When the 'peace process' and a 'Palestinian state' are your religion
Greetings once again from Boston, where the local time is 5:09 pm as I start this post.
I learned in a yeshiva that shall remain nameless in 1979-80 (okay, some of my readers know which one it was, but please don't mention it in comments or I'll delete them). The yeshiva was unusually open in terms of the viewpoints that were tolerated by the Roshei Yeshiva (heads of the yeshiva). An apocryphal store from the year before I arrived would perhaps be the best illustration.
The year before I arrived, one of the Roshei Yeshiva stood up and spoke out in favor of the then pending Camp David accords with Egypt, pursuant to which Israel was going to return every last inch of Sinai to the Egyptian aggressors from which it had captured Sinai 11-12 years earlier. There was an argument about what the Rosh Yeshiva was saying, and one of the other rabbis stood up and started screaming at him in the Beit Midrash (study hall). That Rosh Yeshiva passed away a bit more than a year ago. His eldest son is today one of the Roshei Yeshiva. The rabbi who stood up and screamed at him is also one of the Roshei Yeshiva today.
Perhaps that will explain to some of you how it could be that Rabbi Donniel Hartman (then known as Danny) and I both studied in the same yeshiva at the same time. I did not know him well, but even then I had heard of the Sholom Hartman Institute founded by his father. I wonder which of us got the yeshiva's openness correctly. This statement seems like an overstep to the yeshiva's philosophy in my book, for reasons I will explain below.
Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in
Jerusalem and an Orthodox rabbi, focused his part on the Israeli side of
the conflict.
Hartman said he dreams of a time where he can live side-by-side with the Palestinian state in peace and security.
Change must be made, he said, as fear of the unknown can begin to define and warp an individual’s existence.
“We also have to unequivocally stop acting in such a way that
undermines each other’s hopes,” he said. “If the deepest hopes of the
Palestinians and my hope for them is to be a free people living as
sovereign in sovereign state, side-by-side with Israel, any action which
undermines the fulfillment or the completion of that dream has to cease
to be.
“It is not simply enough for me to declare my commitment
to a Palestinian state, anything I do that undermines that possibility
has to become forbidden either as a political position, let alone as a
political platform or political action.”
The emphasis is mine.
Really? If defending Jews anywhere means no 'Palestinian state,' that means no defending Jews anywhere? Not in my Talmud and not in my Rambam (for starters).
While the yeshiva in which we studied was quite open, it was still well within Torah boundaries. I find it hard to believe that the Roshei Yeshiva - today or in my times - would have placed the value of a 'Palestinian state' on a pedestal above the Torah. In fact, I'm sure they would not.
You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard how the British Labor Party has been overrun by anti-Semitism, and how that's come to a head in the last week or two.
But Britain is not the only place that's happened. Anti-Semitism, politely described as anti-Zionism, has become synonymous with the Left in every Western country.
Two important weekend pieces look at this phenomenon. The first is Stephen Pollard in the London Telegraph. Pollard concentrates on what's going on in his home country, Britain, and says that he's scared of what he sees. He also sees that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
But on another, more visceral
level, it chills me to the bone. And it’s not the terrorists. They
threaten me, of course, as they threaten us all. Yet to me, the real
chill comes from their fellow travelers – the useful idiots of the
terrorists and Jew-murderers who say they do not have a racist bone in
their body, but when it comes to Jews, a blind spot emerges.
The likes,
to be blunt, of the now suspended Ken Livingstone, who claims never to
have come across a single example of Anti-semitism in the Labour Party.
He clearly has never looked in the mirror. Much has been written – especially by the brilliant Nick Cohen
– on the "Red/Green Alliance"; the phenomenon by which a swathe of the
Left has linked up with radical Islam, leading to the bizarre spectacle
of Leftist feminists supporting Islamists who would cut off the hands of
women who read books.
With "anti-Western-imperialism" as part of the glue binding the
alliance, everything else falls into place. So Hamas and Hezbollah might
have as their defining goal the elimination of an entire people from
the face of the earth, but that unfortunate consequence for Jews is by
the by, because Hamas and Hezbollah are freedom fighters.
And because Israel is part of the
Western imperium, as well as a key target for Islamists, it is also
enemy number one for progressives. So an obsessive preoccupation with
the Jewish state becomes the default position of the Left. China,
Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia – pah! The focus must be on Israel and Israel
alone. From that springs an entire worldview that encompasses "Zionist"
control of the media, of business, of everything. And we can’t be
accused of targeting Jews because we don’t use the word. We say Zionist,
not Jew.
So deep does this warping of what it means to be Left and progressive
now run that it is almost prosaic to assert Zionist control. But now,
to cap it, we have a Labour leader whose entire political career has
been in this milieu – feeding it, growing it and pushing it.
