspirations of the Jewish people. “ <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error">Iri</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kassel</span>, an Israeli who directs the Ben <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error">Gurion</span> Heritage Institute, emphasized the inspiring Zionist story of rebuilding the land which instills basic values of belonging, mutual responsibility and activism. (For more see www.<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_25" class="blsp-spelling-error">zionistsforzionism</span> [2]).<br /><br />Zionism has always been a movement of bold moves and high aspirations. How tragic that Israel, Zionism’s creation, would turn some rabbis into meek <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_26" class="blsp-spelling-error">Galut</span> Jews, cowering from conflict. This year, let us hope for more daring vision and bolder challenges from our rabbis – on Israel and other important issues.<br /><br />Gil Troy is Professor of History at <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_27" class="blsp-spelling-error">McGill</span> University and a Shalom Hartman Research Fellow in Jerusalem. The author of “Why I Am A Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today,” his latest book is “The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short IntroductionDavid Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-19064350555482131962011-09-28T08:26:00.000-07:002011-09-28T08:45:24.634-07:00On Teshuva, Self-Reflection and an Honest Rendering of our Accounts, Spiritual & WorldlyAt this holy time of Teshuvah, reflection, and self-examination, an honest rendering of accounts shouldn't be confused with unjustified self-recrimination. Self-reflection asks us to make amends where necessary, but not to assume guilt for that which we are blameless.<br />To a Prosperous, Healthy and Fruitful Year to All<br />david in Seattle<br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>"This convergence of blame comes at a time of spiritual vulnerability for Jews. This is, after all, our season of contrition. As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the process of self-examination intensifies. And as Jewish tradition emphasizes, the basis for penitence is apology. Before seeking forgiveness from God, we are to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt, even inadvertently.<br /><br />But in the present atmosphere Jews should resist the temptation for self-blame. Apology is intended to heal. Yet those demanding apologies of Israel aren’t seeking reconciliation, but the opposite—to criminalize the Jewish state and rescind its right to defend itself." </strong>YK Halevi<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/world/95020/un-palestine-israel-security-council-statehood">No Apologies: Israel Isn’t to Blame for Its Growing Isolation</a><br />Yossi Klein Halevi<br /><br />Jerusalem—As the U.N. votes on Palestinian statehood, and former regional allies of the Jewish state like Turkey and Egypt turn openly hostile, much of the international community is blaming Israel for its own isolation.<br /><br />If only Israel had apologized to Turkey for killing nine of its nationals on last year’s Gaza flotilla, so the argument goes, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan would not be threatening now to send warships against the Israeli coast. If only Israel had apologized to Egypt for the accidental killing of six of their soldiers when Israeli helicopters entered Egyptian territory in pursuit of terrorists last August, an Egyptian mob wouldn’t have ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo, as Egyptian leaders refused to take calls from desperate Israeli leaders. And if only Israel had stopped building in settlements and offered the Palestinians a fair solution, they would not now be turning to the U.N. to substitute an imposed solution for the negotiating process.<br /><br /><strong>This convergence of blame comes at a time of spiritual vulnerability for Jews. This is, after all, our season of contrition. As we approach Rosh Hashanah, the process of self-examination intensifies. And as Jewish tradition emphasizes, the basis for penitence is apology. Before seeking forgiveness from God, we are to seek forgiveness from those we have hurt, even inadvertently.<br /><br />But in the present atmosphere Jews should resist the temptation for self-blame. Apology is intended to heal. Yet those demanding apologies of Israel aren’t seeking reconciliation, but the opposite—to criminalize the Jewish state and rescind its right to defend itself.<br /><br /></strong>If any apologies are forthcoming, they must be on the basis of facts. Erdogan began dismantling the Israeli-Turkish alliance well before the flotilla incident, which he then seized as a pretext to sever ties with Israel: his goal is not to restore Israeli-Turkish relations but to bolster his image in the Muslim world as the leader who humiliated Israel. Still, in the spirit of this season of penitence, Israel could offer Erdogan the following solution: We apologize for the loss of life, and you apologize for encouraging Turkish jihadists to violate Israel’s legal and moral siege against the terrorist regime in Gaza.