“Who’s a Jew?” Hits the Headlines, Again

Posted on March 4, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Israel’s Supreme Court decided a few days ago that conversions to Judaism by the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel must be recognized by the state for the purposes of the Law of Return. Until now, the state has somewhat illogically recognized non-Orthodox conversions done outside of the country, but has not accepted those that took place here.

Despite what many of us think about the Court, it did not make this decision out of rampant leftism and desire to destroy Judaism. In fact, the justices probably would have preferred not to have to take up this issue, which is the hottest potato in Israeli politics.

At the time of the founding of the state David Ben Gurion negotiated a historic agreement with the religious Agudat Israel party in return for its support. This compromise, which is often referred to as the “status quo,” included stipulations about state observance of Shabbat and kashrut, separate streams of education, and – very significantly – that the state would “satisfy the needs of the religiously observant” in connection with “marital affairs.” This came to mean that the Haredi-dominated Chief Rabbinate (the Rabbanut) would be the sole authority concerning marriage, divorce, burial, and so on, of Israeli Jews.

Until recently, the only authority in Israel whose conversions to Judaism were recognized for any purpose was the Rabbanut. About 15 years ago, two petitions were filed with the Court by people who were denied citizenship under the law of return because they had non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism in Israel. At that time, the Court said that it was up to the Knesset to legislate the conversion issue, which was problematic for many reasons besides immigration, and set a deadline for it to do so.

One of the most pressing aspects was that a large percentage of the roughly one million Russian immigrants to Israel were not accepted as Jewish by the Rabbanut, although they had been considered Jewish by the state for the purposes of immigration. Documentation of Jewish parentage was very hard to obtain in the former Soviet Union, where records had been destroyed during the war, and where the Soviet government had discouraged the practice of Judaism. Orthodox conversion via the Rabbanut was long, difficult, and required the adoption of a Haredi lifestyle which many secular Russian Jews were not willing to adopt – although they considered themselves part of the Jewish people (and so did almost everyone else). But if they weren’t Jewish according to the Rabbanut, then they and their descendants were unable to marry, divorce, or be buried in the Jewish part of a cemetery (unless they served in the IDF!)

In order to solve this problem (and satisfy the Supreme Court), various arrangements and compromises were proposed, involving the establishment of Orthodox (but not Haredi) conversion courts outside the control of the Rabbanut. This was shut down by the political power of the religious parties. Conversions in Israel still had to be under the auspices of the Rabbanut. In 2016, the Supreme Court decided that private, Orthodox conversions in Israel would be recognized by the state – but only for the purposes of the Law of Return, and not for matters of family law.

But the old petitions of the Reform and Conservative Jews had still not been acted upon after 15 years, and the Knesset, after the appointment of a commission and countless extensions of the Supreme Court’s deadline, still had not legislated on the matter. It became clear that the religious parties would continue to stonewall any attempts to introduce leniency into the conversion process. Former Justice Minister Moshe Nissim, who headed the legislative commission, said,

At the time I proposed establishing courts for conversion and determined that the conversion would be done according to Torah law and the judges would be certified by the Chief Rabbinate … They didn’t accept the proposal because the words “under the supervision of the Chief Rabbinate” did not appear in it.

So the Supreme Court had no choice but to rule, and in light of its prior decision to accept Orthodox conversions outside the Rabbanut and not wanting to be put in the position of deciding which branches of Judaism were legitimate, extended its recognition to Reform and Conservative conversions.

Practically speaking, the ruling has little effect. It does not include family law and other matters, which remain under the control of the Rabbanut. Very few people in Israel who are not citizens convert to Judaism via the Reform or Conservative movements; the movements say they number 30 or 40 a year.

But the decision is symbolically important, because it constitutes a form of state recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements as Jewish institutions, something that Haredim and many other Orthodox Jews do not accept any more than they accept “Jews for Jesus.” They especially object to what they see as the liberal movements’ lax standards for conversion and recognition of a person’s Judaism.

Full-time rabbis of larger congregations in Israel receive salaries from the state, but until 2014 only Orthodox rabbis were eligible. In response to a petition by a (female) Reform rabbi, the Supreme Court decided that Reform and Conservative rabbis must be included. The government had no choice but to comply, but the religious parties insisted that the payments come from the Ministry of Culture and Sport rather than the Ministry of Religious Services!

***

So now I will give my personal opinion: the Rabbanut has always been Orthodox, but it has not always been Haredi. The organization today is corrupt, slow, and intolerant, and needs to be at least reformed (not Reformed!) and possibly abolished. I believe the refusal to permit Orthodox conversions outside of the Rabbanut is harmful and should be ended, as well as the Rabbanut’s monopoly on kashrut certification. I would also like to see an option for civil marriage and divorce in addition to traditional religious marriage. It’s ridiculous that many Israelis have to jump through demeaning hoops or leave the country to get married.

What about Reform and Conservative Judaism? I think a good argument can be made that Conservative Judaism is just a less stringent form of Judaism, while the Reform Movement practices a different religion from Judaism. Here are some relevant comparisons:

Early Christianity was an offshoot of Judaism. Beginning with a significant theological divergence – the attribution of divinity to Jesus – it continued to diverge by the introduction of extreme leniency in practice and the mass incorporation of formerly pagan converts. By the time of Constantine, and probably well before then, nobody would have said that Christianity and Judaism are the “same religion.” Protestantism (which is in itself very diverse) was a later offshoot of Catholicism. There are many theological and practical differences, but the most essential part – the human need for salvation from sin that is provided by Jesus – remained. Most people agree that they are both forms of Christianity.

