How to Win Back the Squandered Gift of 1967

Posted on June 6, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Recently I watched a short (10 minutes), very powerful video about Israel’s victory in the Six Days War. The film suggests that the victory was literally miraculous. It may well have been so, although miracles like the destruction of the enemy air forces or the capture of the Old City only happen when divine intervention is combined with careful preparation, struggle, and sacrifice by humans.

The film made me enormously proud of the accomplishments of the Jewish people, state, and army. And while I don’t believe in direct divine intervention in human affairs, this victory – along with the survival of the Jewish people since biblical times – made me wonder if I could be wrong about that.

So what’s the problem?

It seems to me that we have taken the gift that was given to us by Hashem and the IDF and little by little, through ignorance and weakness of will, squandered it.

The Sinai peninsula, conquered in 1967, is back in Egyptian hands. Yes, I know that we gained “peace” in return, but a better description of that peace would be that the US bribed the Egyptians to leave us alone with billions in aid, including military aid that translated into weapons that could only have been useful against us. Today Egypt has a government that sees its advantage in maintaining the cold peace; but if the Muslim Brotherhood that came to power for a short time (2012-13) with the help of Barack Obama had been more competent, we would be facing hostility no less bitter than in the days of Nasser. For this, we gave up natural resources including oil, but more important, the one thing that Israel lacks above all else, and the one lack that is most difficult to compensate for with high-tech cleverness: strategic depth.

The Gaza Strip, too, has reverted to Arab control. It is now to all intents and purposes a sovereign state, under control of Hamas, which bitterly oppresses the Arab population and uses it as a human shield in a permanent war of attrition against Israel. This came about as a result of Israel’s voluntary, unilateral abandonment of its settlements and military installations there. Gaza serves as a base for Hamas’ military activities and an excuse for international condemnation of Israel, which from time to time must defend herself against rocket attacks, incendiary and explosive devices carried by kites and balloons, and attempted incursions by terrorists, either over the border fence or by way of tunnels.

And the holiest spot in the world for the Jewish people? The very day after the conquest of the Old City, Moshe Dayan ordered the Israeli flag removed from the Dome of the Rock and gave administrative control of the Temple Mount to the Arab waqf. A “status quo” was created, in which Muslims and Jews would both be able to visit their sacred sites. However, in practice, Jewish rights were eroded little by little. Today, Jews can visit only at restricted times, can enter through just one gate, are forbidden to pray, carry objects (even water bottles), or even use water faucets dedicated to Muslim hand-washing. They are often exposed to harassment from hostile Muslims. There are few limitations on Muslims, and Arab children sometimes play football on the Mount, despite a court order forbidding it. The waqf has built several mosques on and under the Mount, and in the process destroyed or lost irreplaceable archaeologically valuable artifacts. Agreements call for archaeological supervision of construction work, but this requirement is ignored by the waqf.

As far as the rest of Judea and Samaria is concerned, the “international community,” in mortal fear of PLO terrorism and the Arab oil weapon, has been pushing and shoving at Israel ever since the 1967 war to abandon the territories that she liberated from Jordanian occupation. But it took Israel’s own Shimon Peres, in pursuit of a chimerical “New Middle East,” to stupidly bring our worst enemy, Yasser Arafat, back from exile where his organization was growing old and feeble, and allow him to establish his terrorist base in the biblical heartland of the Jewish state. We even gave him money and guns! We paid a steep price for this fashla during the Second Intifada, and we continue to pay today when Jews are murdered at random by the generation of young people raised under the educational system of Arafat and his successor, the porcine Mahmoud Abbas.

Although we can’t blame anyone but ourselves for the Oslo Accords – even US President Clinton was taken by surprise – the hostile European Union has made use of Oslo to advance its objective of forcing Israel out of the territories. In the guise of “humanitarian” aid to the Palestinian Authority, the EU today ignores Israeli zoning and building regulations and constructs public buildings to create facts on the ground in areas that, according to Oslo, are under Israeli control.