...
Should I admit that I am afraid? Because I am. I don’t go about my
life in fear. I wouldn’t be writing this or doing my job if I did. But
how, quite rationally, can I not be afraid when Jews are being murdered
on the streets of Europe simply for being Jews; when anti-Semitic tropes
and discourse is becoming part of the mainstream of political debate;
and when one of our main political parties is led by a man who does not
merely let this fester, but actually describes representatives of terrorist groups as "friends"?
If this is the level we have reached today, I fear not just for
myself but far more for my children. History shows that when
anti-Semitism takes hold it does not wither; it grows. Yes, Britain is a
wonderful home to Jews, as it is to all minorities. Yes, we have the
full backing of the law and the authorities. But yes, I do look over my
shoulder. Wouldn’t you?
In the United States, the Harvard Law Record went to some lengths
to conceal the identity of a law student who attacked a visiting Israeli
dignitary as — in the classic anti-Semitic formulation — “smelly.” That
student was Husam El-Qoulaq, a Palestinian leftist. The campus Left
has, to no one’s surprise, rallied to his defense. Among those defending
him were a number of Jewish law students, who insisted that El-Qoulaq
couldn’t possibly have known the anti-Semitic history of “smelly Jew”
rhetoric, in spite of his having been reared at the world center of such
nonsense.
Others insisted that the Harvard case and the Labour cases are — this,
too, will be familiar — not at all about anti-Semitism but about
anti-Zionism.
That argument does not stand up to two seconds’ scrutiny, and never
has. One of the fundamental stories of history is that people move
around and bump into each other. It is true that most of the current
Jewish population of Israel descends from people who were not precisely
sons of the soil they now inhabit. But then, neither are the so-called
Palestinians, who are Arabs. Arabs famously come from Arabia, but they
are located all over the world. No one talks about the need to get the
Arabs out of Egypt or Libya — or Palestine, for that matter — any more
than anybody seriously thinks about returning the Americas to the
descendants of the aboriginal population, which, of course, wasn’t
aboriginal, either, but merely the first to emigrate. The Irish are
descended of people not native to Ireland, as indeed ultimately is every
population in the world, including those in the African cradle of
humanity.
And it isn’t because the establishment of Israel is, relatively
speaking, fresh in the historical memory, and therefore an open wound.
Before the end of World War II, there was no Pakistan, and to the extent
that there was an “India,” it was a geographical rather than a
political term, much like “Palestine.” There was no independent Ireland
until the 1920s and no Republic of Ireland until 1948. There was no
People’s Republic of China until 1949. There was no Zimbabwe until 1980,
no Czech Republic until 1993, and no modern Democratic Republic of the
Congo until 1997. Israel is an ancient state compared with geopolitical
newcomers such as the 30-odd countries created since 1990.
...
For those who learned at the feet of that old fraud Edward Said,
the Jews are the colonialists, the European modernists inflicting
capitalism and technology upon the noble savages of their imaginations.
The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews
and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s
estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed
to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different
direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated
economies.
For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain,
and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and
those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch
NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk,
son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a
desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with
technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any
other country except the United States and China. The economy under
Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita
that barely exceeds that of Sudan.
The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is
that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I
stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza
shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for
that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is
impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the
Jewish state has done.
And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state
exterminated.
In case I don't get to post again before the holiday starts, a Chag Kasher v'Sameyach (Happy and Kosher Passover) to all of you. And since there's still a little time left, let this Passover - and if not this certainly the next one - be celebrated with the paschal lamb being sacrificed in the rebuilt Third Temple in the Holy City of Jerusalem. There's plenty of room for a tent for all of you to stay in my backyard :-)
At Legal Insurrection, Miriam Elman reports that the loony Jewish Left, lead by 'Jewish' Voice for 'Peace' (JVP) has published a Haggada this year. I have my doubts that anyone who reads this blog is going to want it in their house, but....
I was curious to see what they do for the end of the seder, when we all say "Next year in [rebuilt] Jerusalem. Here's the answer.
Question 4. “Next Year in Jerusalem!”
We now end our Seder meal once again with the proclamation “Next Year in Jerusalem!” And so
we ask: what will we do to ensure that Jerusalem lives up to its name as a city of peace? How will
we respond as the Jewish state increasingly implements policies that claim this holy city in the
name of one people only? Do we dare to dream of a city divided or a city truly united for all its
inhabitants?
...and if we do believe that Jerusalem must be, once and for all, a true City of Peace, what are we
willing to do to make it so?
CLOSING
As we close tonight, go around your table and say goodnight and one thing that you are taking
away with you from this evening’s seder.
TOGETHER:
Next Year in Jerusalem! Next Year in al-Quds! Next year in a City of Peace!
