Netanyahu pulls ahead

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
An example of the level to which Netanyahu's opponents have sunk.

An example of the level to which Netanyahu’s opponents have sunk.

A recent poll has PM Netanyahu pulling away from his challengers in Israel’s election, which is to be held on March 7. Here is the view from the Left:

With the election just over 40 days away, the current electoral picture sees Likud gathering steam; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [25 seats] widening his lead over his main rival, Isaac Herzog [23 seats]; the three ultra-Orthodox parties stabilizing at about 18 seats, similar to what they had in the previous Knesset; and the centrist parties have collectively lost four seats. In short, Netanyahu would undoubtedly be Israel’s next prime minister.

The poll, which was conducted on Sunday under the supervision of Prof. Camil Fuchs with a representative sample of 514 respondents, confirmed what logic and political experience have long since taught us: When diplomatic and security issues dominate the agenda, Netanyahu benefits, even if there’s plenty of public criticism of his handling of these issues – as there has been over his upcoming trip to Washington to address Congress on Iran.

To be fair, which this writer is not, the “public criticism” he mentions has come from Netanyahu’s opponents, who are digging deep to find something that will get traction against the Prime Minister. It also comes from the other side of the world, where President Obama and his friendly media are frantically trying to head off anything that will complicate his attempt to strike a ‘grand bargain’ with Iran, and partition the Middle East between the Iranian regime and the Muslim Brotherhood (thus betraying former allies Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia while guaranteeing chaos in Syria and Lebanon).

I’ll also note that it isn’t an accident that Netanyahu benefits when “security issues” raise their ugly heads. Israelis remember the last time Tzipi Livni (second on Herzog’s list and slated to rotate the Prime Ministership with him should they win) had an important role in the government, as Foreign Minister during and after the bungled Second Lebanon War.

Her signal ‘accomplishment’ was UN Security Council resolution 1701, which was little more than a recommendation that Hizballah should disarm, and made no provision to enforce this. Naturally, Hizballah bounced back to the point that they now have three times as many rockets aimed at Israel than they did prior to the war. When the next round is inevitably fought, Livni will have the blood of many Israelis and Lebanese on her hands.

As long as socioeconomic issues continue to be absent from the headlines, the Likud party chairman and his friends can start planning his third consecutive term as premier (and fourth overall).

Israelis agree that the cost of living here, especially housing, is too high. But Netanyahu’s opponents have no believable plan to fix this. Everyone knows that maintaining military readiness is expensive, and the example of 2006 again — when the army was hobbled by years of budget cuts — is fresh in their minds. Netanyahu, unlike many politicians, is well-versed in economics, as is the present Minister of Economy, Naftali Bennett (of the Jewish Home party, expected to be part of the coalition). The opposition is running American-style ads suggesting that Netanyahu represents the ‘haves’ and they the ‘have-nots’, but Israelis so far haven’t been impressed.

So far, it seems the recent reports of corruption and hedonism at the prime minister’s residences haven’t made much impression on the voters, even though most respondents to the Haaretz poll said police should investigate Sara Netanyahu’s alleged pocketing of bottle-deposit refunds that should have gone to the state.

“Corruption and hedonism” sound like fun, but there is no there there. The best they can do is claim the Sara Netanyahu kept money from recycling bottles (there are a lot of receptions, etc. at the PM’s residence). Mrs. Netanyahu is apparently a very difficult person, and she is more or less the Lindsay Lohan of the Israeli media. But after all, she isn’t the Prime Minister, and Israelis are tired of the press’ obsession with her and would like them to lay off. The pettiness of the accusations and the perceived nastiness of attacking the PM’s family is not helping his opponents.

Maybe saying this won’t make me friends back in the old country, but Israelis seem to have a better grasp of what is important in a leader than a majority of Americans:

When respondents were asked a series of questions about a head-to-head contest between Netanyahu and Herzog, the former won handily on almost every parameter, including suitability to be prime minister, and ability to handle Israel’s diplomatic and security problems. On ability to handle Israel’s economic problems, the two tied – but that’s an issue on which the opposition parties haven’t yet been able to focus public attention.