How did we allow all this to happen?

There are multiple reasons. One is that we don’t know how to negotiate. We like to think, “we are strong, we can afford to give up (whatever) in the interest of peace. The other side will appreciate our generosity.” Wrong. Whatever we give up, the Arabs take, and then ask for more. They don’t understand “generosity” – they see weakness. The negotiating process is like a ratchet: it can go in one direction – toward the Arabs – but can’t go in the other.

Another reason, often noted, is that we assume that everyone else is like us. We want peace, so Palestinian Arabs must want peace. We care about security, economic development, a good life for our children. They, on the other hand, want to get rid of us; it doesn’t matter if they would have a better life if they cooperate with us. We want an independent nation-state, but they are strongly loyal to their clans. We look for win-win solutions, but it is always more important to them to hurt Jews than to help Arabs.

Finally, the Arabs are always ready to use the “heckler’s veto,” or more correctly in this case, the “terrorist’s veto:” give us what we want or there will be no peace. What Israeli politician wants to be accused of being responsible for the unrest that follows standing up for ourselves?

What can we do differently? Unfortunately, we need to become less generous. We need to become tougher. We need to set limits, and stick to them. The EU is funding illegal construction in Judea and Samaria? Demolish it. Start with Khan al Ahmar, which even Israel’s left-leaning Supreme Court agrees must go, and which PM Netanyahu promised to remove months ago. We need to take back what we have given up, little by little, and strike hard against the “terrorist’s veto.” We are not going to get the Sinai back – and at this stage, I doubt that we want it. But the situation in and around Gaza can and must change radically. There must be a price paid for incendiary balloons, a price so high that they won’t want to pay it more than once.

The same goes for the Temple Mount. A bit at a time, the way we lost it, we must get it back. Of course there will be a reaction (i.e., a riot). But the reactions happen because the Arabs know they can get away with them. They know we will always back down, as we did with the metal detectors at the gates. They know we are afraid of confrontation, so they just push harder.

It’s a long process, and it will be painful. The Arabs are in the habit of winning; it will be hard to get them used to losing. But there are no win-win solutions for the Middle East. In this neighborhood, all the games are zero-sum.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli or Jewish History, War | Comments Off on How to Win Back the Squandered Gift of 1967

The Coalition Racket

Posted on June 3, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

The first thing to know about Israel’s electoral system is that it has a serious flaw. The second is that it’s very hard to fix it.

As you probably know, Israelis vote for parties, not for individual candidates for the Knesset. The parties pick ordered lists of candidates (how they do this is up to the parties), and each party gets a number of seats in the Knesset in proportion to the number of votes they get. The seats are given in order, so if a party gets 1/3 of the total vote, the first 40 candidates on its list get seats. Then the President of the state will consult with the various parties and pick the member of the Knesset that he believes is the most likely to succeed in forming a government, usually – but not necessarily – the no. 1 member of the party that has the most seats. Of course no party ever gets a true majority, so after the election come the coalition negotiations.

In April’s election, the constellation of “right-wing” parties,  led by Bibi Netanyahu’s Likud, came out far ahead of the “center-left,” led by Benny Gantz and his Blue and White party (actually, it’s hard to call it a party – it’s more like a conglomeration of personalities with differing political viewpoints who agree on one major principle: opposing Netanyahu).

Although the Likud by itself achieved only a small margin over Blue and White, Netanyahu’s big advantage was that he had – or at least thought he had – enough coalition partners to put together a majority in the 120-member Knesset. Gantz was far behind, and would not get 61 members in a coalition even if he were to ask the non-Zionist Arab parties to join him, something which hasn’t happened in Israel’s history.

Coalition negotiations are notoriously ugly, with small parties trying to extort the maximum number of important cabinet positions, promises to support or kill particular legislation, or money for pet projects or specific segments of the population, before they agree to sign onto the coalition. But usually everyone wants to get on with it, and compromises are made before time runs out.