<br /><br />So too with Egypt: Israel will apologize for the accidental killing of Egyptian soldiers—even though it’s not clear whether they were killed by Israeli fire or by a Palestinian suicide bomber—while Egypt apologizes for the atmosphere of government-instigated hatred against Israel, like the recent cover of one of Egypt’s leading magazines, October, which portrayed Netanyahu as Hitler.<br /><br />The Palestinian issue, of course, is far more complicated. Israel, the Arab world and Palestinian leaders themselves all share blame for the Palestinian tragedy. Under the right circumstances—in an atmosphere of mutual penitence—Israel would apologize for its role in the displacement and occupation of the Palestinians. And the Palestinians would apologize for their role in encouraging the Arab world’s rejection of the Jewish people’s return home and encouraging too the renewal of anti-semtism on a global scale. And then each side would forgive the other for having been so caught in its own trauma that it failed to recognize the trauma of the other.<br /><br /><strong>But Israel is not to blame for the absence of peace.<br /></strong><br />I want to see my government declare an open-ended settlement freeze, convey the message to the Palestinians and to the Arab world that it has no interest in maintaining the occupation aside from security needs, that the Jewish people didn’t return home to deny another people its sense of home.<br /><br />But a settlement freeze, however essential for our own integrity, will not bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. Netanyahu’s ten-month settlement freeze was unprecedented—that was the word used by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Yet the Palestinian Authority continued to boycott talks.<br /><br />Would Netanyahu offer the Palestinians a state along the equivalent of the 1967 lines? In exchange for Palestinian acceptance of a Jewish state and abandonment of the demand for refugee return to Israel: My sense is yes. I wish he would explicitly say so, even if that meant risking his coalition.<br /><br /><em>But in truth the question of what Netanyahu would concede is irrelevant. The Palestinians were offered the equivalent of the 1967 borders by former Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. Yet Palestinian leaders rejected the offers because they refused to concede the “sacred” right of return, as P.A. head Mahmoud Abbas calls it—that is, the sacred right to destroy the Jewish state through demographic subversion.<strong><span style="font-size:130%;"> The Netanyahu government isn’t the cause of the breakdown of the peace process but its result</span></strong>.<br /><br /></em>The temptation for Jewish self-recrimination is deeply rooted in Zionist psychology. Zionism, after all, was a revolt against Jewish fatalism. If the Jewish situation is untenable, then clearly the fault lies with a lack of Jewish initiative. If you will it, said Zionist founder Theodore Herzl, it is no dream.<br /><br />Israeli rightists and leftists agree, in effect, that Israel can unilaterally determine its own reality, regardless of outside circumstances. If Israel lacks security, insists the right, that’s because we haven’t projected enough power and deterrence. And if Israel lacks peace, insists the left, that’s because we haven’t been sufficiently forthcoming in offering concessions.<br /><br />Both right and left, then, implicitly dismiss the Arabs as an independent factor, with their own wills and agendas. But what if the Arab world doesn’t accept Israel’s legitimacy? What if the Middle East is undergoing transformations that have little if anything to do with what Israel wills?<br /><br /><strong>This Rosh Hashanah I will ask forgiveness for my own sins and for the collective sins of Israel, as the liturgy insists. But I will withhold my political apologies for a time when those confessions won’t be manipulated against me. There is no religious obligation to collaborate in my own demonization. I will not be seeking forgiveness from those who deny my right to be.<br /><br /></strong>Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor to The New Republic and a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-19757787566922304082011-09-20T09:22:00.000-07:002011-09-20T09:32:14.254-07:00Yossi Klein Halevi's Spot-on Analysis of the Very Real Dangers Posed by the Palestinians' U.N. Thrust<strong><em>Statehood is a responsibility to be earned. And so far the Palestinian national movement has hardly proved its willingness to live in peace beside Israel. Palestinian schools and media — those of Fatah as well as of Hamas — routinely portray Israel as an artificial and temporary creation, without any rootedness in the land. All of Jewish history — from the ancient temple in Jerusalem to the Holocaust — is dismissed as a lie. No Palestinian leader has told his people — as Israeli prime ministers since Yitzhak Rabin have told their people — that the land must be shared by two nations. Instead, Palestinian leaders have consistently told their people that the goal is a state on all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and they encourage their people to dream of a Middle East without Israel. --YK Halevi<br /><br /></em></strong>Halevi deconstructs the prevailing myths and 'conventional wisdom' about Israel's increasing isolation and demonstrates with great clarity the context within which current Middle Eastern events need to be understood.