Now consider Unitarian Universalism, an even more recent offshoot of Protestantism. It has abandoned the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus. Today’s Unitarian Universalists do not identify as Christian, and may even be atheists. They have crossed the line and now explicitly practice a “different religion.”

Rabbinical Judaism became the primary form of Judaism after the destruction of the Temple. It added to the monotheism and narrative of the Jewish people that had previously characterized Judaism alongside the Temple ritual, an elaboration and codification of the mitzvot found in the Torah. This became the halacha, the laws for Jewish living. Halacha became an essential part of Judaism.

Jews living in Eretz Yisrael and in the various parts of the diaspora placed emphasis on different parts of the halacha or observed it more or less stringently. However, Reform Judaism, from the moment of its creation, rejected the idea that there is an obligation of any sort to follow halacha. The famous “Trefa Banquet” held in honor of the first graduating class of Hebrew Union College in 1883 was not significant because Reform rabbis ate non-kosher food, but rather because it demonstrated that they did not consider themselves bound by halacha. Their deliberate action defined them not as nonobservant or even “bad” Jews, but as Jews who had stopped observing Judaism.

Since then, the Reform Movement has replaced halacha with a different moral code, one which is very similar to that of Unitarian Universalists and other liberal and progressive people, emphasizing values like diversity, environmentalism, gender and racial equality, and so on. Indeed it is often hard to tell the difference between Reform Jews and Unitarians, and I am acquainted with numerous people that have moved from one to the other faith. But unlike the Unitarians, the Reform Movement does not admit how far it’s come from its roots.

The Conservative Movement observes halacha, although its rabbis have – especially in America – issued halachic rulings that are more lenient than Orthodox Judaism; for example that it is permissible to drive to the synagogue (but only there) on Shabbat. However, if a line must be drawn between Judaism and not-Judaism, I would place the Conservatives on the side of Judaism – and the Reform movement on the other.

***

The Supreme Court’s decision will change little. The Russian immigrants are already citizens. What they need is to be able to be married (and buried) like anyone else. It would be good for all of us if this could be achieved by making it possible for them to affirm their Jewish identity through a realistic option for conversion.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society, The Jewish people | 2 Comments

Biden’s Stupid Mideast Policy

Posted on February 28, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

The policy of the new American administration is unintelligible in terms of American interest.

Supposedly the goal is to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and to stop it from exporting terror throughout the region and the world. The best way to do that short of war is to use the massive economic power of the US to squeeze the regime until either it cracks and is overthrown by its own people (who would be happy to see it go), or until it agrees unconditionally to stop its nuclear and long-range missile development, and end its proxy wars against its neighbors. In the immortal words of Vito Corleone, to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

This is not hard to understand. The Trump Administration called the policy “maximum pressure,” and combined with the elimination of key Iranian personnel (by both the US and Israel) as well as cyber-warfare and other operations-short-of-war, the regime had been forced against the ropes. Opponents said that the policy “wasn’t working,” but the truth is that it was – it just needed more time to go to completion. Trump and Pompeo’s sanctions were strangling the Iranian economy, and while there is no doubt that this caused significant hardship to ordinary Iranians, a military confrontation would be far worse for everyone.

Had Trump been reelected, the pressure would have continued. At some point the ayatollahs would have realized that they had no real option other than to sit down with the Americans and negotiate for relief, which would be granted only in return for real concessions. Indeed, the Trump Administration made overtures to Iran on the occasion of the UN General Assembly opening in September 2019, but were rebuffed. Perhaps the prospect of four more years of maximum pressure would have already borne fruit.

Maybe one of the reasons the Iranians decided that they could tough it out, was that current Biden envoy to Iran and former Obama staffer, Robert Malley, had met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif two months before. The Iranians had also been in contact with other former Obama–era officials such as John Kerry and Ernest Moniz during Trump’s tenure, and it’s reasonable to assume that they told them to hang tight; Trump would soon be gone and they would be back with a better offer. Private citizens negotiating with a foreign power behind the back of the legitimate government is a violation of the very rarely-enforced Logan Act, whose penalties are relatively mild in any case. But some commentators think what they did was far more serious.

As soon as Joe Biden took office, he began taking steps to undo Trump’s tough policy. The “snapback” of UN sanctions on procurement of military and nuclear-related materials that Trump ordered in his last days in office has been canceled. The terrorist designation was removed from Iran’s proxy Houthi guerrillas in Yemen, and military aid for Saudi Arabia’s campaign against them was stopped. An arms deal with the UAE that was part of the Abraham Accords was put on hold. Travel restrictions on Iranian diplomats have been lifted. The State Department indicated that it was open to Iran receiving an IMF loan for a $5 billion “cash infusion.” And the US seems to have permitted the release of at least $1B of Iranian assets held in South Korea.

In a surprising move, Biden declassified an intelligence report which said that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) had approved the murder of “dissident journalist” (and anti-regime conspirator) Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The report does not say, but implies, that MBS ordered the killing. Biden telephoned to deliver a message of rebuke, and he called the aging King Salman himself, rather than the Crown Prince who is the de facto ruler of the country, in order to imply disdain for MBS.

In an interview Friday, Biden described the call:

I spoke yesterday with the king, not the prince. Made it clear to him that the rules are changing and we’re going to be announcing significant changes today and on Monday. We are going to hold them accountable for human rights abuses and we’re going to make sure that they, in fact, if they want to deal with us, they have to deal with it in a way that the human rights abuses are dealt with…

The Khashoggi case got a great amount of play in the American media, especially the NY Times. One wonders about the importance of this one man, whose murder was used as an excuse for a major policy change. Lee Smith mentions that Robert Malley had even argued that the US should not punish Bashar al Assad for the murder of Lebanese President Rafik Harari in 2005, while he called for degrading the relationship with the Saudis over Kashoggi. Could he possibly have been more biased in favor of Iran? It’s possible to smell the “echo chamber” here.