Moreover, on every issue aside from his handling of the economy, Netanyahu actually increased his lead over Herzog compared to the last Haaretz poll, conducted three weeks ago. Most astonishingly [I am not astonished — ed], when Haaretz asked whom respondents thought would be the next prime minister, only one out of four (21 percent versus 58 percent) chose Herzog. In other words, even many center-left voters don’t foresee a Herzog victory.

So it looks like another term is within Netanyahu’s grasp, as long as he doesn’t make any serious mistakes in the next few weeks. And that is as it should be.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 4 Comments

The uppity Jew card

Posted on February 2, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

If we needed any further evidence that President Obama has it in for PM Netanyahu — in a very special way, with a bitterness that he doesn’t express toward Vladimir Putin or Ali Khamenei — his administration’s behavior in connection with Netanyahu’s planned speech before Congress should provide it.

After White House officials said that the president was “furious” that he had received a “slap in the face” from Netanyahu when he accepted an invitation from Speaker Boehner “behind his back” it turns out that the White House was informed of the invitation before Netanyahu accepted it.

Michael Doran, in a fascinating and horrifying piece about Obama’s tilt toward Iran, writes that

Netanyahu accepted the invitation without first consulting the White House, which reacted in a storm of indignation, describing the move as an egregious break in protocol and an insult to the president. Instead of trying to paper over the disagreement, Obama has done everything in his power to advertise it. In making his personal rift with Netanyahu the subject of intense public debate, the White House means to direct attention away from the strategic rift between them—and from the fact that the entire Israeli elite, regardless of political orientation, as well as much of the U.S. Congress, regards the president’s conciliatory approach to Iran as profoundly misguided.

The White House outrage is manufactured, just as it was when an Israeli official announced that the housing authority was planning to permit apartments to be built in a Jewish neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem during a visit by Joe Biden in March of 2010. And how can we forget the phony contention that Israel was getting weapons from the Pentagon ‘behind the backs’ of the White House and State Department during last summer’s Gaza war?

The administration, it seems, can’t resist playing the ‘uppity Jew’ card whenever Israel doesn’t jump to attention as a good satellite should.

Netanyahu’s domestic opponents, too stupid (or more likely too cynical) to see that it plays into the hands of the administration, have been happy to chime in and say that Netanyahu is going to America as a pre-election stunt, and that he is sacrificing relations with the US for his own political advantage. This is precisely the what the administration would like Americans — including members of Congress — to think, so that they will not pay too much attention to what Netanyahu will say, which is that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the US and others as much as it it to Israel.

Netanyahu argues that the US is on the verge of making a very “bad deal” with Iran that will leave it a “breakout state” that can field a nuclear weapon in a matter of months. Such weapons in the hands of an expansionist nation which is the world’s greatest sponsor of terrorism would be disastrous, even if it didn’t intend (incidentally) to destroy Israel.

As Netanyahu will certainly say, this is a matter too important to be pushed aside for political reasons. And it is by no means certain that his visit to the US will help him at home, since the opposition has attacked him aggressively over this (their next biggest ‘issue’ is an alleged scandal about recycled glass bottles).

Posted in Iran, US-Israel Relations | 4 Comments

How Europe and the US subvert Israel’s sovereignty

Posted on January 28, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

One of the most infuriating things about the struggle to keep a sovereign Jewish state is the degree of interference in its affairs by Western governments and interests — which are, with very few exceptions, anti-Israel in practice if not in word.

The Obama Administration has recently expressed its anger that Israel’s PM Netanyahu wants to ‘interfere in its affairs’ by accepting an invitation to speak to Congress on the subject of Iran. But interference in Israel’s affairs by Western governments is widespread and, unlike Netanyahu’s proposed speech, mostly hidden.

For example, the European Union and individual European states contribute huge sums of money to various non-governmental organizations in Israel which are run and staffed by anti-Zionist Jewish extremists and Arabs. These organizations, like Adalah, B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, Breaking the Silence, etc., along with the international “human rights” establishment (Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, ICRC, and others) create and disseminate propaganda intended to delegitimize the state of Israel and criminalize its actions in self-defense.

Many of these groups work closely with anti-Israel UN forums like the UN Commission on Human Rights), providing raw data — mostly unsupported allegations from sources in terrorist organizations like Hamas — which are sanitized and used to buttress legal and diplomatic warfare against Israel. B’Tselem today is releasing a report which accuses the IDF and Netanyahu government of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge this summer.