<br />db<br /><br /><a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-halevi-israel-20110920,0,6085772.story">The coming U.N. debacle<br /></a><em>A General Assembly vote that seeks to bypass negotiations and impose a Palestinian state on Israel will only undermine a two-state solution.<br /></em>By Yossi Klein Halevi<br /><br />September 20, 2011<br /><br />After decades of failed negotiations over a Palestinian state, it is tempting to imagine that the potential vote in the U.N. General Assembly on Palestinian statehood might help finally resolve one of the most vexing problems that the world has inherited from the previous century. And after all, that's just how a Jewish state was born — by a U.N. General Assembly vote in 1947.<br /><br />But a U.N. vote that seeks to bypass negotiations and impose a fait accompli on Israel will only undermine a two-state solution. By deepening Israel's isolation, the vote will reinforce the sense among Israelis that this is not a time for concessions but for resolve.<br /><br />As polls in recent years show, a majority of Israelis supports a two-state solution. And for good pragmatic reason: Israelis see a Palestinian state as an existential necessity for Israel itself, a means of preserving their country's Jewish majority and democratic identity.<br /><br /><strong>But that same majority also perceives a Palestinian state as a potential existential threat. Even primitive missiles launched from the West Bank hills against greater Tel Aviv would end normal life here. And should Israel then be forced to send its soldiers back into the West Bank, it would likely find itself judged — perhaps literally — in the court of world opinion.<br /><br /></strong>That, after all, is what happened when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in 2009, even though Israel had withdrawn from Gaza four years earlier, only to be hit by thousands of rockets over its international border.<br /><br /><strong>A Palestinian state, then, could create an untenable choice for Israel: learn to live with terror as a daily reality, or defend yourself and become a pariah.<br /><br />In endorsing an imposed solution, the General Assembly would be telling Israelis that their security concerns are irrelevant. It is, in other words, far more important to the U.N. to create Arab state No. 22 than it is to ensure the safety of the lone Jewish state.<br /><br />With its disdain for Israel, the U.N. has invalidated itself as a forum in which to try to heal the Arab-Israeli conflict. Israel isn't just condemned by the world body more than any other country; the Jewish state is condemned more often than all other countries combined. According to U.N. Watch in Geneva, the U.N.'s Human Rights Council has adopted, since its founding in 2006, about 70 resolutions condemning specific countries, 40 of which have been against Israel. In the General Assembly, about 20 anti-Israel resolutions are adopted each year, as opposed to five or six against other countries. That is not mere hostility but pathological obsession.<br /><br /></strong>The vote to recognize Palestine will almost certainly increase anti-Israel violence in the region. It will also likely encourage the international boycott-Israel movement, which uniquely ostracizes the Jewish state. <strong>Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has said that upgraded Palestinian status at the U.N. would "pave the way" to press for legal sanctions against Israel. The likely result would be to turn any Israeli act of war, even in self-defense, into a war crime.<br /><br />Statehood is a responsibility to be earned. And so far the Palestinian national movement has hardly proved its willingness to live in peace beside Israel. Palestinian schools and media — those of Fatah as well as of Hamas — routinely portray Israel as an artificial and temporary creation, without any rootedness in the land. All of Jewish history — from the ancient temple in Jerusalem to the Holocaust — is dismissed as a lie. No Palestinian leader has told his people — as Israeli prime ministers since Yitzhak Rabin have told their people — that the land must be shared by two nations. Instead, Palestinian leaders have consistently told their people that the goal is a state on all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and they encourage their people to dream of a Middle East without Israel.<br /><br /></strong>The U.N. vote comes at a time when Israelis are feeling increasingly besieged. In the last year, Israel's closest regional ally, Turkey, has turned outright hostile; Turkey's Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, last week threatened to dispatch warships against Israel. The peace with Egypt is unraveling: Two weeks ago, as a mob ransacked Israel's embassy in Cairo, Egyptian leaders refused to take desperate calls from their Israeli counterparts and dispatched commandos to rescue Israeli personnel only after American intervention. Israel evacuated its embassy in Amman, Jordan, over the weekend to avert a similar situation.<br /><br />Meanwhile, terrorist enclaves on Israel's borders — Hezbollah in the north, Hamas in the south — aim tens of thousands of missiles at Israeli cities. And the Iranian regime, whose declared goal is the destruction of Israel, is moving ever closer to nuclear capability.<br /><br /><strong>For many Israelis the sense of threat recalls May 1967, when Arab leaders vowing to destroy the Jewish state massed their armies on its borders. And while the international community remembers Israel's stunning victory against those forces in June 1967, Israelis recall the terrible isolation of the weeks before, when even Israel's friends offered little assistance.