This time, one of Bibi’s partners, Avigdor Lieberman, whose Israel Beitenu party is made up mostly of secular Russian immigrants and which had won five seats in the Knesset, insisted that he would not join unless the government passed a law that Lieberman had initiated when he was Defense Minister. The law called for an increasing number of yeshiva students to be drafted, and applied financial penalties to yeshivot that didn’t meet the targets. The Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) parties would not agree, although they were willing to discuss a compromise. But Lieberman insisted: the law must be passed “without changing a comma.” Lieberman’s five seats made the difference between a 65 seat majority and the inability to form a government (you can read more of the back story about this issue here).

Everyone believed that a last minute compromise would be made, or that Bibi would persuade an opposition member to jump to his party, or pull some other rabbit out of his hat. But it didn’t happen. Bibi’s options were to tell the President of the state, Reuven Rivlin, that he could not form a coalition, in which case Rivlin could ask Gantz or any other member of the Knesset to try, or to get the Knesset to pass a bill to dissolve itself and call new elections. Whether anyone else could have succeeded was uncertain, but rather than take the chance, he chose new elections. They will be held in September.

Until then, Bibi will remain PM. The Knesset will not introduce any new bills. Soon the campaign will start all over again. It’s been estimated that the election will cost the Treasury 475 million shekels ($131 million), and the obligatory day off for all workers will cost the country as much as a billion shekels. The lack of a government capable of making serious commitments will mean that Trump’s “deal of the century” – at least, the political part of it – will be put off until after the election, and after the coalition negotiations that must follow. That won’t be until the end of the year, which will be just about when the pre-election frenzy in the US will be starting. Various domestic issues of importance will languish – such as the reform of the Supreme Court, which I believe is essential and should be decoupled from any attempt to grant Bibi immunity from prosecution on the several corruption charges pending against him.

And it’s possible that the whole thing could happen again this September. It’s totally unacceptable that the creation of a new government can be stymied by one stubborn individual, whose party received about 4.2% of the vote.

The general problem is the way a small party can exploit its position to gain massive leverage and benefits. The Haredi parties, who are prepared to go with either the Right or Left depending on who offers them the best deal in cabinet positions, money for yeshivot, freedom from military service, and Torah-based legislation, are famous for this, but they are not the only ones that do it. Of course this applies once there is a government as well as at coalition-making time; if they are unhappy, they can vote with the opposition to bring down a government.

The bribes paid to the various prospective coalition partners – because this is what they are – are expensive. New ministries and their staffs are created to give jobs to important partners. Institutions are subsidized, welfare benefits for particular segments of society are expanded, and so forth. The negotiators are generous. Why shouldn’t they be, it’s absolutely vital (they think) that their party get to lead the nation, and it’s taxpayer money anyway.

It was felt that there were too many small parties, so the percentage of the vote needed to get into the Knesset at all was increased. It presently stands at 3.25%, which means that if a party doesn’t get that many votes (equivalent to four seats), they get no seats and their votes are lost. This is what happened to my vote this April, when the New Right party of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked barely missed the cut-off by a thousand votes. Now there aren’t numerous one and two-seat factions in the Knesset, but the extortion problem still exists. And the high cut-off harms the medium-size parties because it impels voters to choose the biggest parties out of fear of having their votes neutralized.

There are some very good things about Israel’s system. A citizen makes a clear ideological choice in voting for a party, and Israelis care about ideology. Even if you vote for a party that just makes it over the threshold with four or five seats, your people will have influence in the Knesset, and perhaps in the Cabinet if they join the coalition. Unlike the American or British systems in which parliamentary candidates stand for election from geographical districts, there is no problem of gerrymandering (drawing district boundaries to disenfranchise voters of a particular party or particular ethnic groups). Gridlock caused by conflict between the executive and legislative branches, so characteristic of the American government, is far less likely.

I don’t have an easy solution. Politics is politics, and it will always involve deals in smoke-filled rooms. But is there anything we can do to clean up the coalition system, without losing the worthwhile parts?

