From @CAMERAorg: Even in naming a govt ministry, @NYTimes finds a way to disparage Israel. http://t.co/YG9R2i3sjx pic.twitter.com/OU86StDmij
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) June 21, 2015
Labels: anti-Israel media bias, CAMERA, Jeff Jacoby, New York Times
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:00 PM
1 comments
After more than 25 years of working for newspapers, I figured I knew something about stories that grab public attention. But the intensity of interest in my son’s disappearance was extraordinary. Of course some of that was due to the public following that comes with a regular byline in the Boston Globe. But I wasn’t prepared for the way the news erupted, especially on social media, or how it radiated outward in wider and wider spheres of compassion and concern.
It astonished the police, too. “You have an amazing community here,” the detectives working on the case told us more than once. Tips, queries, and offers of help surged into the Brookline police station. Maimonides, the Modern Orthodox Jewish day school where Caleb is an 11th-grader, coordinated a local search effort involving more than 200 volunteers. But offers of aid came pouring in from strangers in other states and countries, many of whom were prepared to drop everything and go anywhere they were needed to search for a teen they didn’t know from a city many had never been to.
The “amazing community” that so impressed the detectives wasn’t just the community of Maimonides school students, administrators, and graduates, who poured heart and soul into finding Caleb. It wasn’t just the broader Jewish community, so often riven by factions and disputes, that momentarily set those differences aside out of concern for a missing boy.
It was more — much more, as I came to understand while trying to make sense of the tide of kindness, empathy, and worry that helped keep my family afloat during those agonizing days.
Like the interlocking circles of a Venn diagram, our “amazing community” is really many communities with one family common to all of them. We were embraced and helped and prayed for by people who are connected to us through our son’s school or our local synagogue — as well as by others with different connections: residents of Brookline, my colleagues at the Boston Globe, companies my wife has worked for, readers (by no means all fans) of my column, fellow media people, our younger child’s school, charities we support, causes we’ve been involved in, people who know Caleb’s far-flung aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
And above and beyond them all, the “amazing community” of parents who have been through their own stresses and storms, and who know from experience that no family is immune to them.
Labels: Jeff Jacoby
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:22 AM
1 comments
Our prayers have been answered. We are thrilled to hear from the Brookline Police that our beloved son Caleb has been found and is safe.
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) January 10, 2014
Labels: Jeff Jacoby
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:46 AM
0 comments
Police have told Maimonides parents that they’ve never seen this degree of interest in a missing person. They’ve received calls from strangers in Israel who are ready to fly over and carefully comb the streets of Brookline with the Maimonides classmates who are searching for him, house-to-house, in below-freezing weather. For Modern Orthodox Jews, the story has radically altered and personalized the notion of missing children. And for Caleb’s neighbors, the “it-couldn’t-happen-here-ness” that is practically synonymous with Brookline’s suburban idyll has been totally shattered.
Once a year, when Caleb was younger, his father would take a break from writing about hot-button political issues like pension reform or Roe v. Wade, and turn his column into a letter to his son, writing frankly and intelligently about the challenges of fatherhood. In one of those columns, written on the occasion of Caleb’s 10th birthday, he recalled a lesson from Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, who wrote that rather than feeling “startled or inconvenienced by the siren of an ambulance or firetruck,” we should “offer a prayer that the EMTs or firefighters arrive in time to help whoever is in danger.” I’m hopeful that help will arrive for Caleb. And the next time a missing person announcement appears on my Twitter feed, I’ll read it carefully and retweet it before it’s whisked away, downstream.Read the whole thing.
Labels: Jeff Jacoby, personal stuff
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:20 AM
6 comments
Jeff Jacoby is a hateful fanatic, but I very much hope his son is quickly found safe and sound
http://t.co/BDIJnT9E0H
— Hussein Ibish (@Ibishblog) January 8, 2014
Labels: Jeff Jacoby, myth of moderate Palestinian
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:50 PM
1 comments
Early on, the Haggadah introduces the Four Sons -- the four types of children a parent must teach. "One is wise," the ancient text reads, "one wicked, one simple, and one does not know how to ask."
Which son are you?
In a way, you have been all of them: You were once a bright and lively toddler, too young for questions, taking everything on faith. With speech came "simple" curiosity, along with an endless train of ingenuous questions about everything. Now, at age 12, you are becoming quite the adolescent, with a streak of "wicked" obstinacy -- quick to challenge your parents' views and to ask why their opinions should carry greater weight than yours. Then again, you have moments of wondrous maturity and good judgment, when your strong intelligence shows hints of the wise adult I hope you will become.