<br /><br />Israel tends to take risks for peace when it believes the chance for peace is credible and when it senses a fair international climate.</strong> Israel withdrew from the Sinai desert — which is three times the size of Israel and which provided it with strategic protection — because Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced the Israeli public he was serious about peace. And when Eastern European and many Third World countries established diplomatic relations with Israel following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Israel responded with an overture to the Palestine Liberation Organization that became the Oslo process.<br /><br />But when the international community treats the Jewish state with contempt, Israelis tend to reciprocate. The result is a stiffening of hard-line attitudes.<br /><br />In large measure, then, the future of a Palestinian state will be determined by whether Israelis perceive it more as existential necessity or as existential threat, and whether they feel the international community is receptive to their security concerns.<br /><br /><strong>In one sense the U.N. vote is a useful reminder of the origins of the conflict. In 1947 the General Assembly voted for partition; it didn't call for creating only a Jewish state but a Palestinian state as well. The Arab world rejected partition and tried to destroy Israel.<br /><br />That rejection remains the core of the conflict. However problematic, settlements are not the main obstacle to an agreement. Both former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert offered to uproot dozens of settlements and concentrate the rest in "blocs" along the border to enable Palestinian territorial contiguity. Palestinian leaders dismissed those offers.<br /><br /></strong>In endorsing a diplomatic process that ignores Israel, the U.N. would, in effect, affirm the Arab world's attempt to erase Israel's legitimacy. And by encouraging Israeli despair, it could help turn Palestine into a permanent virtual state.<br /><br />Yossi Klein Halevi is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and a contributing editor at the New Republic.David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-24480067706932733412011-09-15T08:38:00.000-07:002011-09-15T09:45:31.543-07:00On the Urgency of Standing With Israel Today: 3 Voices of Reason: David Harris, Prof Edward Alexander, & Daniel Gordis<div id="title-post" class="title-post">Three different voices, across the continents and political spectrum, echoing a common theme. When our fellow Jews are embattled, we are all threatened. Moreover, we are all brethren and responsible for one another. </div><br /><br /><br /><div class="title-post"><em>‘Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). “And Moses said unto the children of Gad and the children of Reuben: ‘Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here?’” (Numbers 32:6). </em><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><div class="title-post"><strong><em>Marginalized as never before, Israel is now witness to Iran’s continuing nuclear aspirations, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s cozying up to Iran by threatening Israel and Egyptian masses who despise Israel simply for existing. Iran, Turkey and Egypt have assumed their positions because of radicalization in the Arab world, not because of anything to do with the Palestinians.<br /><br />Capitalizing on this trend, the Palestinians are explicitly transforming the vote into a referendum on Israel. Just days ago, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority claimed that the Palestinians' land had been occupied for 63 years. The “occupation” to which he refers is thus not the result of Israel’s victory in 1967, but rather, Israel’s very creation in 1948. If the U.N. votes to recognize Palestinian statehood in light of this attitude, it will simply be tightening the noose further.<br /><br />Because such hatred of the Jewish state cannot be appeased, Israel has no good options at the moment. It will thus hunker down and hold on, hoping that the international community that voted to create the Jewish state just decades ago might soon return to its senses. </em></strong>excerpt from Gordis' <em>A Referendum on Israel--see below</em><strong><em><br /><br /></em></strong>The challenges Israel currently face transcend party lines, politics and whether or not American Jews like Bibi or not. Israel is besieged on a multitude of fronts, and it behooves us to use our seichel, pick our battles judiciously, and stand with Israel today, more than ever. In this season of reflection and Teshuvah, let us return to the ethical mandate of "Ahavot Yisrael," and love and support our fellow Jews in Israel in their time of need.</div><br /><br /><div class="title-post">david in Seattle</div><br /><br /><br /><div class="title-post"><a href="http://blogs.jpost.com/content/hineni-here-i-am">Hineni! Here I Am!</a></div><br /><br /><div class="title-post">David Harris</div><br /><br /><div class="content clear-block"></div><br /><br /><div class="content clear-block">Every day brings new strategic challenges for Israel.<br />Those of us who live outside Israel have a choice. We can help, or we can stand on the sidelines.