Of course Saudi Arabia is no champion of human rights. But neither are many countries in the Middle East – Iran is worse, reaching out to kill dissidents all over the world. Saudi Arabia is (or was) a close ally of the US, and Biden has delivered a significant blow to the relationship. It is also a personal shot at MBS. MBS is a key player in the new Sunni-Israeli alliance against Iran, and this can only be seen as an attempt to weaken that alliance.

As Caroline Glick notes, the UAE and Saudi Arabia might decide that keeping their client state relationship with the US is more important than their developing alliance with Israel. That, she says, would be “a disaster of epic proportions” that would greatly increase the risk of war in the region.

I think the Saudis – especially MBS – will not go in this direction. I think that everyone realizes that America is not what it once was in its ability to project power throughout the world. I doubt that the Saudis would be foolish enough to depend on an agreement made by Iran with the US to protect them, or for the US to intervene militarily if Iran were to break its agreements and move against them. It’s also necessary to take into account the influence of China in the region, which has recently made a strategic agreement with Iran that is intended to reduce American power in the Mideast, and will reduce America’s influence over Iran.

Israel has learned through bitter experience that she cannot depend on others for its vital interests. Some elements in the Arab world have watched carefully, and understand that Israel’s success is not due to her support by major powers – which have proved fickle throughout the 73 years of her existence – but rather to her self-reliance in critical matters. This is the model that MBS follows, and why he is perceived as a danger by the Biden Administration, which prefers to deal with corrupt client states.

This is not a pro-American policy. It is a pro-Iranian one. The real question is why on earth would an American president follow one?

Posted in American politics, Iran, Media, Middle East politics | 1 Comment

Israel and the US are on a Collision Course Over Iran

Posted on February 25, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Joe Biden has been in office for about a month. I have my doubts about the degree to which Joe himself is running things, but because he has always bent pragmatically to the winds of political (and perhaps personal) advantage, it’s not really important. Someone is making policy, in particular policy that concerns Israel. The course set by the Biden Administration appears to be almost 180 degrees from that taken by Donald Trump, and promises to bring back the sharp disagreements between the two nations that characterized the Obama period. He has already brought back most of the same people.

There are two main areas with which Israel must be concerned: the Palestinian and Iranian arenas. The Palestinian question seems to be on the back burner now, perhaps because everyone realizes that no solution is likely. But the Iranian desk is buzzing with activity. Obama’s people had four years to lick their wounds and plan for a rematch. Now their time has come, and they are moving swiftly.

Indeed, it has recently been revealed that during the Trump Administration, John Kerry and Robert Malley met with Iranian and EU officials and advised them to ignore overtures from President Trump’s people to fix the defects in the deal, and wait for their team to return with the expected Democratic victory. Seeing no alternative, Trump took the US out of the deal in 2018 (several European nations remain in it with Iran).

Biden’s declared Iran policy seems to be more or less the same as Obama’s, and it will be implemented by the same people: Malley, Jake Sullivan, Wendy Sherman, and Anthony Blinken. Before his appointment, Malley’s “International Crisis Group” prepared a report that recommended that the new administration should “move swiftly to revive the nuclear agreement on its existing terms.”

This is the deal that provided for an inspection regime with holes big enough to drive a truck through, which had sunset clauses that in effect guaranteed that after a certain point Iran’s weapons development would be legitimate, which revoked UN prohibitions on missile development, and which suffered from numerous other flaws – to the point that Binyamin Netanyahu risked an open break with the US, its essential ally and prime supplier of critical military equipment, in order to oppose it.

The new administration has already begun to make concessions to Iran in order to initiate a process of mutual moves to restart the deal. It removed the designation of Iran’s proxy Houthi rebels in Yemen as terrorists, and announced that it would no longer support Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against them. Biden also reversed Trump’s “snapback” to honoring pre-2015 UN sanctions on Iran.

Iran, for its part, has said that it wants to see all sanctions lifted and the deal reinstated at the point Trump left it. It’s not clear what the Iranians would do with the prohibited high-enriched uranium and even uranium metal that they have produced in violation of it since then.

Biden’s policies, from Israel’s point of view, are extremely dangerous. And the political situation in Biden’s Democratic Party is becoming more and more anti-Israel, as it moves to the left. There is little to restrain the administration, and there are forces pushing it to take positions even more disadvantageous to Israel.

The evaluation in Israel is that we cannot simply leave it to the US and trust that everything will be fine. A return to the deal without significant changes – which nobody thinks the American negotiators can, or even want to, obtain – will ultimately result in a nuclear Iran. On the other hand, direct opposition to the US could leave Israel in trouble, a result of the excessive dependence of the IDF on American aid. Israel is locked into extremely complex weapons systems that in many cases are integrated with our own systems, and switching to (for example) Russian systems, or even trying to develop our own, would be a very long, difficult process.

Caroline Glick thinks that Israel can maintain good relations with the US while working to decrease dependence, and establish relationships various political factions in the US as well as with other allies who are not happy with the prospect of Iranian nuclear hegemony.

I am afraid this is wishful thinking. Everything she suggests about developing our allies, and so forth, is worth doing, but there is no way  Israel can avoid direct conflict with the American administration if it will not “concede either its sovereignty or its core interests to satisfy an administration committed to policies that harm both,” as Glick puts it. In my opinion, a confrontation is unavoidable, even if our PM does not travel to the US and speak to a joint session of Congress, as Netanyahu did in 2015.