Which is the real you, Caleb? Are you the budding philosopher who has taken to insisting lately that "nothing really matters," since no matter what any of us does or doesn't do, the universe won't notice? Or the perennial naysayer who surprised me by saying yes when I proposed that you sign up for sailing lessons at Community Boating -- and then surprised me even more by thoroughly enjoying the experience? Are you the sarcastic kid who mocks Mama when she loses her patience with you? Or the affectionate big brother who lavishes attention on Micah? Is the authentic Caleb the sometimes sullen pre-teen with the seemingly bottomless reserve of grievance and indignation? Or the industrious helper who for the last few days has rolled up his sleeves and good-naturedly pitched in to get the house ready for Passover?
Last December you came with me to Washington and a reception at the White House. Even now I smile at the recollection of how engaging you were, and how pleasant your company. For 24 delightful hours, nothing provoked an argument or spoiled your amiability -- not even when you hungrily forked a mouthful of what you thought was lox, only to discover, standing there in the State Dining Room buffet line, that you were chewing on a mouthful of excruciatingly sharp ginger.
Life is sometimes like that: It feeds you raw ginger when you think you're getting smoked lox. No one escapes occasional disappointments or unwelcome surprises, and one aspect of maturity is being able to meet them with equanimity. I can't say you always manage it. But just as your 12-year-old body increasingly prefigures the man you're becoming, your behavior and temperament today -- even with the storms and stresses of adolescence -- are gradually resolving themselves into the good and upright character that I am confident will be your hallmark tomorrow.
Labels: Jeff Jacoby, personal stuff
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:40 AM
2 comments
Caleb Jacoby, an 11th grade student at Maimonides School, has been missing from home since yesterday. The school is engaging all of its resources to aid Caleb's parents and the Brookline Police. Our entire school community is praying for Caleb's safe return. Anyone with information should contact the Brookline police at 617-730-2222.Please spread this post around. I know you are all praying with me for Caleb's safe return.
Labels: Jeff Jacoby, personal stuff
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:52 PM
4 comments
A gutten zummer - a good summer to everyone (that's what we say after the Shavuoth holiday).1) Israel's imageI'm actually glad Jacoby wrote that column and I think he makes a valid point.
Recently, Ambassador Michael Oren wrote a column asking What Happened to Israel's Reputation? (or to access the complete article click on the link from here.)There was a panoramic portrayal of Jerusalem, described as "the focus of Jewish prayers for 2,000 years" and the nucleus of new Jewish neighborhoods. Life emphasized that in its pre-1967 borders, Israel was "a tiny, parched, scarcely defensible toe-hold." The edition's opening photo shows a father embracing his Israeli-born daughter on an early "settlement," a testament to Israel's birthright to the land.In a nutshell, Oren explains:
Would a mainstream magazine depict the Jewish state like this today, during the week of its 64th birthday?
Unlikely. Rather, readers would learn about Israel's overwhelming military might, brutal conduct in warfare and eroding democratic values—plus the Palestinians' plight and Israeli intransigence. The photographs would show not cool students and cutting-edge artists but soldiers at checkpoints and religious radicals.It began with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1974 speech to the U.N., when he received a standing ovation for equating Zionism with racism—a view the U.N. General Assembly endorsed the following year. It gained credibility on college campuses through anti-Israel courses and "Israel Apartheid Weeks." It burgeoned through the boycott of Israeli scholars, artists and athletes, and the embargo of Israeli products. It was perpetuated by journalists who published doctored photos and false Palestinian accounts of Israeli massacres.Jeff Jacoby takes issue with Oren's argument and responds, The peace process battered Israel's reputation:The real answer is that Israel's global standing has been debased not despite the "peace process," but because of it.I understand Jacoby's answer, but it's not entirely convincing. During the past nineteen years, clearly statements like Ehud Barak's have fed or justified the growing anti-Israel sentiments we see in the media. But even before Oslo, there was plenty of bias. For example, in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Six Day War, Tom Brokaw hosted a special, Six Days Plus 20 Years: a Dream Is Dying on NBC.