<br />The battle didn’t begin yesterday. And alas, it’s hardly likely to end tomorrow.<br />Strikingly, there are many disengaged from the battle, at least for now. I see them every day.<br />They’re the ones I seek to reach.<br />I’m not talking about the “ABJ” crowd – the “<strong>Anyone But Jews” Jews, who are inclined to help just about everyone in the world except fellow Jews</strong>.<br />Nor am I talking about the “IOI” crowd – those convinced that “If Only Israel” did this or that, all would be solved, as if the problems and the solutions were solely in Jerusalem’s hands.<br /><strong>No, I’m talking about those who understand that Israel has no easy answers in dealing with its regional challenges, recognize the immense burden Israelis shoulder to build and secure their democratic and Jewish state, believe that Israel eagerly seeks peace but needs trustworthy partners, and know that Israel isn’t being treated fairly in the international community.</strong><br />Until now, for whatever reasons, they haven’t been active.<br />But, as Rabbi Hillel famously said, “If not now, when?”<br />Look at what Israel faces today.<br />Iran is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear-weapons capability.<br />Turkey has undergone a political earthquake.<br />Once a close friend of Israel, over the past nine years, it has reversed course. It has now vowed, while seeking regional ascendancy, to isolate Israel.<br />Hezbollah has become Lebanon’s power broker.<br />The terror group has amassed more than 40,000 missiles and rockets, courtesy of Iran and Syria. It proclaims its arsenal can reach anywhere in Israel.<br />Then there’s Syria.<br />It should be pretty clear by now that, whatever the eventual outcome of the present turmoil, those in charge aren’t going to be batting their eyelashes at Israel anytime soon.<br />To the contrary, in societies that have been fed a steady anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Semitic diet, the best way to whip up political support is to fan the flames of those hatreds.<br />How about Gaza?<br />If I could, I’d make the Hamas Charter required reading. It’s all spelled out there, just a click away on the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp">Internet</a>. The determination to obliterate Israel. The vision of a Shari’a-based state. Bone-chilling, classic anti-Semitism.<br />Then there are developments in Egypt.<br />Again, it shows that when Israel is demonized over decades in schools, the media, the mosques, and the street, given half a chance, the power of those accumulated feelings explodes, making a vital Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty extremely tenuous.<br />Precisely such a critical time in Israel’s life is the moment to stand up and be counted.<br />Israelis, whatever their own political affiliations might be, are shouldering more than outsiders can possibly imagine.<br />They do so day in and day out, without fanfare or self-congratulations. They’ve defied all the odds and achieved miracles.<br />They must never feel alone. It is not their exclusive battle. It is also ours.<br />Our faith speaks of Zion and Jerusalem. That is where they are.<br />Our tradition teaches us collective responsibility. Nearly half the world’s Jews live in Israel.<br />Our value system is rooted in the defense of democracy. Israel is such a democracy.<br />And, on a practical level, the battle against Israel is going on in our universities, our political process, even our retail stores. If that’s not a frontline battle, what is?<br />There are those who say they’d get involved if only there were a different government in Jerusalem. They forget one basic fact: the battle is bigger than the government du jour; it’s really about Israel, no matter who is in power.<br /><br />In 2000, an unprecedented wave of terror against Israel broke out with a left-of-center coalition in power and a sweeping two-state proposal on the table.<br /><br />What to do?<br /><br />Look at yourself in the mirror and ask whether this battle really is about someone else, or whether it’s also about you.<br /><strong>Now is precisely the time to visit Israel... to buy Israeli products... to express support for the vital U.S.-Israel relationship to elected officials... to vacation in friendly countries and avoid unfriendly ones... to get involved with pro-Israel organizations... to help those around you understand what’s going on and why it’s so important to friends of Israel and, more generally, to democratic nations.</strong><br />The battle is here. The need is urgent. The time is now.<br />At this time of reflection and renewal in the Jewish calendar, won’t you please say “Hineni!”</div><br /><br /><br /><div class="content clear-block">Here I am!”?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=237978">New York Jewish intellectuals: Another moral debacle</a>?<br />By EDWARD ALEXANDER </div>click above to read the article in its entirety<br /><br /><br /><p><em><strong>As the international noose grows ever tighter about Israel’s throat, the learned classes of Diaspora Jewry are not asking themselves the right questions.<br /></strong></em></p><br /><br /><br /><p><strong>‘Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). “And Moses said unto the children of Gad and the children of Reuben: ‘Shall your brethren go to the war, and shall ye sit here?’” (Numbers 32:6).