Kumbaya.... Totally delusional. Either the Jews will control Jerusalem or the Arabs will make it Judenrein (Jew-free).
But as Miriam reports, the loony Jewish Left has done much more than publish a Haggada.
This week JVP activists have also been partnering with other Jewish activists affiliated with the recently founded If Not Now movement to field a “public Passover action” on April 19-21.
The effort is spread on social media through this week’s trending
hashtags #LiberationSeder and #IfNotNow (see samples below). It’s a five
city (Boston, NYC, Chicago, Bay Area, and Washington, D.C.) series of “seders in the streets”
and in various buildings that house major Jewish organizations in order
to appropriate the holiday’s rituals and texts for an anti-Israel
narrative.
The explicit goal of these publicly staged seders is to replace the
essential Passover themes—the retelling of the exodus from Egypt and the
Jewish people’s redemption in the land of Israel—with messages
concentrated on the “fight for Palestinian liberation”.
Let's go to the videotape.
Even more, it’s a bizarre program of anti-Jewish propaganda that has a
precedent. As I describe below, in the 1920s some deluded Jews in the
Soviet Union also enlisted in a campaign to eliminate the true meaning
of Passover.
It gets worse and there's a lot of it. Read the whole thing, but please don't let it ruin your Passover.
The only meaningful commonality between Islamist and leftist dogma is
hatred for Jews with power, first and foremost for Israel. And the
singular creation of this alliance is the sides’ joint determination
that it isn’t racist to hate the Jewish state, or Jews who refuse to
condemn it.
In this state of affairs, the only outlet that leftists have for their
moral outrage is Israel. Because while they fear being called racist,
they know that being anti-Semitic will not expose them to charges of
racism.
And they know Jews won’t assault them for attacking Israel and its
supporters. So they project all the crimes perpetrated by Islamic
fanatics on Israel.
For instance, this week Megan Marzec, the president of Ohio University’s Student Senate, posted a video of herself dousing herself in a bucket of “blood.”
Marzec explained, “This bucket of blood symbolizes the thousands of
displaced and murdered Palestinians – atrocities which OU is directly
complacent in [sic] through cultural and economic ties with the Israeli
state.”
In other words, she accused Israel of the crimes Hamas seeks to inflict
on Israel, and of the crimes that Islamist forces, such as al-Qaida,
Islamic State and Boko Haram, are currently carrying out in their areas
of operations.
The growing prevalence of anti-Semitism in leftist circles has placed Jewish leftists in a vulnerable position.
Their ideological movement is denying Jews the right to self-defense and
self-determination and siding with Islamists who seek to annihilate
them. For a growing number of leftist Jews, their new status as members
of a hated group has made them feel it necessary to publicly side with
Israel’s enemies against it.
...
Lerman quoted an article published a few weeks before his in The New York Review of Books by Jonathan Freedland titled “Liberal Zionism After Gaza.”
Freedland argued that as the two-state solution becomes more and more
remote, liberal Zionists “will have to decide which of their political
identities matters more, whether they are first a liberal or first a
Zionist.”
But this is of course absurd. The only way a person can uphold
liberal values is by being a Zionist. Israel is the only country in the
region that is a human rights-respecting liberal democracy that is
governed by the rule of law.
What is becoming more and more difficult is being a Zionist while being a
leftist. As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics,
anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist
dogma. And that anti-Semitism will express itself first and foremost as a
virulent rejection of Israel and of Jews who refuse to disavow and
condemn the Jewish state.
...
Leftist Jews must take a lesson from Sotloff, who was reportedly a product of a Jewish-leftist worldview.
They should understand that the decision they are being required to make
is not a choice between liberalism and Zionism, but between liberalism
and a reactionary dogma that sits comfortably with genocidal Jew-haters
and misogynist oppressors.
Are they capable of making the choice? Let's say I have my doubts.
Rabbi Menachem Creditor of Berkeley, California explains why he's done apologizing for Israel to his liberal friends(Hat Tip: Mrs. Carl).
To those who suggest that Prime Minister Netanyahu is over-reacting
to the missiles, I offer this response which I have now shared regularly
at campus and communal conversations:
Israel is treating wounded
Palestinians during this conflict, risking Israeli lives in surgical
strikes to destroy weapons-smuggling tunnels created with building
materials Israel allowed into Gaza for infrastructure projects to
benefit Palestinian society. Just for a moment, consider the deaths that
would result from Israel wishing harm on Palestinian civilians. In just
the last 48 hours, Israel has allowed over 10 tons of goods into Gaza.
During the past weeks, Israel has agreed to two humanitarian
cease-fires. In the first hours of those ceasefires, Hamas rained down
over 70 missiles onto Israel civilians.
I ask: What do Israel's enraged critics truly desire?