Posted in Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Security and Insecurity

Posted on May 30, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Last week my Masorti shul hosted a visiting group of Americans, members of a Conservative synagogue. One of the subjects for discussion was “what’s the issue that you are most concerned with at your synagogue?” The answer was not declining and aging membership, providing Jewish education for children (and grandchildren), mixed marriage, Israel, or any of the usual issues. It was security. “Ask anybody. Security is the top issue,” they said. “Who wants to join a shul or send their children to a school where they might get shot?”

The traditional position of liberal Jews in the US has always been that security was for someone else. It was sort of a badge of honor for liberals to insist that they didn’t need to protect themselves. They really liked themselves, so why shouldn’t everyone else like them? The Reform Temple in my home town built a beautiful new suburban structure for themselves in 1990, to replace the old fortress-like building downtown. The new one was invitingly open, with acres of glass, lots of doors, and expansive grounds without serious fencing – and it will cost them a small fortune to secure it.

Liberal Jews disliked guns and favored limiting access to them. They trusted the state to protect them. Now they are happy to have the “paranoid” gun owners with carry permits among them. Now they are having “active shooter drills” and taking self-defense courses too, because they are in danger on the street as well as in the synagogue.

This is just one aspect of the end of a golden age. There is no going back. As economic conditions get worse – and they will, thanks to the massive, crushing debt which will leave the increasingly incompetent government no choice but to inflate the currency – both the disenfranchised former blue-collar workers and the revolutionary Left will continue to blame the Jews, as will the blacks, who have been taught since the 1960s that anything bad that happens to them is a result of institutional white racism, and who have also come to believe – thanks to almost every important black “leader” after MLK – that the power behind the racist institutions is The Jew. The increase in the Muslim population, which is already close in number to the diminishing Jewish one, is another reason for an increase in antisemitism. Many Muslim immigrants bring with them the Jew-hatred that is common in the Muslim world, even apart from tensions relating to Israel. The security problem is a new reality, not a temporary problem.

I have to admit that I am lucky in that I have almost never experienced insecurity by virtue of being a Jew. I could say I have lived a charmed life. I lived in America at a time when being a Jew was almost as safe as being anything else. I did not live in Israel during the wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, when her existence was threatened. I was in California when Saddam was firing Scuds at Tel Aviv. I missed the Second Intifada, with its exploding buses and restaurants, and the recent Knife Intifada never came to Rehovot. I didn’t live in the North in 1981 when missiles from the PLO were landing, nor in 2006 when Hezbollah was launching them. I don’t live in the South now, which periodically comes under fire from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

One exception was in California in January, 2009. It was during Operation Cast Lead, the first of the “mowing the grass” operations in Gaza. After Israel absorbed thousands of rockets and mortars on the southern part of the country, Israel’s government decided to end the threat. In air, ground and naval attacks, Hamas installations were pounded, with buildings, tunnels, and of course rocket manufacturing and storage sites destroyed.

The operation started on December 27, 2008, and lasted 22 days before officials of the incoming Obama Administration ordered Israel to get the IDF out of Gaza before the inauguration. In the meantime, Hamas and supportive NGOs launched a vicious and effective propaganda attack, in which Israel was portrayed as deliberately trying to injure and kill civilians (the ultimate product of this was the tendentious Goldstone Report). At the same time, the Al Jazeera satellite channel showed continuous violent footage, much of it from wars in other places at other times, inflaming the world against Israel.

The local Islamic Center and “Peace” organization organized an anti-Israel demonstration at a main intersection. Several hundred demonstrators, many of them Muslim teenagers bused from other cities in California, stood on three corners of the intersection, facing a handful of pro-Israel demonstrators. Muslim demonstrators crossed the street and threatened the counter-demonstrators; at one point I called the police and told them that verbal confrontations were escalating and might become violent. They responded that the Muslims had promised that they would control their people. Shortly thereafter, one of the leaders of the demonstration came across and placed himself in front of the counter-demonstrators, protecting us from their more aggressive members.