</strong> These should have been the besetting questions for American- Jewish intellectuals during Hitler’s twelve-year war against European Jewry; but generally they were not.<br /><strong>They should be the pressing ones for the learned classes of Diaspora Jewry today, as the international noose grows ever tighter about Israel’s throat; but they are not.<br /><br /></strong>Long after World War II had ended, William Phillips, co-founder of Partisan Review, recalled that Irving Howe, the most astute political mind among the Jewish intellectuals, “was haunted by the question of why our [Jewish] intellectual community ... had paid so little attention to the Holocaust in the early 1940s.... He asked me why we had written and talked so little about the Holocaust at the time it was taking place.”<br />One may, for example, search the pages of Partisan Review from 1937 through summer 1939 without finding mention of Hitler or Nazism. When Howe was working on his autobiography, he looked through the old issues of his own journal Labor Action to see how, or indeed whether, he and his socialist comrades had responded to the Holocaust. But he found the experience painful, and concluded that the Trotskyists, including himself, were only the best of a bad lot of leftist sects. He told Phillips that this inattention to the destruction of European Jewry was “a serious instance of moral failure on our part.”<br /><br />The leading New York intellectuals had shown appalling indifference not only to what had been endured by their European brethren, but to what had been achieved by the Jews of Palestine. Events of biblical magnitude had occurred within a single decade. A few years after the destruction of European Jewry, the Jewish people had created the state of Israel. Of this achievement, Winston Churchill, addressing Parliament in 1949, said: “The coming into being of a Jewish state in Palestine is an event in world history to be viewed in the perspective, not of a generation or a century, but in the perspective of a thousand, two thousand or even three thousand years. This is an event in world history.” </p><br /><br /><p><strong>The moral failure of ignoring the Holocaust was now compounded by a related failure: having averted their eyes from the destruction of European Jewry, the Jewish intellectuals now looked away from one of the most impressive assertions of the will to live that a martyred people has ever made. The writers had been immersed in the twists and turns of literary modernism, in the fate of socialism in the USSR and the US, and most of all in themselves, especially their “alienation” not only from America but from Judaism, Jewishness, and Jews. Indeed they defined themselves Jewishly through their alienation from their Jewishness.<br /></strong>IN ONE sense, (Irving) Howe and (Saul) Bellow were the (embarrassed) prototypes, if not exactly the progenitors, of today’s bumper crop of “anti-Zionist” Jewish deep thinkers. </p><br /><br /><p><strong>Howe, even more contrite than Bellow about his “moral failure,” was among the first to see what was coming, and by 1970 found the treachery of the younger generation of Jewish intellectuals literally unspeakable: “Jewish boys and girls, children of the generation that saw Auschwitz, hate democratic Israel and celebrate as ‘revolutionary’ the Egyptian dictatorship; ... a few go so far as to collect money for Al Fatah, which pledges to take Tel Aviv. About this, I cannot say more; it is simply too painful.” </p></strong><br /><br /><p><strong>Many of these “Jewish boys and girls” are by now well-established figures in journalism and academia, tenured and heavily-petted, warming themselves in endowed university chairs, or editorializing from The New York Times or New York Review of Books. But the “alienation” of which the older New York Jewish intellectuals belatedly grew ashamed became the boast of the Judts, Kushners, Butlers, Chomskys, and their acolytes.<br /></p></strong><br /><br /><br /><p><strong>These are people who do not merely “sit here” while their brothers go to war. They take the side of their brothers’ enemies and call their cowardice courage. Others, more cautious, discover that the Jewish state, which most Europeans now blame for all the world’s miseries (with the possible exception of global warming,) should never have come into existence in the first place, and that “the [non-Zionist] roads not taken” would have brought (and may yet bring) a “new” Diaspora Golden Age. They are forever organizing kangaroo courts (called “academic conferences”) to put Israel in the dock; or else they are churning out articles or monographs or novels celebrating those roads not taken; or they are performing as “public intellectuals,” breathlessly recommending a one-state solution or a no-state solution or (this from the tone-deaf George Steiner) “a final solution.”<br /><br /></strong><strong>In 1942 a character named Yudka (“little Jew”) in Haim Hazaz’s famous Hebrew short story The Sermon says that “when a man can no longer be a Jew, he becomes a Zionist.” But the unnatural progeny of the New York Intellectuals embody a new, darker reality: when a man can no longer be a Jew, he becomes an anti- Zionist, building an “identity” on the very thing he would destroy. They have turned on its head the old slogan of assimilationism, which was “Be a Jew at home, but a man in the street.” Their slogan is: “Be a man at home, but a Jew in public.” By the time Howe and Bellow came to recognize that their lack of brotherly concern with Jewish survival had indeed been a “moral failure,” a new generation of Jewish intellectuals was already proclaiming it as a virtue entitling them to put on the long robes and long faces of biblical prophets.