How is it possible to hear indignant claims of human rights violations
in the context of Syrians slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands,
state-sanctioned terrorism around the globe, and young immigrants
treated like chattel by the US and other? Israel is doing its best,
sacrificing its own children to preserve the lives of Palestinians.
I
also ask, regarding the world's seemingly acceptance of Hamas' tactics
as the only remaining option left for a desperate leadership:
Were
Hamas to truly lead its people forward to a life of stability and
peace, wouldn't it use building materials for schools instead of
smuggling tunnels? Wouldn't Hamas stop stockpiling weapons in mosques
and transporting them in UN ambulances? Wouldn't Hamas stop firing
missiles from civilian population centers if it valued Palestinian lives
as much as Israel does? If Israel weren't so concerned for Palestinian
lives, wouldn't it respond to Hamas' horrific decisions in kind?
I
ask the enraged critics of Israel's defensive responses to Hamas: Would
you have us not respond to this monstrosity? Do you think it's not
worth losing the PR battle to retain our humanity and save as many lives
as possible? What country would stand by when thousands of terrorist
missiles assault its citizens? I, a Jew, have lost 20 of my sons in the
last three days, because I will not lose my humanity and stage a
careless ground war in Gaza that would cause mass casualties. Though I
fight monsters, I will not become one.
My response has changed
these last few weeks, in which three Jewish teens were murdered by Arab
terrorists and Palestinians celebrated by distributing sweets to
children and an Arab teen was murdered by Jewish terrorists and the
Jewish world condemned the hatred. I am done trying to apologetically
explain Jewish morality. I am done apologizing for my own Jewish
existence.
Some will call this needless hyperbole. But, having
watched in this last week anti-Semitic "die-ins" in Boston, violent
assaults against Jews in Los Angeles and Antwerp, and an almost pogrom
at a synagogue in Paris, I'm done mincing my own words.
We will do what we must to protect our people. We have that right. We are not less deserving of life and quiet than anyone else.
The BDS movement's goals have become so blatantly obvious that even such uber-Leftists as Peter Beinart and MJ Rosenberg have been forced to admit that BDS's goal is not a 'two-state solution.'
Peter Beinart, the de facto spokesman for Liberal Zionism, famously called for a boycott of the West Bank
in 2012. In the same article, however, he also called for the
increasing investment inside the Green Line, in order to distinguish
“Zionist BDS” from the predominant BDS movement.
“Boycotting anything inside the green line invites ambiguity about the boycott’s ultimate goal — whether it seeks to end Israel’s occupation or Israel’s existence.”
MJ Rosenberg, a longtime critic of Israel’s West Bank
policy, who was spurred by last week’s debate at the University of
Michigan, to write a detailed piece about the duplicity of the BDS used the same argument:
The reason why BDS keeps
failing despite the almost universal recognition that the occupation of
the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the blockade of Gaza, are illegal
and immoral is that the BDS movement is not targeting the occupation per se. Its goal is the end of the State of Israel itself.
In its view, all of historic
Palestine is occupied territory; that means Tel Aviv and Haifa as much
as Hebron and Nablus. Obviously, a movement dedicated to eradication of
Israel as a country is never going to achieve support other than from a
radical fringe.
Rosenberg and other supporters of the two-state solution –
including those who support a “limited boycott” of the West Bank for
that purpose – are best positioned to see that the BDS movement is not a
“peace” movement and does not aim for a Palestinians state alongside a Jewish state.
BDS is an all-or-nothing proposition. You can't support BDS and support a 'two-state solution.' Beinart and Rosenberg apparently see that. Does J Street? Do other 'liberal Zionists'? Hmmm.
It's come to this: Ramaz has to ban Rashid Khalidi
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
It's come to this: Ramaz, one of the most prominent Jewish high schools in the New York City area, where one of the most prominent anti-Islam, pro-Israel Jewish bloggers sends their children, had to ban Rashid Khalidi to prevent him from appearing at the school. The students wanted him.
Students of a Jewish modern orthodox upscale high school in New York
City are demanding that the administration permit its political society
to host the noted Palestinian-American academic Professor Rashid Khalidi
after the head of the school barred his appearance.
The
controversy erupted earlier this week when the anti-Zionist blogger
Mondoweiss reported that the Ramaz day school had nixed an appearance by
Khalidi, who was invited to the Manhattan campus by the student-run
political society.
The move angered some students, who were moved to circulate an online
petition that called on the Ramaz headmaster, Paul Shaviv, to reverse
his decision.
...
In a statement issued to JTA on Friday, Shaviv said he was working
with students to “navigate a delicate political situation, respecting
their wish for open exchange of ideas, but also being mindful of
multiple sensitivities within our varied school constituencies.”
The
statement from Ramaz said, “The issue is not whether or not students
should hear another view – they should. Our question was: ‘Is this the
appropriate program?’”