I can see one way out of the dilemma. That is to present the Americans with a fait accompli that will at the same time send an unmistakable message that Israel cannot accept a nuclear Iran, and that will significantly set back the Iranian project. I mean, of course, military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. And the sooner – before the US becomes fully enmeshed in negotiations with Iran – the better.

Although there is no doubt it will anger those in the American administration who are more anti-Israel than worried about Iran’s expansionism, it will speak to those who have a realistic attitude and understand that the primary goal is to keep Iran from going nuclear. The Rob Malleys will not approve. The Tony Blinkens might. You may recall the condemnation of Israel that followed her destruction of Saddam’s reactor in 1981; ultimately, almost everyone agreed that it was a good thing.

This time the job is much more difficult. Is it possible to carry it out without too much damage from the certain retaliation? Is there a way to neutralize Iran’s ability to retaliate? What are the probabilities?

These are questions that I can’t answer. They are questions for our Chief of Staff, and I believe the Prime Minister has already asked them.

Posted in Iran, US-Israel Relations | 3 Comments

Only Our Friends Pay Taxes

Posted on February 21, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Israel is a heavily-taxed nation. There is an income tax, there is 17% VAT on all goods and services, there are customs duties on many items, there are property taxes, real estate transaction taxes, and excise taxes on things like tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline and diesel fuel. I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.

Regarding the excise taxes on gas and diesel, it’s possible for charitable or humanitarian organizations to get an exemption. But apparently it’s not so easy. The Magen David Adom ambulance that takes sick people or accident victims to the hospital doesn’t have one.

There is a an interesting story by reporter Gilad Zwick in today’s Israel Hayom newspaper, concerning who is exempt from the fuel tax.

It turns out that many organizations that are less than charitable to the idea of a sovereign Jewish state are “humanitarian” in the eyes of Israel’s Tax Authority. The biggest one is UNRWA, the UN agency that supports and encourages the growth of the population of stateless “Palestinian refugees,” most of whom are not actually refugees by any definition other than UNRWA’s. They are descendants of the 550,000 to 750,000 Palestinian Arabs that fled the area that would become the state of Israel at the time of the 1948 War of Independence. Today there are as many as 5 or 6 million Arabs with refugee status, according to UNRWA. The agency provides services in including food aid, education, and healthcare to these people, and maintains the “refugee camps” – today, usually city neighborhoods – in which they live, in Gaza, Judea/Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

Palestinian refugee status, according to UNRWA, is hereditary. Anyone whose father was a refugee is one. Even if a “refugee” has citizenship in another country, like Jordan, he keeps his status. And it is passed down from generation to generation, which is why there are so many more today than there were in 1948.

No other agency defines “refugee” this way. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which deals with all refugees other than Palestinians, considers refugees “persons fleeing the risk of persecution or serious harm, including human rights violations, armed conflict or persecution. In the absence of protection in their countries of origin, which the State is unwilling or unable to provide, they are forced to cross an international border and seek safety in other countries” (the full legal definition is here). UNHCR provides services to these people and to their immediate family members including children, but children of refugees can’t pass the status down to their children. By this definition of “refugee,” there are probably about 30,000 Arab refugees from 1948 that remain.

In the decade after WWII millions of refugees were awash in the world. Most didn’t return to their home countries, but were resettled in other countries. Some 800,000 Jews from various countries in the Middle East and North Africa were among them, and virtually all of them ended up in other countries, including of course Israel.

But Palestinian refugees were different. UNRWA, which was originally established as a temporary expedient to help the displaced Palestinian Arabs (and theoretically, also Jews!) became a permanent institution. Unlike other agencies, which aimed to resettle refugees and get them off the dole and into productive lives, UNRWA simply maintained the population, and by paying generous benefits for each child, encouraged its growth.

The Arab nations, which would have been the rational place to resettle Palestinian refugees, refused to take them, saying that only “return to their homes” in Israel was possible, even where great-grandchildren of refugees were concerned. In 1955, the Arab League issued a declaration forbidding their members from granting citizenship to Palestinians. Although Jordan granted the refugees citizenship after 1948 (they revoked some of these in 2004-5), no other Arab state has done so. Even the PLO has said that they will not do so, if they should succeed in establishing a state! In Lebanon, Palestinians are officially discriminated against in education, employment, and other areas. Every attempt to improve the conditions of the refugees (e.g., providing permanent housing) has been frustrated by the Arab states, UNRWA, or the PLO.

UNRWA is primarily supported by Europe and the US (the Arab states contribute little). President Trump cut the US contribution somewhat, but President Biden restored it. However, the geometric increase in the refugee population dictates that this situation cannot long continue, and it’s unfortunate that the new administration failed to recognize the need to shake things up.

Some 98% of the employees of UNRWA are Palestinians. So it’s not surprising that the organization’s activities support the Palestinian movement, whose main objective is to free all of “Palestine” from Jewish sovereignty. Many UNRWA workers (including teachers) are associated with terrorist organizations, and anti-Jewish incitement is part of their unofficial curriculum. Rockets have been stored in Gazan UNRWA schools and have been fired at Israel from their yards. Despite its ostensibly humanitarian purpose, UNRWA is an anti-Israel organization in every way.

The fact that UNRWA does not pay taxes on its fuel is ludicrous. In the past six years, the amount of this exemption has come to 167 million shekels, close to $51 million. 90% of this fuel has been used in the Gaza strip, so this amounts to a subsidy of $45 million – to Hamas.

But UNRWA is not the only anti-Israel group that gets this exemption. Various religious groups also do. For example, the World Lutheran Federation, which, while not quite on a level with Hamas, is clearly an unfriendly organization. There are also the Mennonite Central Committee and Diakonia, which provide funds for numerous anti-Israel projects and organizations, including some with connections to terror.