For 19 years Israel has clung to a policy of appeasement that has made it seem weak and irresolute -- a policy that successive Israeli governments have justified by denigrating Jewish rights to the land, while playing up the Palestinian narrative. Ehud Barak infamously said in 1998 that if he had been a Palestinian, he might have joined a terrorist group, and that "there is legitimacy for a Palestinian to fight." Were an American presidential hopeful to suggest that under other circumstances he could see himself becoming an al-Qaeda terrorist, his White House ambitions would instantly implode. But Barak's remarks didn't prevent him from becoming prime minister.
With its embrace of the peace process, "Israel stopped defending its own claim to the West Bank and Gaza and instead increasingly endorsed the Palestinian claim," Israeli journalist Evelyn Gordon has written. "And with no competing narrative to challenge it any longer, the view of Israel as a thief, with all its attendant consequences, has gained unprecedented traction."
In the United States, though, I'd take issue with Ambassador Oren's concerns. It's true that in certain segments of the opinion making community, there is a strong tendency to blame Israel first. Fortunately, that doesn't seem to have affected the American public as a whole. According to Gallup's latest country ratings 71 percent of Americans look at Israel favorably compared to 24 percent unfavorably. Israel is also viewed more favorably than the Palestinians by a rate of nearly four to one. Granted, without the biased coverage of Israel, I believe Israel's ratings would be even better, but in the United States the hostility of the media and academic elites has not had a major impact on Israel's image.
2) Brag about a pirate day
CAMERA noticed that Iran's boast of having saved an American ship from pirates was denied by the shipping company, but that CNN never published the denial.
So it's interesting to read The Lede blog from the New York Times and see the denial mentioned but ...The Danish company that operates the ship, the Maersk Line, said its onboard guards repelled an attack from multiple pirate skiffs after the attackers opened fire on the vessel, the Maersk Texas. “Despite clear warning signals, the skiffs continued their direct line toward Maersk Texas and the embarked security team fired warning shots,” the company told the maritime news site gCaptain. “The pirates then fired upon Maersk Texas, and the security team returned fire per established U.S. Coast Guard rules of engagement.”"[D]ifferent interpretations?" One account is true and one is false. The next paragraph attempts to inject a little more uncertainty:
But Iranian state media had a different interpretation of events on Thursday, crediting the safety of ship to a nearby Iranian naval warship. “An Iranian naval ship was patrolling the area when it received an S O S from the American cargo ship,” read a report on IRNA, the state-run news agency, that quoted Iran’s naval authorities. “Upon arrival of Iranian forces the pirates who had attacked the American ships aboard some speed boats had to flee the scene.”Lt. Cmdr. Mark Hankey, a spokesman for Combined Task Force 151, an international counterpiracy team off the coast of Africa, was unable to confirm Iran’s role in the episode, though he said such behavior would not be surprising. “If the Iranians responded to a mayday call, then that’s perfectly normal activity,” he told The Associated Press. But, he added, the nature of the episode was not certain. “It is not clear from the information available to date whether this was a piracy event,” he said.So this source is quoted as saying that Iran may well have checked out the situation and that even at that it may not have a real instance of piracy. The Lede notes reasons that Iran might want to boast about having helped an American ship, but overall seems determined to explain away Iranian claims that seem exaggerated, if not false.
3) Fighting Kirk
In his dispatch over the political battle brewing between the State Department and Sen. Mark Kirk, Josh Rogin reports:For the people involved in the issue on the ground, the distinction is not as important as the U.N. mission to feed and support these 5 million Palestinians. They see the Kirk amendment as part of a pattern of legislative moves against UNRWA in the U.S. Congress, including a drive to cut off U.S. funding by House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL).There's a point that Rogin is missing here. The UNRWA isn't just about feeding Palestinian refugees, but about maintaining them (and their grievances against Israel.) So one of the effects of UNRWA is to expand the definition and thus the number of Palestinian refugees.
They also note that the drive to redefine how UNRWA classifies refugees is supported by Israeli President Bibi Netanyahu and a similar drive is led in the Israeli parliament by lawmaker Einat Wilf.
"There are some individuals that believe if they unilaterally in America make changes, that will solve peace processes, and that's really naïve," one U.N. official said. "It has to be done by the parties involved, not the U.S. Congress."
Assaf Romirowsky and Alexander Joffe write in Palestinian Refugees Forever?It is long past time that limits are set on the never-ending expansion of Palestinian refugees. A new proposal from Kirk therefore sets out a more precise series of definitions for American aid to UNRWA, to be specified in the Memorandum of Understanding with the organization.According to Rogin, in addition to the State Department, Sen. Leahy and the government of Jordan oppose the Kirk amendment.