The school’s administration said it
believed the controversy would “massively overshadow any conversation
and would make an educational experience impossible,” and that Khalidi
was not the right partner for dialogue with high school students. Shaviv
said he met with Khalidi and amicably explained the situation to him,
and Ramaz’s statement said the school is “working with the politics club
to arrange an event that will provide the program content they
originally envisaged.”
Sorry but as far as I am concerned a private school has the right to ban whomever they want from appearing at their school, and if the families don't like it, they have the right to vote with their feet and send the kids elsewhere.
It's almost important to remember who Khalidi is.
Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, was born to a
Saudi-Palestinian father and a Lebanese mother. According to the Jewish
Telgraph Agency, Khalidi was an adviser to the Palestine Liberation
Organization during the Madrid peace negotiations in the early 1990s. Khalidi has generated controversy in the past for stating that the Palestinians were legally entitled to resist Israel’s occupation by targeting soldiers.
Prior
to taking up his current post as the Edward Said Professor of Modern
Arab Studies at Columbia, Khalidi also taught at the University of
Chicago and Georgetown University.
Not mentioned: Khalidi is a close friend of President Hussein Obama. When Khalidi left Chicago, there was a going away party at which it was rumored that the future President made anti-Semitic comments. The videotape of that party has never been released.
At least I assume she's a gentile. I'd like you all to meet Chloe Simone Valdary.
Chloe took on Julia Salazar of J Street U earlier on Wednesday in a debate on Twitter. You'll only be able to read it in Chloe's Twitter feed. 'Open-minded' Julia has blocked her account.
Seven and a half years ago, people who wanted to do things like this were kicked off Birthright. Now, we're paying for it. Something is seriously wrong with our government and with our self-image.
The International Day of Non-Violence is marked on 2 October, the
birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement
and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence.
According to General Assembly resolution A/RES/61/271
of 15 June 2007, which established the commemoration, the International
Day is an occasion to "disseminate the message of non-violence,
including through education and public awareness". The resolution
reaffirms "the universal relevance of the principle of non-violence" and
the desire "to secure a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding and
non-violence".
Introducing the resolution in the General Assembly on behalf of 140
co-sponsors, India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, Mr. Anand
Sharma, said that the wide and diverse sponsorship of the resolution was
a reflection of the universal respect for Mahatma Gandhi and of the
enduring relevance of his philosophy. Quoting the late leader’s own
words, he said: "Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of
mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised
by the ingenuity of man".
But most Jews either don't know or don't want to know how Gandhi felt about them and about Israel. This is because Gandhi is a liberal icon, and actually looking at what he said about the State of Israel is going to make an awful lot of Leftist Jews - whose support for Israel is in any event tenuous - uncomfortable. This is Gandhi in 1938.
But my sympathy does not blind me to the requirements of justice. The
cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me.
The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which
the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not,
like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where
they are born and where they earn their livelihood?
Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England
belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman
to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today
cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no
sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against
humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to
the Jews partly or wholly as their national home.
The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of
the Jews wherever they are born and bred. The Jews born in France are
French. If the Jews have no home but Palestine, will they relish the
idea of being forced to leave the other parts of the world in which
they are settled? Or do they want a double home where they can remain
at will? This cry for the national home affords a colourable
justification for the German expulsion of the Jews.
But the German persecution of the Jews seems to have no
parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler
seems to have gone. And he is doing it with religious zeal. For he is
propounding a new religion of exclusive and militant nationalism in the
name of which any inhumanity becomes an act of humanity to be rewarded
here and hereafter. The crime of an obviously mad but intrepid youth
is being visited upon his whole race with unbelievable ferocity. If
there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a
war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole
race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A
discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my
horizon or province.
But if there can be no war against Germany, even for such a
crime as is being committed against the Jews, surely there can be no
alliance with Germany. How can there be alliance between a nation which
claims to stand for justice and democracy and one which is the
declared enemy of both? Or is England drifting towards armed
dictatorship and all it means?
Germany is showing to the world how efficiently violence can
be worked when it is not hampered by any hypocrisy or weakness
masquerading as humanitarianism. It is also showing how hideous,
terrible and terrifying it looks in its nakedness.
Can the Jews resist this organised and shameless persecution?