There is no reason for Israel to subsidize these enterprises, which are explicitly or implicitly calling for its destruction.

How can it be that they don’t have to pay while Magen David Adom does? Reporter Zwick called the Defense Ministry, which referred him to the Finance Ministry. “No comment,” they said.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Politics, Middle East politics, Terrorism, The UN | 2 Comments

The Bedouins and the Jewish State

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Bedouins are tribal, nomadic Arabs, tracing their ancestry to the Arabian peninsula, who today live all over the Middle East and North Africa. Today there are at least 200,000 Bedouins in Israel, and the population is growing rapidly. They are Israeli citizens with full political and civil rights.

Historically they fed themselves primarily by herding animals and other forms of nomadic agriculture and fishing. Some were bandits, raiding the caravans that passed through their region, and taxing non-Bedouin tribes in the vicinity. Over the years they have become more settled, with many of them living in towns and cities. But there still are some who follow traditional nomadic ways.

Bedouins are mostly Muslim Arabs, but most do not see themselves as “Palestinians.” Their political identification is with their (large) extended families and tribes. Tribes have supported whichever side in the conflict benefits them. Some volunteer for the IDF. There is a Bedouin (Ismail Khaldi) who served as Israeli Consul in San Francisco, and who has been chosen to become Ambassador to Eritrea.

Recently there has been a disturbing trend in which some Bedouins have returned to banditry as a way to make a living.

Everything that is not nailed down in IDF bases like Tze’elim in the Negev, including large quantities of weapons, ammunition, night vision equipment, vehicles, uniforms, and even soldiers’ kitbags is stolen by Bedouin thieves. The loot finds its way into the hands of Jewish and Arab criminals in Israel and in the territories, as well as terrorists. Rules of engagement only permit soldiers to use their weapons (even to fire in the air as part of the “procedure to apprehend a suspect”) if they think there may be immediate danger to life. Theft, even of weapons and ammunition, is not an acceptable reason.

This has been going on for decades, although the scale of it has recently expanded to a massive degree. When I did reserve duty guarding southern airbases during the 1980s, it was already a problem. When my son was part of a large training exercise ten years ago, Bedouins stuck close to IDF soldiers during live fire exercises, sweeping up shell casings and stealing anything they could. Over time it has taken on an ideological character. In an interview (Hebrew) with an Israeli website, one thief said “…all the firing ranges of Tze’elim belong to us. The state stole our land, expelled us. We are stealing back what belongs to us.”

The criminals are becoming bolder all the time, stealing cars in broad daylight and breaking into homes. Recently a 70-year old man, Aryeh Schiff of the Negev town of Arad, was indicted for manslaughter after shooting a thief who was driving away in his car. According to his family, Schiff had already had several cars stolen. In a particularly horrible episode, three Bedouin burglars broke into a home and raped a 10-year old girl while her parents slept. They have been arrested, but the punishment will not fit the crime. It rarely does.

These incidents are not part of the organized Palestinian war against the Jewish state. But they are not just apolitical crime either. The unrelenting propaganda from the Palestinian Authority and Israeli Left, which accuses Israel of stealing “Palestinian land,” oppressing and murdering Palestinians, even to the point of genocide, finds its mark among Bedouins and other Arab citizens of Israel. One man’s crime is another man’s jihad.

There are also cultural differences that are difficult to overcome. Bedouins practice polygamy, for example, which is illegal in Israel, although the state has almost always ignored it. It is usually bad for the women (the men tend to live with their newest, youngest, wife and leave the older ones to take care of their children), and there is pressure to enforce the law.

The Palestinians and their sponsors, the European Union, have found it possible to make use of Bedouins to create incidents in which Israel plays the role assigned to it, the powerful colonialist oppressor of third-world people. For example, there is Khirbet Humsah, a shepherding encampment squatting (even the left-leaning Israeli Supreme Court agrees) on an IDF firing range, which has been dismantled several times and rebuilt as many, thanks to the assistance of the EU.

Of course the most celebrated Bedouin settlement is Khan al-Ahmar, built illegally at a strategic location next to main roads in Area C (the part of Judea/Samaria that is supposed to be under full Israeli security and civil control according to the Oslo Accords). Here is how Regavim, an organization dedicated to Israeli sovereignty, describes it:

Khan al-Ahmar is one of more than 170 illegal outposts created by the P.A. and funded by the European Union for the sole purpose of establishing a corridor of P.A.-controlled territory disconnecting Jerusalem from the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. These outposts are populated by the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and easily manipulated Bedouin families, stateless pawns in the P.A.’s power play, and follow a very simple, very predictable pattern of development.

First, the P.A. places water tankers at strategic points: along major Israeli highways, on land belonging to or abutting existing Jewish communities, or along lines that create territorial contiguity between major Arab population clusters in Areas A and B of Judea and Samaria. Knowing that Bedouin require little more than a steady supply of water to congregate and remain in any particular spot in this arid region, the P.A. thus attracts the tribes to strategic locations, even when those locations pose serious hazards to the health and livelihood of the Bedouin.

The next step is the construction of a school. This, too, attracts population—and makes for devastating publicity if Israel’s Civil Administration knocks it down. From this point, the battle of narratives begins. The “village” quickly rises up, constructed almost entirely of prefab housing units bearing the symbol of the European Union. It is given a name and equipped with a fictitious history. An army of internationally financed “do-gooders” takes up the cause of the unfortunate Bedouin who are “threatened” with relocation by the Israeli authorities—to new, modern neighborhoods on Israeli state-owned land, along with cash payouts and other forms of compensation.