Europe is joined in funding these enterprises by the US government and various foundations in the US, among which the New Israel Fund (NIF) is prominent.

But apparently even this isn’t enough. Now a group funded from US and European sources is mounting an effort to defeat PM Netanyahu in the coming election.

Haaretz reporter Roi Arad revealed in an article in the Hebrew edition [January 26] that the foreign funded organization, “One Voice”, is bankrolling the V-2015 campaign to defeat Binyamin Netanyahu’s national camp in the March 2015 Knesset Elections.

One indication of the generous financing is that it has now flown in a team of five American campaign experts (including Jeremy Bird, the Obama campaign’s national field director) who will run the campaign out of offices taking up the ground floor of a Tel Aviv office building.

V-2015 is careful not to support a specific party – rather “just not Bibi”. As such, the foreign funds pouring into the campaign are not subject to Israel’s campaign finance laws.

I question the ‘grassroots’ character of a movement that involves a 5-man team of high-priced professionals including Bird, whose other clients include Hillary Clinton. And I question the honesty of claiming to be nonpartisan when you oppose one side in what is essentially a two-sided race.

The One Voice organization has close connections to the Obama Administration, and it lists the US State Department and the European Commission as ‘partners‘ (ironically, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry refuse to meet with Netanyahu on the grounds that it would constitute ‘interference’ in Israel’s election!)

It is reasonable to assume that if the details of this Astroturfing campaign paid for by elements hostile to the state should become well-known in Israel that it will backfire. On the other hand, recent revelations of the anti-Zionist attitudes of several of Labor’s candidates — shocking to naive observers like myself — didn’t seem to hurt them in the polls.

It isn’t easy for a story like this to “grow legs” in Israel. All of the TV and radio broadcasters in Israel and most of the print media — a significant exception being the “Israel Hayom” newspaper — lean left and oppose PM Netanyahu. There is now an attempt in the Knesset (temporarily frozen due to the upcoming election) to ban free newspapers of a certain size and frequency of publication. It precisely fits Israel Hayom, of course.

Right-wing media have had a hard time here. The Arutz 7 radio station was unable to get a broadcast license, operated as a pirate station for a time, and finally was given a license by a special act of the Knesset — only to have it taken away by Israel’s Supreme Court. Now it broadcasts only on the Internet.

As an American, I thought I was familiar with polarized politics and the extreme tactics used by the Left to try to stifle free discussion of controversial issues. But in the US, the Right has managed to develop effective communications channels, while in even-more-polarized Israel, the Left has maintained its almost-monopoly on the ‘real’ media.

There is also a constant din of scandals (corruption, secret recordings, sex, you name it) that distracts people from the real scandal — the fact that our enemies are already inside the walls of our city and are trying to manipulate us into opening its gates.

Posted in Europe and Israel, Israeli Politics, US-Israel Relations | Comments Off on How Europe and the US subvert Israel’s sovereignty

It’s Bibi vs. Obama again

Posted on January 24, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

barack-obama-benjamin-netanyahu

As you probably know, PM Netanyahu has been invited by the Republican Speaker of the House to speak before both houses of the US Congress on March 3. It is assumed that he is going to talk on the subject of Iran, in particular, the need for real sanctions or the threat thereof, in order to keep the regime from going nuclear.

He is expected to say, among other things, that nuclear weapons in the hands of the greatest supporter of Islamic terrorism in the world, whose tentacles stretch throughout the Middle East and Europe, reach South America, Mexico and probably even into the US, would be a disaster for the West. He will certainly say that this is not only an Israeli problem, although the danger for Israel is more imminent.

He might imply that if the West doesn’t prevent this by diplomatic/economic pressure, then Israel will have no choice but to do so by military means, which would almost certainly result in a war with Iran and its proxies in which Israelis, Iranians,  Lebanese and others would die.

Personally, I doubt that Iran can be deterred by sanctions of any kind, and think that only a credible military threat can stop the regime. But Obama’s present policy, which is wholly lacking in teeth, actually aids Iran in its nuclear program by freeing it to pursue development despite claims that the program has been ‘frozen’.

The Obama Administration opposes any involvement of Congress in its negotiations with Iran, even the Kirk-Menendez bill which would call for sanctions only if Iran failed to live up to its agreement, or the Corker bill which calls for congressional review of any such agreement.