Is there a way to preserve their self-respect, and not to feel
helpless, neglected and forlorn? I submit there is. No person who has
faith in a living God need feel helpless or forlorn. Jehovah of the
Jews is a God more personal than the God of the Christians, the
Mussalmans or the Hindus, though as a matter of fact in essence, He is
common to all and one without a second and beyond description. But as
the Jews attribute personality to God and believe that He rules every
action of theirs, they ought not to feel helpless. If I were a Jew and
were born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim
Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German may, and
challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon; I would refuse to
be expelled or to submit to discriminating treatment. And for doing
this, I should not wait for the fellow Jews to join me in civil
resistance but would have confidence that in the end the rest are bound
to follow my example. If one Jew or all the Jews were to accept the
prescription here offered, he or they cannot be worse off than now. And
suffering voluntarily undergone will bring them an inner strength and
joy which no number of resolutions of sympathy passed in the world
outside Germany can. Indeed, even if Britain, France and America were
to declare hostilities against Germany, they can bring no inner joy, no
inner strength. The calculated violence of Hitler may even result in a
general massacre of the Jews by way of his first answer to the
declaration of such hostilities. But if the Jewish mind could be
prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined
could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had
wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to
the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be
followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long
sleep.
...
And now a word to the Jews in Palestine. I have no doubt that they are
going about it in the wrong way. The Palestine of the Biblical
conception is not a geographical tract. It is in their hearts. But if
they must look to the Palestine of geography as their national home, it
is wrong to enter it under the shadow of the British gun. A religious
act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. They
can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should
seek to convert the Arab heart. The same God rules the Arab heart who
rules the Jewish heart. They can offer satyagraha in front of the Arabs
and offer themselves to be shot or thrown into the Dead Sea without
raising a little finger against them. They will find the world opinion
in their favour in their religious aspiration. There are hundreds of
ways of reasoning with the Arabs, if they will only discard the help of
the British bayonet. As it is, they are co-shares with the British in
despoiling a people who have done no wrong to them.
I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen
the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an
unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the
accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the
Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds.
Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title
by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on
earth. Every country is their home including Palestine not by
aggression but by loving service. A Jewish friend has sent me a book
called The Jewish Contribution to Civilisation by Cecil Roth. It gives a
record of what the Jews have done to enrich the world`s literature,
art, music, drama, science, medicine, agriculture, etc. Given the will,
the Jew can refuse to be treated as the outcaste of the West, to be
despised or patronised. He can command the attention and respect of the
world by being man, the chosen creation of God, instead of being man
who is fast sinking to the brute and forsaken by God. They can add to
their many contributions the surpassing contribution of non-violent
action.
In other words, Gandhi advocated Jews being led to their deaths for the sake of 'non-violence.' That's a false god if I ever heard of one.
Here's what Pamela Geller said at the Chabad House in Great Neck last Sunday. This is what the Jewish Left and the Muslims didn't want you to hear. And it should be obvious why: It conflicts with and destroys their world view.
Introduced by David Yerushalmi, Pamela Geller gave this talk at Chabad
of Great Neck, Long Island, after her scheduled talk was cancelled at
Great Neck Synagogue under leftist and Islamic supremacist pressure. The
Chabad house was packed and the overflow crowd watched on a jumbotron
outside -- nearly 1,000 people attended. Videographer Pamela Hall.
The letter, initiated by the
Israel Policy Forum, came in the wake of US President Barack Obama’s visit to
Israel last month. It called upon Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to work
closely with US Secretary of State John Kerry to devise pragmatic initiatives,
consistent with Israel’s security needs, which would represent Israel’s
readiness to make painful territorial sacrifices for the sake of
peace.
“The first and foremost responsibility of the government must be
the security of the citizens and guaranteeing a safe future for Israel,” Elkin
said in an interview with Ma’ariv.
“Pressure from overseas must not guide
the prime minister in how he carefully administers the diplomatic
process.”
Elkin, who lives in Kfar Eldad, a settlement in Gush Etzion,
came out strongly against the two-state solution in the
interview.
Here's Rabbi Yosef Geisinsky on why he agreed to host Pamela Geller on Sunday at the Chabad of Great Neck (Hat Tip: Zvi S).
Speaking to COLlive.com, Rabbi Geisinsky said Geller was not the radical "the media proposes" she is. "She speaks against Sharia, terror and anti-Semitism," he said, noting that he expects a crowd of over 1000 people.
He said that "99.9%" of the feedback he has received since scheduling Geller's talk has been positive. "We have been getting very positive input," he said.
"The one who was able to block (her coming to speak) was a Reform Rabbi who fought our public display of the menorah for many years and hates anything to do with Yiddishkeit," he said.
While Rabbi Geisinsky didn't mention the person by name, the Jewish Press reported that cancellation was due to "the intimidating and relentless tactics engaged in by certain leftist Jews, notably Rabbi Jerome Davidson and Rabbi Michael White."
"I knew right away, if this person is against it, I should be for it," said Rabbi Geisinsky who was in a coma recently after suffering a massive heart attack and miraculously recovered.