The P.A., the European Union and a host of “humanitarian aid” groups take to the High Court of Justice to block any and all compromise solutions, forcing the helpless Bedouin to remain in unbearable conditions in the illegal outposts, in the service of the P.A.’s geopolitical machinations.

Bedouins, like Jews (and unlike most Palestinians), are an indigenous people in parts of Eretz Yisrael. Will it be possible for us to coexist? And if not, then what?

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

The Open Racism of the New York Times (updated)

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Donald G. McNeil Jr. was a science writer at the New York Times. Now he is unemployed.

Here is how he described the event that triggered his forced resignation:

On a 2019 New York Times trip to Peru for high school students, I was asked at dinner by a student whether I thought a classmate of hers should have been suspended for a video she had made as a 12-year-old in which she used a racial slur. To understand what was in the video, I asked if she had called someone else the slur or whether she was rapping or quoting a book title. In asking the question, I used the slur itself.

To be more precise, he did not use the word. He mentioned it. He talked about it. He did not, if I may be permitted to commit the same offense, call anybody a “nigger.”

This was reported to his bosses at the Times. It was also mentioned – and this is important – that he expressed opinions that rankled the students’ sensibilities. Some concrete examples are that he “scoffed” at the concept of “cultural appropriation,” suggested that the high black incarceration rate was due to a high black crime rate and not an “oppressive and racist power structure.” One student even related that he said that “white supremacy didn’t exist.”

So we have an older white man who apparently holds some un-woke, even conservative opinions, who uttered a word that is forbidden to whites. That word, which (according to Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones of “1619 Project” fame) “was created by white people to justify the slavery, racial apartheid, violence agnst [sic] Black people.” It is, she says, “the most offensive word in American English,” which “stops the heart” of a black person against whom it is used.

Hannah-Jones explains why she thinks it is permissible for blacks, but not whites, to use it:

Clearly, CLEARLY, there is difference when a word created by white people to justify slavery, racial apartheid and three centuries of anti-Black violence is said or written by a white person then [sic] by a Black person, the race this word was deployed against. …

You can’t logically apply a colorblind usage status to a RACIST word used to reinforce racist systems, to the verbal manifestation of white supremacy and anti-Black violence.

This argument has a serious logical flaw (I know, logic is racist). If the reason that the word is so offensive is that its function is to justify oppression of blacks, then what is offensive is when someone uses it for that purpose, not when they simply make the sound. If it were only the sound then blacks (even black hip-hop artists) using the word would have the power to offend. But if the word is used with appropriate intent, then even a black person can use it to offend. When Malcom X called certain black leaders “house niggers,” he intended (and succeeded) to insult them. Intent is the key.

Hannah-Jones and others will claim that blacks are so damaged by their experience of racism, even when the black victim in question is a middle-class student numerous generations removed from slavery, that just the sound of the word from a white mouth harms them. I don’t buy it. Are they so fragile? I believe that this argument is intended to bully white people, who – in the woke world – are not permitted to express their own opinions about matters connected to race.

The fascist Left tries to get around complaints that they want to limit free speech by saying that just the utterance of certain words or the expression of certain ideas causes “harm” to members of victimized groups. This depends on the idea that psychic “harm” is a privately observable fact, which nobody but the subject has a right to question. This is the same argument they use for declarations of gender.

They can’t have it both ways. Either it’s private and subjective, in which case it can’t be the basis of rules that bind other people, or it’s objective and can judged as true or false by others.

Because I say Zionist things on Twitter, I’ve been told more than once to “jump into the oven” or “gas up, Jewboy.” And yet, even though much of my family didn’t make it out of Europe, I still allow people, even German people, to use the words “oven” and “gas” around me.

McNeil certainly was talking about the word, not using it to insult anyone. But there is more to it. The students, mostly white and progressive, apparently didn’t like his un-woke ideas in general. And after the Executive Editor of the Times, Dean Baquet (who is black) said that he didn’t think that McNeil’s “intentions were hateful or malicious,” 150 Times staff members signed a letter saying that their “community is outraged and in pain.” They said that “intent is irrelevant,” and that they felt “disrespected” by McNeil’s actions. The management took a second look at the situation, and announced his resignation with the statement that “We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent.”

There is only one word that adequately describes the position that the intent of a speaker is irrelevant but his color is: racist.

McNeil did accede to the staffers’ demand that he apologize, and produced a typically craven apology of the type previously associated with Stalin-era show trials or Maoist self-criticism sessions. But he’s still out of a job.

Posted in Media, Wokeness | 5 Comments

The ICC is Nothing but a Pack of Cards

Posted on February 11, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

There is no world government based on international law, and there should not be one. That seems like something that should be understood and agreed to by everyone, but apparently it is not.

Today, Israelis, from the Prime Minister to almost any IDF soldier, are in legal jeopardy as a result of the overreach of arrogant international institutions and an overly-expansive idea of international law.

In its simplest form, international law is based on the (supposedly) universal acceptance of the principle that a nation should honor its agreements with other nations. If, for example, Iran signs the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and then develops nuclear weapons, it is in violation of international law. When a country joins the UN, it agrees to be bound by the UN Charter (which, for example, forbids the “threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”), and by certain kinds of Security Council resolutions. In these contexts, international law depends on consent: a nation is not bound to follow any laws that it hasn’t agreed to.