The draft amendment states that "a Palestinian refugee is defined as a person whose place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who was personally displaced as a result of the 1948 or 1967 Arab-Israeli conflicts, who currently does not reside in the West Bank or Gaza and who is not a citizen of any other state."
Refugee status would therefore no longer be heritable, at least if UNRWA were to continue to receive U.S. funding. The amendment would also require the secretary of State to report to Congress about the notoriously slippery numbers of refugees and what measures the U.S. government is taking to ensure these limits are abided by.
Labels: Ehud Barak, Iranian navy, Jeff Jacoby, Mark Kirk, Michael Oren, Middle East Media Sampler, Middle East peace process, Oslo accords, Soccer Dad, US State Department
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:10 PM
0 comments
For those who would disparage the uniqueness of the Holocaust, Jeff Jacoby explains what's different about it. The destruction of European Jewry stands alone because it was not a means to any end. The "Final Solution" was an end in itself. Jews were not murdered by the millions in the context of a struggle for power or land or wealth. There was no political or economic rationale for wiping out the Jews; they had nothing the Nazis coveted, and Germany gained nothing by their deaths. There was only the monomaniacal ideology of eliminationist antisemitism -- the determination to track down and kill anyone born of Jewish ancestry. "It was precisely this -- the fact of being born -- that was the mortal sin, to be punished by death," the historian Yehuda Bauer has observed. "That had never happened at any time -- or anywhere -- before."Read it all.
Jews were satanic, Hitler said -- the seed and prototype of the Judeo-Christian values to which the National Socialist revolution was so violently opposed. Their very existence was a threat to the Nazi creed of Aryan power, blood, and soil. Consequently, they had to be physically destroyed. Not segregated, not expelled, not forced to convert or assimilate. Destroyed.
...
Hitler has been dead for 66 years, but in the ongoing campaign against the Jewish state, Hitlerism thrives. "Its geographic center of gravity has moved to the Middle East," writes Robert Wistrich, the foremost modern scholar of antisemitism, "but the tone and content of the rhetoric, along with the manifest will to exterminate the Jews, are virtually identical to German Nazism. . . . Radical Islamists of every stripe openly proclaim at every opportunity that the eradication of Israel is a divine commandment, the will of God, and a necessary prologue to the liberation of mankind."
Labels: Adolph Hitler, anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Jeff Jacoby
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:27 PM
1 comments
How could Israel have been so complacent? What could have accounted for such lethargy in the face of a deadly menace that was growing more dangerous by the day?Read the whole thing. I am proud to say that if you go here, you will see that I emphasized the same points about Israel being too complacent.
The answer, says the Winograd Commission, is that too many of "the political and military elites in Israel have reached the conclusion that Israel is beyond the era of wars." Unlike their forbears, who understood that the Jewish state would never have peace until its enemies decided to lay down their arms, today's Israeli leadership imagines that it can achieve peace by means of restraint and retreat.
"Since Israel did not intend to initiate a war," the report concludes, senior officials decided that Israel "did not need to be prepared for 'real' war." And that being the case, "there was also no urgent need to update in a systematic and sophisticated way Israel's overall security strategy and to consider how to mobilize . . . all its resources -- political, economic, social, military, spiritual, cultural, and scientific -- to address the totality of the challenges it faces."
Fed up with fighting, aching to live normally, Israelis lulled themselves into a stupor. They shook hands with Yasser Arafat and ran away from Lebanon and expelled the Jews from Gaza. They blamed themselves for their enemies' hatred and turned the other cheek to suicide bombings and Kassam rocket attacks. They tried to be Athens, one Israeli commentator wrote last year. But to survive in the Middle East, even Athens must sometimes act like Sparta.
"We are tired of fighting," Olmert moaned in a 2005 speech. "We are tired of defeating our enemies." But those who grow tired of defeating their enemies generally end up being defeated by them.
As America's beleaguered ally searches for new leadership, one voice worth heeding is that of Hebrew University game theorist and Nobel laureate Robert Aumann.
"We are like a mountain climber who gets caught in a snowstorm," Aumann said at this year's Herzliya Conference in January. " If he falls asleep, he will freeze to death. We are in terminal danger because we are tired. I will allow myself to say a few unpopular, unfashionable words: Our panicked lunging for peace is working against us. It brings us farther away from peace, and endangers our very existence.
Labels: Jeff Jacoby, New Middle East, Winograd Commission
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:43 PM
1 comments
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
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