Rabbi Geisinsky gets what so many - even Orthodox - Jews don't get. The Jews who seek to destroy us from within are the same Jews who make themselves the protectors of radical Islam. Here in Israel, the same Jews who rail against the 'ultra-Orthodox' (and often include the 'settlers' in their rants) are often the same Jews who seek to create a 'Palestinian state.'
Stupid Jews: Carodozo law school journal giving award to Jimmy Carter
Why are some Jews so dumb?
Yeshiva University's Cardozo law school is giving a 'peace award' to one of this generation's greatest anti-Semites: Jimmy the Dhimmi Carter.
The Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution is honored to present President Jimmy Carter with its annual International Advocate for Peace Award. President Carter will speak on "America as Global Mediator." Jimmy
Carter served as president from 1977 to 1981. During his time in
office, he oversaw significant foreign policy accomplishments, including
the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords, the treaty of peace
between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union, and
the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with the People's
Republic of China.
In
1982, President Carter and his wife Rosalynn reinvented the American
"post-presidency" by founding the Carter Center. Actively guided by
President Carter, the nonpartisan and nonprofit Center addresses
national and international issues of public policy. Specifically, the
center works to resolve conflict, promote democracy, protect human
rights, and prevent disease and other afflictions. President Carter and
the Carter Center have engaged in conflict mediation in countless areas
around the world, including Ethiopia and Eritrea (1989), Bosnia (1994),
the Great Lakes region of Africa (1995-96), Sudan and Uganda (1999),
Venezuela (2002-2003), Nepal (2004-2008), and Ecuador and Colombia
(2008).
President
Carter's post-presidential peace-building efforts were recognized in
2002 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his decades of untiring
effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance
democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social
development." He is the only American president to receive the Nobel
Prize for work done primarily after his time in office.
Oy.... Elder of Ziyon has a list of some of Carter's 'achievements - read the whole thing.
A law professor at another university wrote to me that the university and even the law school likely have little control over this, and cannot stop the journal in question (known as the 'Cardozo Journal of International Conflict Resolution') from doing whatever they please. I disagree. They're using campus facilities and they can be stopped by the university from using campus facilities for such invidious purposes.
And yes, I know, not everyone at Cardozo is Jewish (as one of my friends put it, Cardozo represents Yeshiva about as much as Notre Dame represents the Catholic Church). Well, here's the Editor in Chief of the 'Journal of International Conflict Resolution.' Decide for yourselves.
Passover has become a complicated holiday for me. I am still moved
and inspired by the recounting of the Exodus. But the irony of
celebrating Jewish freedom and deliverance into Israel, especially when,
in today’s Israel, it is the Palestinians who face oppression at the
hands of the Israelis, makes it painful. Yet it also renews my
commitment to pursue the kind of justice that the story of Exodus
teaches us is part of our legacy.
I bring this commitment to the Seder by including an
olive on my Seder plate. The olive tree is a universal and ancient
symbol of hope and peace. And sadly, the destruction of Palestinian
olive trees by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army is just one example
of the way that Israeli policies systematically deny Palestinians of
even their most basic rights.
Of course, her argument is a bunch of lies. But leaving an olive on your seder plate is not a bad idea. The olive reminds us of the oil in the Menorah in the Temple, of the oil used to anoint the High Priest in the Temple, and of the minimum portion of various foods that must be eaten in the Jewish tradition, including several at the seder itself.
All of which, of course demonstrates the ancient connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel, which far predates the existence of anything called a 'Palestinian.'
The reason I entitled this post "Martin Peretz, an appreciation,"
is not for what he wrote in 1967, but because of what has happened to
the Left, the Jewish Left and to Peretz in the 46 years that have passed
since he wrote that article.
In the late
1960s, Peretz wasn't alone in defending Israel against the radical Left -
white and black. In 1967, even Jewish Communists were willing to break
ranks to support Israel. And as the 1968 New York Teachers Strike
showed, at the time, liberal Jews in general were willing to defend
themselves from attacks by black anti-Semites.
But
in the intervening years, fewer and fewer voices on the Left, and
specifically on the Jewish Left were willing to take such positions and
pit themselves against their movement. And so as the decades passed,
what were the positions of the radical Left in the 1960s became
increasingly the positions of the mainstream Left, until by last summer,
they became the positions of the majority of delegates at the
Democratic National Convention.
When I was growing up in Chicago, the local Jewish establishment's
refusal to support Israel in the 1982 Lebanon War is what made me decide
to make aliyah. By the time I arrived at Columbia in 1987, and the
Palestinian uprising broke out, it was hard to find Jewish leaders who
were willing to stand up for Israel without stuttering.
Today
the situation has become simply untenable. Suffice it to say that Bill
Ayres's political protégé Barack Obama's success in garnering 70 percent
of the Jewish vote is not an aberration.