This was an object lesson in dhimmitude and in diaspora life. We Jews were shown that Muslims would protect us, assuming of course that we were properly subservient; and we saw that the goyishe authorities could not be depended on. Not strong enough to protect ourselves, we were at our enemies’ mercy. My wife commented that it was time for us to move back to Israel (it took five more years).

The Jews of Europe have been insecure for some time now. I was in the UK in 2001, and the synagogue in North London that I visited already had the kind of precautions that Americans are only needing to implement today. Once-safe Germany is warning Jews to keep their kippot in their pockets. Forget France or Sweden.

Insecurity is unpleasant. Someone wants to hurt you, maybe kill you. You look over your shoulder. You cluster together with your own people, in ghettos or “Jewish neighborhoods,” because there’s safety in numbers (sometimes). You look for exits, make contingency plans. You try to make alliances with your non-Jewish neighbors, and to keep on the right side of the authorities in case you need their help.

This is humiliating, dishonorable. It harms your self-respect when your people can’t stand up for themselves. This is life in the diaspora.

Israel is the world’s biggest Jewish neighborhood, with the world’s most powerful security patrol, the IDF. Sometimes we would like the government to get a little tougher with our enemies. After all, this is the Jewish state, not the diaspora. There is still insecurity in Israel, but it is usually collective insecurity, in which the whole country worries about the same things. But personally speaking, I feel much more secure as a Jew in Israel than I ever did in California.

Posted in American Jews, Jew Hatred, Terrorism, Zionism | Comments Off on Security and Insecurity

Israel’s Coming Constitutional Crisis

Posted on May 26, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Can there be a constitutional crisis without a constitution?

Apparently Israel is headed toward one, as Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Likud party confront Israel’s Supreme Court.

The Court says that Netanyahu wants to render it powerless, destroying the independent judiciary that is a requirement for democratic governance. Netanyahu says that the court has arrogated too much power to itself, so much so that the Knesset and the Government, which in fact are the democratically elected voice of the citizens, are the ones that have been neutered.

Both sides appeal to the concept of democracy. But both sides understand that the conflict is about power.

What brought this issue – which has been simmering for years – to a boil now is that the PM would like to pass a law granting him immunity from prosecution on corruption charges as long as he is in office. And he also wants a law that will enable the Knesset to override a Supreme Court decision to overturn a law it has passed.

It is very unfortunate that the issue of checks and balances among the branches of government has to be tied up with the question of immunity for the PM, since naturally anything anyone says about it will be attributed to the most obvious political motives. But the balance of powers question does need to be addressed.

Let me just insert a bit about the PM’s immunity here: I’m for it. The last few years have seen the PM’s time increasingly taken up by several police investigations, countless sessions of questioning, and daily media frenzies based on leaks from the police and prosecutor’s office. There is absolutely no doubt that his ability to do the job he was elected to do has been severely impacted. Not only this, but his political position has been undermined by the flood of unproven allegations leaked to the hostile media. No matter how you feel about Netanyahu, this is both dangerous for the nation and personally unfair to the PM.

There are good solutions to this in other democracies. In France the president has immunity by law from questioning prosecution for the period of his term; statutes of limitations are suspended during it, but he can be prosecuted immediately upon leaving office. He can be removed from office by impeachment by a special court that is convened by both houses of the French parliament. In America, although there isn’t a constitutional provision for it, the majority legal opinion is that a president must be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate before he could be prosecuted.

Israel does not have a constitution as such. The very first Knesset was supposed to adopt one six months after the establishment of the state. It did not, because various factions were unable to agree on many issues, and because David Ben Gurion felt the enterprise would be too divisive. Instead, Israel has fourteen Basic Laws, which deal with important subjects and which will supposedly (don’t hold your breath) one day be expanded and put together to be a constitution.