The Administration is (as usual) furious with Netanyahu for ‘interfering’ in US affairs, and the feral pack of “unnamed officials” that scuttle about the White House has  let us know it yet again:

“We thought we’ve seen everything,” [Ha’aretz] quoted an unnamed senior US official as saying. “But Bibi managed to surprise even us.

“There are things you simply don’t do. He spat in our face publicly and that’s no way to behave. Netanyahu ought to remember that President Obama has a year and a half left to his presidency, and that there will be a price,” he said.

Officials in Washington said that the “chickenshit” epithet — with which an anonymous administration official branded Netanyahu several months ago — was mild compared to the language used in the White House when news of Netanyahu’s planned speech came in.

Neither Obama nor Kerry will meet with Netanyahu when he is in the US, and have threatened to withdraw diplomatic support for Israel at the UN if he won’t stop telling members of Congress to vote for additional sanctions on Iran.

The Israeli Left, in its myopically egocentric belief that everything is is about them, is claiming that Netanyahu has accepted the invitation in order to boost his popularity immediately before the Israeli election, and have even petitioned the judge that oversees the election to forbid the broadcast of his speech in Israel. They are accusing Netanyahu of damaging the the relationship with the US for domestic political reasons.

It should be noted that recent polls show that although the Likud and Labor are running neck-and-neck, the total number of mandates predicted for right-wing parties far exceeds those for any possible left-wing coalition. All Netanyahu needs to do to continue as Prime Minister is to do nothing.

It’s not as if he doesn’t understand US politics, either. By accepting a Republican invitation against the wishes of the administration, he is placing himself in a difficult position, leaving himself open to the charge that he is making support for Israel a partisan issue in the US.

I believe that Bibi thinks that he has no choice. Either sanctions can be made to work, or he will have to order an attack on Iran, something he quite sensibly wishes to avoid. He realizes that administration threats are empty. The US will act at the UN according to its perceived interests, and believes that it has a better chance of getting Israel out of the territories by forcing bilateral negotiations on the parties — especially if it can help a left-wing government take over in Israel — than by supporting the PLO’s unilateral efforts.

The Obama Administration is hostile to Netanyahu both because of Iran — he is making it difficult for it to hide the fact that its policy is to simply push off Iran’s nuclearization until after 2016 — and because of his resistance to the creation of a Palestinian state. It will do everything it can to replace him with what it hopes will be a more compliant Israeli government.

The contrast between the historically conscious and responsible leader of the tiny Jewish state and the ignorant, petulant and destructive “leader of the free world” is striking.

Posted in American politics, Israeli Politics, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

The delusional thinking of Israel-haters

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal

It’s often said that Jew-hatred is irrational, and this is obviously true when you look at the absolutely insane beliefs of Jew-haters. For example, Muslims in Paris suburbs believe that Jews, even “a hybrid race of shape-shifters” were responsible for the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, “to make Muslims look bad.” Right.

But exactly the same kind of delusional thinking characterizes obsessive “critics of Israel.” Several years ago there was a scandal over the master’s thesis of one Tal Nitzan at the Hebrew University, in which she argued that the fact that there are no reported rapes of Palestinian Arab women by Jewish IDF soldiers is ‘evidence’ that Israelis are racist. Nitzan argued that they deliberately do not rape them because their racism makes Arab women undesirable to them! Nitzan’s thinking is clearly irrational, but she received a high grade and a prestigious award for her thesis.

But we all know that academics are often, shall we say, different from the rest of us. So we can chalk this up to academic silliness. Not so for the next example, which appeared in the New York Times. A writer named Sarah Schulman popularized the term ‘pinkwashing’, “a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.”

Schulman’s argument was that Israel’s LGBT-friendly policies, rather than being evidence for its being an advanced liberal and tolerant democracy, were actually a “public relations tool.” Never mind that Israel is in fact one of the best places in the world (and by far the best in the Middle East) for people with non-traditional gender identities, and that gay Palestinians often flee to Israel to escape persecution. One is not allowed to mention these facts because it will obscure the oppression of Palestinians.