Yet
through it all, Martin Peretz has rarely wavered. Despite his attempts
to support the Palestinians, he has not allowed his desire to see the
Arab conflict with Israel resolved diminish his support for Israel. He
has remained a staunch, loyal defender of Israel. When I was growing up,
I relied on his New Republic for its reporting on Israel and the Middle
East. Peretz was one of my intellectual heroes.
In
recent years, I've felt more bemused by than respectful of Peretz. A
colleague of mine quipped some years back that Peretz and Allan
Dershowitz live in an intellectual universe populated only by Peretz and
Dershowitz and they refuse to acknowledge that they are alone. That
quip has probably anchored my thinking on both men ever since.
But even if my colleague's remark was more true than false, reading
the FBI report, I decided I should discard its snide diminution of
Peretz. The fact is, he has been fighting this fight for nearly fifty
years. As a man of the Left, he has fought the fight for Israel and
Jewish rights, increasingly alone for nearly fifty years, and has done
so despite what must have been enormous personal costs as his comrades
all jumped ship, and in many cases, joined the cause of Israel's
enemies.
As someone who grew up half a generation ahead of Caroline (I arrived at Bir Zeit on the Hudson in 1974, decided to make aliya while in yeshiva in 1980, and actually spent the summer of 1982 in Chicago watching Ted Koppel and Bibi Netanyahu every night), what bothers me is why so many American Jews were so swept up by the civil rights movement that they failed to notice or care when it turned against their Jewishness. One could place the blame for that on a lack of Jewish education.
Quite simply, 40-50 years ago. there were much fewer Jewish schools and a much smaller percentage of Jews were educated to care about our people. That wasn't done intentionally. It was just assumed by our parents' generation that we would stick together, even if we didn't have strong Jewish upbringings. We were in the goldener medina and therefore there was no need for that 'old' Jewish education to keep us in the fold (many Zionists made a similar mistake in Israel in the 50's and 60's), and we didn't want to do anything that would harm our college or job prospects. There was also a feeling that Jewish schools weren't 'good enough' academically, partly because of the quota systems that were in effect at the elite universities in the 50's and 60's.
As to how this influenced President Obama (a story to which Caroline only alludes), I discussed that at very great length here.
Only in Israel: Government accused of censorship for not intervening to save 'private' television station
This could only happen in Israel.
Cable Television station Channel 10 is on the verge of shutting down due to financial mismanagement, and the government stands accused of forcing the station into bankruptcy, because... it refused to authorize a government bailout!
"This is another step in the anti-democratic efforts of 'Biberman'
(an amalgamation of the names Bibi, Netanyahu's nickname, and Foreign
Minister Avigdor Liberman)," Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz said. "(Netanyahu
is working) against every address for critical thinking - in court,
academia, culture, civil society organizations, and media."
Labor
party head Shelly Yacimovich charged the prime minister with personally
intervening in demanding the closure of the channel despite agreements
reached by all involved parties that would have saved it. "This is is
flagrant, destructive, anti-Democratic conduct that will will cut the
bread-winnings of hundreds of families, something which is well known
and which doesn't concern Netanyahu in the slightest."
The Tzipi
Livni Party candidate and current MK Yoel Hasson on Sunday slammed
Netanyahu over the state of Israeli media. "The public must awaken to
Netanyahu's campaign to destroy the free media in Israel," Hasson said.
"This method of silencing opinions and legislating anti-democratic laws
must stop."
This is pretty funny. The only opinions expressed in the broadcast media here are those of the Left, and they are nearly always expressed at government expense. The fact that Israeli voters are leaning Right in the upcoming election is a tribute to their ability to think critically and to find alternative news sources that require them to read, often in foreign languages.
Finally, Babylonian Jewry was riven by internal disputes between its
religious and temporal leaders. Disputes, especially disputes that touch
on religious matters invariably lead to extremist views and
unacceptable behavior – all under the guise of following the will of
Heaven.
There is much extremism under display in American Jewry
today. Ah, but you will counter, how about the extremism in the
religious circles in Israel. But there is a fundamental difference
between Israel and America. Here in Israel the extremism is mostly
political in nature - the quest for patronage and budget allocations,
and the personal ambitions of politicians for office and power.
With
all of the trappings of piety surrounding them, the contests here are
basically much more personal than ideological. The anti-Israel groupings
in Israel have waned in numbers and influence while, unfortunately,
they have increased in the American Jewish society. More and more, the
hareidi society in Israel sees itself as part of the general apparatus
of the state, and the nineteenth century battle over Zionism has ended
here. It is a moot question.
Not so in American Jewish society
where actual hatred of the State of Israel exists in many sections of
that society, from the intellectual Left to the extremists in the
religious world on the Right.
When Babylonia saw itself as the substitute for Jerusalem as a safe haven for all eternity, its decline immediately set in.
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