Most (but not all) of these Basic Laws can be changed by a vote of the majority of the Knesset members present (assuming a quorum). Some of them are detailed and some vague, some subjects are not covered at all, and the empty spaces have to be filled by legislation or by legal interpretations. This provides fertile ground for a very activist court. The Supreme Court has defined its own role over the years, especially since the 1980s. And an exceedingly broad role it is.

In most legal systems, access to the courts is reserved for those with “standing” – a stake, financial or otherwise, in the outcome. But in Israel, anyone can petition the highest court anytime for any reason. So you have European-funded NGOs petitioning the court on behalf of Palestinian residents of the territories!

In most systems, there are limitations on the kind of matter that is “justiciable” – that is, appropriate for the courts to decide. Some matters are considered essentially political, and some, like issues related to security, require special expertise. But the definition of “justiciable” has expanded to include almost anything that the government does.

There’s more. As Evelyn Gordon writes,

Whereas once the court would consider only whether a government action accorded with the letter of the law, the court began routinely overturning decisions which it considered “extremely unreasonable,” on the grounds that extreme unreasonability is ipso facto illegal. In the words of [former Court President Meir] Shamgar, “unreasonability that extends to the heart of the issue makes the decision of a government authority illegal.”

This combination gives the Court virtually dictatorial powers in every realm of government action. The Court can review any law passed by the Knesset and any administrative decision of any government official, including decisions made by military or security personnel. It is the first and last court to consider such laws and decisions; so there is no higher court to appeal to. And they can throw out a law or decision not only because it’s unconstitutional, but because in their eyes it is “unreasonable.”

Israel’s Supreme Court is probably the most powerful such organ in any democratic country. The US Supreme Court, in anyone’s wildest dreams, has never been this “activist.” The Court sees itself as sort of a philosopher-king as recommended by Plato, because it believes that it can be completely objective and is not dirtied by the muddy waters of politics. If only that were possible!

All judges in Israel, including the justices of the Supreme Court are chosen by a 9-member judicial selection committee, which meets in secret. Three of its members are justices of the Supreme Court, and two are representatives of the Bar Association. These five often vote as a bloc, which means that the left-leaning legal establishment controls the selection of judges. These philosopher-princes were recently embarrassed when it turned out that an influential member of the committee and head of the Bar Association was caught trading judicial appointments and promotions for sex.

A right-wing government and a left-leaning Court would be expected to be in conflict. But the balance of power has moved too far in the direction of the Court in recent times, paralyzing the executive and legislative branches. The Court almost prevented the signing of an agreement to sell natural gas internationally, and has prevented the repatriation of illegal migrants that have made life hell for residents of South Tel Aviv. It has ordered the demolition of whole Jewish communities in the territories because of NGO petitions that (sometimes unknown) Palestinians have claims on some of their land. It is almost certain to move to overthrow the newly-passed Nation-State Law. The Court is the main reason for complaints that Israelis vote for the Right but get policies of the Left. It is not accidental that the expansion of the Court’s powers came at about the same time that the historic monopoly of the Labor party was smashed by Menachem Begin.

The opposition to Netanyahu and the Court itself view – or pretend to view – the situation today as nothing less than an attempt to overthrow democracy and the rule of law, and install Bibi as a fascist dictator. The Times of Israel reports,

Judges on the Supreme Court have warned they could take “extreme steps” in order to block legislative proposals that could severely curtail the court’s powers and shield Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from prosecution, Israeli television reported Friday.

“It seems as if the prime minister and the candidates for the role of justice minister want to shatter and destroy the legal system,” Channel 13 news quoted unnamed Supreme Court justices saying during private talks.

“The immunity bill alongside the override clause is unbelievable. We won’t hesitate to take harsh and extreme steps because history will judge us,” they were said to add.

What these steps might be remain unspecified. But it’s clear that we will be in uncharted territory with no clear directions to get back if an open conflict between the government and the Court erupts.

An immunity bill, along with some sensible restrictions on the Court’s power – a return to requiring that petitioners have “standing” in a case, a retreat from the ideas that “everything is justiciable” and that anything the justices find unreasonable is also illegal, would be a good start. A change in the way judges are selected to make it fairer and more transparent is probably necessary.