If this isn’t enough, the same argument is recycled for the growing Israeli vegan and animal rights movements by Shawndeez Davari Jadali, who is a research assistant for the “Islamophobia Studies Journal” — yes, there is such a thing — at UC Berkeley of course.

Nitzan, Schulman and Jadali seem to believe that Israel is so evil that it is forbidden to point out any of its good qualities. It is only legitimate to vilify it for its alleged oppression of Palestinian Arabs.

The traditional name for the fallacy in their arguments is petitio principii, or begging the question. It means assuming the thing that you are trying to prove. A sure giveaway is when a supposedly empirical proposition (in this case, ‘Israel is evil’) can’t be falsified by any possible evidence. And that is what is happening here. No matter what evidence is presented that Israel really is an advanced democratic state, it cannot possibly be enough for them.

A related problem in leftist thinking is the idea that a true progressive activist can’t pick and choose his causes. He or she must buy the whole package, from animal rights through anti-racism, LGBT causes, Palestinism, women’s rights, etc. And it’s all one or another form of ‘oppression’, usually by the same white male culprits. Jadali says this explicitly:

Liberationists work to elevate the struggles of oppressed groups, whether animal liberationists or Palestinian liberationists, in the struggle for justice. Therefore, a necessary distinction must be made between uncritical, depoliticized, and ignorant vegans/animal rights activists that are duped by Brand Israel’s vegan-washing, and intersectional activists that understand the interconnectedness of oppression and strategically stand in solidarity with Palestinians in boycotting the occupation.

It never occurs to them that possibly they are wrong about the Arabs, and that the other evidence should give them a clue that they are wrong.

Israel’s army is moral and/or disciplined enough to not rape enemy civilians, the nation is LGBT-friendly, has women in important positions in the army, government and work force, has strong environmental and vegan/animal rights movements, has free and fair elections, and more. This should lead a rational person to consider that perhaps the reports of Nazi-like behavior toward Arabs from the anti-Israel contingent don’t make sense. But they are ideologically insulated against facts that are contrary to their assumptions.

In fact, Israel does its best to behave in a humane and fair way in the face of continuous provocations from the violent extremists that control Palestinian society, and indeed have a dominant influence over almost all of the Arab and Muslim world. Israel behaves this way because it is essentially a tolerant, liberal democracy.

Israel isn’t perfect, but its behavior in conflict situations is probably more in keeping with international law than that of other Western democracies in recent conflicts — and there is absolutely no comparison with the behavior of its opponents, like Hamas, Hizballah, and the PLO.

Posted in Information war, Jew Hatred, Post-Zionism | 2 Comments

Armed Palestinian Arabs to guard “Embassy to Palestine?”

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
US Consulate, Jerusalem. The Embassy to 'Palestine'

US Consulate, Jerusalem. The Embassy to ‘Palestine’

The US Consulate in Jerusalem has always been the “Embassy to Palestine,” even though its intended purpose is to provide services for US citizens in Jerusalem and the territories. Most of the staff are Palestinian Arabs, and it runs educational and cultural programs for Palestinian Arabs.

Now there are reports that the head of security there is hiring, training and arming Palestinian Arabs as guards (keep in mind when you read this that this consulate is located in the capital of the state of Israel):

A scandal has erupted in the American Consulate in Jerusalem, as three Israeli security guards have quit following a plan to hire 35 armed Palestinian guards from East Jerusalem. The Palestinians have been undergoing weapons training in Jericho in recent days.

The decision to hire and arm the Palestinian security personnel was made by the consulate’s chief security officer, Dan Cronin. The plan is to employ them mostly as escorts to American diplomats’ convoys in the West Bank. Their operating base will be at the consulate in the city’s west, as well as six other facilities around the city belonging to the consulate, of which five are in western Jerusalem.

The plan is a breach of a 2011 agreement between the consulate and the Israeli government, which determined that only former IDF combat soldiers hired by the consulate would be allowed to carry weapons. That year, Israel gave the consulate approval to keep about 100 guns for its security guards, but only if they’re American diplomats or Israelis who served in the army. While the consulate employs scores of guards from East Jerusalem, they have not been armed up until now. …

According to these sources, some of the Palestinian guards have been arrested in the past for throwing stones, or have relatives who were convicted of terrorist activity. “The consulate’s conduct is extremely biased towards the Palestinian side, and Cronin is actually raising an armed militia of Palestinians in the consulate. They’re trained in weapons use, Krav Maga, and tactical driving. This is irresponsible. Who is ensuring that putting this weaponry in Palestinian hands will not lead to terror?”