There is also something called “customary international law.” That refers to principles that are not covered by treaties, but are unwritten rules based on the customary behavior of states and a subjective opinion of obligation. One area in which it is applicable is where non-state actors are concerned, who are not members of the UN and have not signed any treaties. So Hamas’ use of human shields can be considered a violation of customary international law even though Hamas is not a member of the UN and has not signed any of the protocols of the Geneva Conventions. Here there is no consent. But even when customary international law is applied to states the question of consent can become murky, since there are no agreed-to treaties to refer to.

The difference between the laws of states and international law is most pronounced when you consider interpretation and enforcement. States establish domestic courts that interpret their laws and determine when someone is in violation of them. They have jurisdiction over all the residents of a country and their decisions are binding. A state can use force to enforce them. For international law, jurisdiction is limited by the principle of consent and enforcement is more complicated.

There are international courts. The UN has established an International Court of Justice (ICJ), which can adjudicate disputes between nations in the framework of international law. In order for the ICJ to do so, either the nations involved must explicitly consent, or they must have signed treaties that include clauses that require such adjudication of disputes. The ICJ can also give advisory opinions to various UN agencies when asked to do so. Such opinions are not binding on the nations involved. For example, in 2004, the ICJ produced a highly politicized advisory opinion for the UN General Assembly, holding that Israel’s security barrier violated international law and construction of it should stop. Israel cooperated with the court by providing testimony, but was not required to do so or to accept its judgment.

There is also an International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC is not a part of the UN; it was established in 2002 by a multilateral treaty called the Rome Statute and is financed by contributions from its member states. The ICC can try individuals (not states) who are accused of serious crimes like genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. The ICCs jurisdiction is limited to crimes committed within the territorial area of states that have adopted the Rome Statute or declared their acceptance of its jurisdiction; or crimes committed by nationals of those states; or in special cases referred by the UN Security Council. 123 states have signed on to it and 42 (including the US and Israel) have not.

Note that the criterion for jurisdiction seriously undermines the principle of consent. The court can prosecute a citizen of a particular country whether or not that country is a member of the Rome Statute, as long as the offense was committed in a country that is a member.

The ICC can prosecute someone only if it decides that “national justice systems do not carry out proceedings or when they claim to do so but in reality are unwilling or unable to carry out such proceedings genuinely.” It can prosecute anyone, even if they are a head of state or a soldier who is required to follow orders.  So far it has indicted 44 people, mostly for crimes committed in several African conflicts.

The ICC can issue arrest warrants which may be executed by member states, or any state that cooperates with it. Arrested persons can be tried at the Court’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. If convicted, they can be sentenced to prison terms up to and including life imprisonment, which can be served in cooperating countries.

As you probably know, the ICC’s head prosecutor has announced that the Court would initiate a criminal investigation against Israelis and (presumably) Hamas members for war crimes committed during 2014’s Operation Protective Edge and the defense of the Gaza border, as well as Israel’s settlement policy. The prosecutor claims that the Court has jurisdiction over Gaza and Judea/Samaria, even though “Palestine” is not a sovereign state and Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute.

A pre-trial panel of judges decided that “The State of Palestine” had joined the Rome Statute in 2015, and that therefore – although the Court didn’t wish to decide the question of whether “Palestine” is a state – the very fact that it had joined the statute implies that it can be treated as a “state party” to the Statute. Once a “state party,” it would be unfair to deny it any of the rights and privileges accruing to one! (See pars. 89-113 of the decision linked above). Sometimes an argument is so bad, it’s hard to even restate it.

But since “Palestine” isn’t actually a state with borders, how do we know that the “crimes” were committed within its borders? Easy, say the ICC judges: UN General Assembly Resolution 67/19, which admitted “Palestine” to the UN as a “Non-member Observer State” in 2012 says that “Palestine” includes the Gaza Strip and the “West Bank.” QED.

Regarding the UNGA, I don’t think I have to add anything to Abba Eban’s well-known comment, “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.”

The Kafkaesque ICC decision, 60 pages of mumbo-jumbo intended to obscure the intention to pillory Israel and punish Israelis, proves that the ICC is “nothing but a pack of cards,” in the words of Lewis Carroll’s Alice.

And this illustrates how, at least in the realm of nations, politics trumps law. It illustrates why the expansion of international law beyond the principle of consent is dangerous. And – as if any more such illustrations are needed – it shows how important international institutions are viciously biased against one particular country, which just happens to be the one Jewish state.

Posted in The UN, War | Comments Off on The ICC is Nothing but a Pack of Cards

Has Joe Forgotten Joseph?

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Victor Rosenthal

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph – Ex. 1:8

Ever since the day there arose a Pharaoh in Egypt who “did not know Joseph,” the dialectic of the Jewish people in diaspora has been the same. The Jews are first welcomed and treated well, but in time they grow numerous, and acquire wealth, influence, and position in society. They do exceedingly well. The reason for that is fraught with controversy, but the fact is undeniable.

And then the locals become unhappy with them. Perhaps they feel threatened, perhaps envious, perhaps greedy for the possessions amassed by the Jews. Perhaps they simply are repelled by the stubborn otherness of the Jews. Then the majority rises up, places restrictions on them, persecutes them, impoverishes them, expels them, murders them, or all of these.

It happened in Egypt, in the Roman Empire, in England, Spain, Byzantium, the Russian Empire, Iraq, and of course 20th century Europe. Over and over. Finally the Zionists realized that the only way to break out of this dialectic was to return to Jewish sovereignty, create a Jewish state of, by, and for the Jewish people. After a difficult struggle and a particularly horrific episode of large-scale mass murder, they succeeded to build a state in the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

But then the dialectic did not disappear. Rather, it raised itself to a higher level of abstraction, with the whole world playing the role of the diaspora nations and the Jewish state that of their Jewish communities; hence the expression “Israel is the Jew among nations” (usually attributed to Golda Meir).