<br /><br />Their prodigious work in painting Israel’s decent society black as Gehenna and the pit of hell has forced a small yet crucial revision of Orwell’s famous pronouncement about moral obtuseness and the ignorance of the learned: “Some ideas are so stupid that only [Jewish] intellectuals could believe them.”<br /></strong>The writer is the author of numerous books, including <em>Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew</em>, and (with Paul Bogdanor) <em>The Jewish divide over Israel: Accusers and Defenders</em>.</p><br /><br /><p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/14/can-israel-survive-without-a-palestine/a-referendum-on-israel-not-palestine">A Referendum on Israel</a>--Daniel Gordis<br />September 14, 2011<br /><br /><strong><em>Daniel Gordis is president of the Shalem Foundation and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He is the author, most recently, of “Saving Israel: How the Jewish People Can Win a War That May Never End.”<br /></em></strong><br />Not long ago, one could have imagined Israel voting for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. While some Israelis are merely resigned to Palestinian independence, others actually believe that Palestinian statehood is the only way to resolve this interminable conflict.<br /><br />If the U.N. votes to recognize Palestinian statehood, Israel will hunker down and hold on, hoping the international community will come to its senses..</p><br /><br /><p><strong>Furthermore, Israelis understand that what ignited Palestinian nationalism was, ironically, Palestinians’ witnessing the rebirth of a newly sovereign Jewish people.</strong> Independence has enabled Jews to return to their ancestral homeland, revitalize their ancient language, gather their exiles from a far-flung Diaspora and engage in a public debate about what should constitute Jewishness in the 21st century. All of these are hallmarks of a flourishing people, and one can well understand why Palestinians would seek the same.<br /><br /><strong>Nonetheless, Israel will not vote for Palestinian statehood, because the U.N. vote is more a referendum on Israel than it is on Palestine.</strong> Marginalized as never before, Israel is now witness to Iran’s continuing nuclear aspirations, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s cozying up to Iran by threatening Israel and Egyptian masses who despise Israel simply for existing. Iran, Turkey and Egypt have assumed their positions because of radicalization in the Arab world, not because of anything to do with the Palestinians.<br /><br />Capitalizing on this trend, the Palestinians are explicitly transforming the vote into a referendum on Israel. <strong>Just days ago, Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority claimed that the Palestinians' land had been occupied for 63 years</strong>. <strong>The “occupation” to which he refers is thus not the result of Israel’s victory in 1967, but rather, Israel’s very creation in 1948. If the U.N. votes to recognize Palestinian statehood in light of this attitude, it will simply be tightening the noose further.<br /><br />Because such hatred of the Jewish state cannot be appeased, Israel has no good options at the moment. It will thus hunker down and hold on, hoping that the international community that voted to create the Jewish state just decades ago might soon return to its senses.<br /></p></strong>David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2873837983794172904.post-25182193370957304182011-09-10T08:53:00.000-07:002011-09-10T09:20:48.426-07:00A Broader View of History: The Deeper Implications of 9/11 for America and the WestTrenchant, insightful piece by Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the UK.<br />An essay with broad historical sweep and well worth reading in its entirety on this, the 10th Anniversary of 9/11<br />db<br /><br /><a href="http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/4049/full">How to Reverse the West's Decline</a> - Jonathan Sacks<br />1989 was the year of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War. One narrative was that the West had won. Communism had imploded. The other narrative was quite different. The key precipitating event of the fall of Communism, the withdrawal, in 1989, of the Soviet army from Afghanistan, set in motion the rapid collapse of one of the world's two superpowers. It was achieved not by the United States and its military might, but by a small group of religiously inspired fighters, the mujahideen and their helpers. If that is what a small group of highly motivated religious fighters could do to one superpower, why not the other, America and the West? That is when 9/11 was born.<br />The question is not radical Islam but, does the West believe in itself any more? Is it capable of renewing itself as it did two centuries ago? Or will it crumble as did the Soviet Union from internal decay. The writer is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth. (Standpoint-UK)David Brumerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04290621672310065155noreply@blogger.com0