The most senior advisor to the consul general is a Palestinian who served time in Israeli prison because of membership in the PLO. Another employee is related to one of the leaders of Hamas in Jerusalem, Mohammed Hassan Abu Tir, who has served numerous sentences in Israel’s penal system.

The consulate responded that “there are many inaccuracies in the claims.” Let me translate: “they are essentially true but we found some details that were wrong.”

Recently there was an incident in which American security guards allegedly aimed guns at Israeli Jews while conducting an uncoordinated ‘investigation’ of Arab complaints against a nearby Jewish community.

The US has an arrogant attitude with respect to Israel, which is basically “if it weren’t for us you’d all be dead, so do what we tell you.” I am not sure that this is so, especially in the Age of Obama, and I’ve urged that Israel do its best to reduce every form of dependence on the US.

The creation by a Western power of a paramilitary force made up of Arabs in the land of Israel has a precedent: the British-armed, financed and led Arab legion, which was probably the most effective of the military forces facing the new state of Israel in 1948. I think we would prefer not to go there again.

There is no way that Israel should allow this violation of its law and its sovereignty in its capital. Can you imagine the Israeli consulate in Washington DC hiring local non-citizens, some of whom had been arrested for attempted murder (“throwing stones”) or were associated with street gangs (the PLO), giving them guns and training them in their use?

Israeli law about carrying weapons is actually quite strict today, and I guarantee that individuals with records as above would not be permitted to have guns.

If the US needs an “Embassy to Palestine” then I suggest that it be located in Ramallah or Gaza City.

Posted in US-Israel Relations | 4 Comments

Don’t submit

Posted on January 14, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
"Everything is forgiven." But is it? Cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine published today.

“Everything is forgiven.” But is it? Cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine published today.

News item:

Charlie Hebdo published a front page showing a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad holding a sign saying “Je suis Charlie” in its first edition since Islamic terrorists attacked the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper last week.

With demand surging for the new edition, the weekly planned to print up to 3 million copies, dwarfing its usual run of 60,000, after newsagents reported a rush of orders. Digital versions were to be posted in English, Spanish and Arabic, while print editions in Italian and Turkish were also to appear.

Of course there is only one way that we — the West — can be forgiven, and that is by submission to Islam. Which is why, despite the fact that we may find some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons in poor taste and despite the fact that most of us really don’t want to insult Muslims in general, we must publish them.

We must publish and republish them, because now if we don’t do so, we accept that Islamic jihadists have the right to control our actions, in the most violent way possible. And that is unacceptable.

We need to hit back as hard as we can at the jihadists, and at the same time we cannot limit our expression out of fear of violence.

Once we allow them to limit us in their terms, there’s no end to it. If we agree that, out of good taste and consideration for their sensitivities, we won’t publish certain cartoons or show certain films, then what do we do when they say that beer for sale in supermarkets, women with uncovered faces, or church steeples higher than mosque minarets are just as offensive to them?

The craven reaction of the Obama Administration to the “Innocence of Muslims” film trailer in 2012 is a perfect example of how not to react to Islamic pressure. The “filmmaker” (I put this in quotes because there was no film other than the 15-minute trailer) was arrested and jailed after the trailer was falsely blamed for provoking the al-Qaeda attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Free expression can be ugly, too. We see this in the US, where there are almost no limits on what can be published or how people can express themselves on public property. But Islamic violence is much uglier.

If we think Western values are worth protecting, then we have to protect them. Use your rights, or lose them. Don’t submit.

Posted in Islam, Terrorism | 1 Comment

France didn’t live up to Napoleon’s bargain

Posted on January 12, 2015 by Victor Rosenthal
PM Binyamin Netanyahu met with cheers as he enters the Grand Synagogue of Paris

PM Binyamin Netanyahu met with cheers as he enters the Grand Synagogue of Paris

As I wrote yesterday, the presence of terrorist Mahmoud Abbas at the anti-terror march in Paris was obscene. But it’s interesting to note the reason why he was there. Here’s the story:

After the French government began to send invitations to world leaders to participate in the rally against terror, Hollande’s national security adviser, Jacques Audibert, contacted his Israeli counterpart, Yossi Cohen, and said that Hollande would prefer that Netanyahu not attend, the source said.