Just like the various kings, princes, and sultans who adopted or spurned the Jews, the nations of the world took positions about the Jewish state. But as she became stronger and wealthier, and her people happier and more successful, resentment against her rose up throughout the world. Just as the Jews were accused of murdering Christian children to obtain their blood, the Jewish state was accused of horrendous crimes against Palestinians. A notorious parallel, called a 21st century blood libel, was the allegation that the IDF had murdered young Mohammed al-Dura, which became a cause célèbre for Israel-haters worldwide. Just as Jews were seen in medieval Europe as evil creatures for their refusal to accept the doctrines of Christianity, today Israel is called a racist and apartheid state.

What has happened is that while traditional Jew-hatred (although growing strongly under the radar, especially among lower economic classes in the West) has become at least publically unfashionable, misoziony, hatred of Israel no less extreme, irrational, and obsessive than Nazi antisemitism, is burgeoning. International institutions like the UN have adopted it as a pillar of their “moral” edifices, and it has become a litmus test for ideological purity on the left.

This didn’t happen by itself. It was a deliberate consequence of Soviet cognitive warfare. Starting in the 1960s, the KGB deliberately amplified anti-Israel sentiment, and worked to create it with every means at its disposal. The Soviets, well understanding the power that misoziony inherited from its Jew-hating roots, emphasized the demonization of Israel in its propaganda, contributing greatly to its strength and spread. In particular, the false identification of Zionism with racism and apartheid was a KGB creation.

Official American policy has been relatively non-misozionist since Harry Truman played the role of Cyrus the Great to the Jewish state in 1948. Elements in the State Department have always been biased against Israel to some extent, but in general US policy was rational, even friendly unless American interests (mostly connected to oil) dictated otherwise.

With the Obama presidency, America’s Mideast policy became driven by more than strict considerations of US interests. Barack Obama saw himself as motivated by moral concerns, but his moral principles were those of the contemporary Left (with a contribution from black liberation theology). He absorbed the Soviet conception of Israel as a colonialist exploiter of people of color, and saw Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a personal foe.

But he knew that the American people, especially including Evangelical Christians, weren’t ready for a president who would explicitly denounce Israel as a state that ought not exist. So he employed a dual strategy. On the one hand, he repeatedly assured Americans that he was committed to the security of Israel (“an unbreakable bond”), and he supported military aid to Israel, which sent a message of support while it provided leverage to control her, and weakened her domestic military industries.

On the other hand, he worked to weaken Israel and strengthen her enemies, including the PLO but especially Iran. The nuclear deal (JCPOA) with Iran, which had the effect of protecting Iran’s nuclear program instead of dismantling it, was a direct threat to Israel’s continued existence. And yet, the tortuous explanations of how this arrangement would benefit the US didn’t hold water. What is there about “death to America” that he didn’t understand? What is there about Iranian-sponsored drug trafficking that is in America’s interest? Had the Iranian regime ever done anything in response to the gifts it received from the US other than increase its support of terrorism and push harder to expand its sphere of influence, so as to surround its intended victims (Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt)?

The answer is that Obama had replaced the traditional interest-based policy with one based on his understanding of morality. Unfortunately his ignorance of history and skewed ideology produced an equally skewed morality, in which there is no room for a Jewish state. American policy had sometimes been less than supportive of Israel when the perception was that US interests required it. But for the first time, it became ideologically anti-Israel.

Obama was replaced by Donald Trump in 2017. Whatever his motives, Trump’s actions in both the symbolic and the concrete realms were consistently pro-Israel. In particular, he took the US out of the dangerous JCPOA and increased pressure on Iran, both by means of sanctions and by assisting the targets of Iran’s aggression, Israel and the Sunni Arab states. Trump’s policy severely weakened the highly unpopular regime in Iran (Obama had supported the regime when it was challenged domestically by the Green Movement in 2009).

Trump and his movement were defeated in a remarkably rancorous and brutal election struggle that left the US bitterly divided. The Joe Biden administration has chosen its foreign policy team almost entirely from former Obama Administration officials, and has appointed some particularly anti-Israel individuals to key positions, including those that will be concerned with Iran. In his first days, Biden has reversed several of Trump’s actions relating to the Palestinians, restoring aid to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, reopening the Jerusalem consulate that was the unofficial US embassy to “Palestine,” and pledging to allow the PLO office in Washington to reopen.

But it is in connection with Iran that the intention to continue Obama’s policies are the most concerning. Although Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (the “good cop” in the administration) has said that Iran will get no sanctions relief until it “returns to compliance” with the JCPOA, Biden has already given Iran several important gifts: he has said he will remove the Iran-sponsored Houthi guerrillas in Yemen from the list of designated terrorist organizations; he will no longer sell arms to Saudi Arabia in support of its war against the Houthis; and he has suspended the impending sale of F35 aircraft to the UAE, an Iranian enemy and recent ally of Israel.

Israel has been waiting for Biden to call PM Netanyahu, because Netanyahu wants to present evidence about Iranian nuclear development, and argue that rejoining the JCPOA as it stands or with minimal changes would be a serious error. Biden apparently would prefer not to have this conversation, which might result in an open break with Israel. So far he hasn’t called.

I don’t know where Biden himself is at, or indeed if he is at anyplace at all. But it seems certain that the new administration has returned to Obama-era policies on issues of concern to Israel. I wonder if any of them have questioned the rationality of helping the misogynist, homophobic, dictatorial, terror-propagating, expansionist Iranian regime get nuclear weapons?

Does the existence of a Jewish state bother them that much?

Posted in Jew Hatred, US-Israel Relations, Zionism | 3 Comments