Audibert explained that Hollande wanted the event to focus on demonstrating solidarity with France, and to avoid anything liable to divert attention to other controversial issues, like Jewish-Muslim relations or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Audibert said that Hollande hoped that Netanyahu would understand the difficulties his arrival might pose and would announce that he would not be attending.

A similar message was sent to Abbas, and both agreed that they would not come. On the one hand, I can see Hollande’s point. He wanted the event to be about France, nothing else. On the other hand — and I am sure that Hollande does not want to see it this way — it is at least partly about Jews, and the Prime Minister of Israel has a responsibility to the Jewish people, not just to Israelis. And perhaps he suspected that Netanyahu might suggest that French Jews should consider aliyah (which of course he did).

In any event, Netanyahu changed his mind and decided that he would come. Cynics will suggest that it is because he didn’t want to be upstaged by Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, but it is also possible that he realized later that his responsibility to speak for the Jewish people overrode his desire for good relations with Hollande (who, after all, had just voted for an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council).

Hollande was reportedly furious, and invited Abbas to ‘balance’ Netanyahu. And when Netanyahu spoke at the Grand Synagogue in Paris that evening, Hollande got up and left.

This is another chapter in the long and not-so-happy relationship between France and its Jews. When Napoleon offered the Jews emancipation at the beginning of the 19th century, he made demands as well. He decreed that they could live outside of ghettos, removed other restrictions and even made Judaism one of the official religions of France (the others were Catholicism and several forms of Protestantism). In return, he expected that Jews living in France would no longer consider themselves a distinct people. They would be French in every way, Frenchmen and women who practiced Judaism.

But France didn’t live up to Napoleon’s bargain. Anti-Jewish attitudes remained, and when Alfred Dreyfus — an army officer, a French patriot who happened to be Jewish — was falsely accused of treason in 1894, most of the establishment went along with the coverup of the evidence against the real traitor, Ferdinand Esterhazy, and the trumped-up charges and draconian punishment of Dreyfus. The French ‘street’ seethed with anti-Jewish agitation as well. Indeed, the Dreyfus affair was a major motivation for Theodor Herzl’s position that Europe’s Jewish problem would not be solved within its borders.

Herzl was so affected by the Dreyfus case that he as much as predicted the coming Holocaust:

I cannot imagine what appearance and form this will take. Will it be expropriation by some revolutionary force from below? Will it be proscription by some reactionary force from above? Will they banish us? Will they kill us? I expect all these forms and others.

France’s behavior during WWII, when Vichy officials cooperated with the Nazis in sending Jews to their deaths, was not exemplary either, although of course there were many French people who did not cooperate (as there were famous “Dreyfusards” like Emile Zola). Nevertheless, French Jews knew, and know today, that they are somewhat less than wholly ‘French’ when the chips are down.

The recent anti-Jewish violence — the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, the mob attacks on synagogues, the rape of a woman in her home who was told it was because she was Jewish, the murders at the Jewish school in Toulouse, yesterday’s killing of four Jews at a kosher market, and perhaps most of all, the daily degradation of Jews who are afraid to wear kippot or walk to synagogues, who are cursed, struck and spat on in the streets — has convinced French Jews that the Republic can not or will not protect them.

Hollande apparently is insulted by the fact that they don’t trust the state and him personally, so much so that they appeal to the leader of the Jewish state (Netanyahu was met with cheers (video) when he entered the synagogue) for help and perhaps to provide them with a place of refuge. In addition, he is probably worried about France losing its Jews and the intellectual and financial capital that they represent.

There is also a psychological/political defeat when it becomes manifest that the Republic is apparently incapable of  maintaining its founding principle, the idea of “liberty, equality and fraternity” for all French people, regardless of religion or ethnicity. French PM Manuel Valls said this:

If 100,000 French people of Spanish origin were to leave, I would never say that France is not France anymore. But if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.

I can sympathize with Valls. But how many chances ought the Jews to give to France before they decide that it’s time to go?

Posted in Europe and Israel, Jew Hatred, Terrorism, Zionism | 3 Comments