None of these things destroys democracy or introduces fascism. Indeed, by restoring eroded checks and balances, they would make the country more democratic. But the Supreme Court is the last bastion of real power for the Left in Israeli society, and they are going to fight to keep it, regardless of collateral damage.

Posted in Israeli Politics | 2 Comments

The Moral Bankruptcy of Reform’s Religious Action Center

Posted on May 23, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC) is the “social justice” arm of the American Reform movement (it has a parallel organization here in Israel, the IRAC). Although it claims to be “completely non-partisan,” if you look at the issues that the RAC is interested in, you will find that they are exactly the same ones that occupy the progressive wing of the Democratic party: immigration, minimum wage, climate change, LGBTQ rights, the 2-state solution, abortion, gun control, separation of church and state, antisemitism (from the Right) and of course “Islamophobia.”

This is not news. The Reform movement was created in 19th century Germany in the hope of easing the acceptance of Jews into the larger society. The promise of emancipation made in the early part of the century had not been fulfilled, and Jews were still severely discriminated against unless they converted to Christianity. So the reformers changed or eliminated practices that made Jews stand out, including distinctive clothing, religious services on Saturday, kashrut, and more. But the intention was not to assimilate but rather to prevent assimilation. The hope was that German society would then become more tolerant and grant Reform Jews the same rights as their Christian neighbors, while allowing them to remain Jewish.

As the movement developed over the years in America, the focus became different. American Jews in the 19th century did not face the same kind of pressure as European Jews. In America the problem was a lack of Jewish knowledge and education. The founders of the movement were formerly traditionally observant, knew how to pray in Hebrew, and had a many scholars among them. Most Eastern European immigrants to the US around the turn of the 20th century brought some traditional background with them from Europe. But many members of the post-WWII generation of American Jews, busy becoming Americans – although still very conscious of being Jews – did not have the tools to be traditionally observant. The Reform movement was a good fit for them.

But by the 1960s, it became clear that something had been taken out of the Judaism they were practicing. When the ritual went away, so did the spirituality. There were numerous Jews who turned to Eastern religions like Buddhism in search of something transcending the mundane. At the same time, many Jewish liberals were active in the civil rights movement, and some even became involved in more radical political activity.  The idea developed that some of the political fervor could be brought into the temples, to fill the vacuum. After all, there are “social” commandments and a prophetic tradition in Judaism which can be emphasized to compensate for the de-emphasis of the “ritual” commandments. And so what has come to be called “tikkun olam Judaism” arrived, whose basic ethical principles coincided more or less with those of liberal Protestantism and secular humanism, and in which “social action” replaced Jewish ritual.

At the same time, Reform Judaism became more accessible to non-Jews. Reform Judaism accepted a child as Jewish if either the mother or father were Jewish, as long as the child received a certain amount of (Reform) Jewish education. Conversion classes were offered to non-Jewish spouses or others who wanted to become Jews; the students learned some Jewish history (from the Reform perspective), they learned about observing the major holidays, and a few Hebrew songs – and it was explained to them that Judaism had moved beyond old-fashioned ritual, and was now concerned primarily with moral issues. Since most of these converts were already liberals, they felt very comfortable with the tikkun olam Judaism that they were taught.

The removal of the differences between Jews and non-Jews caused by the de-emphasis of ritual commandments helped accelerate the amount of intermarriage in the Reform world, so that today something like 50% of married Reform Jews have a non-Jewish spouse (among all non-Orthodox Jews, including those who are secular, the rate is close to 70%).

In part because of the universalist, anti-nationalist strain in the secular humanistic ethics of tikkun olam Judaism, and perhaps also because of the increasing number of converts and non-Jews (spouses that chose not to convert) in the Reform population, there is a weaker connection to the Jewish people as a whole. If you ask an orthodox Jew what the primary attributes of his identity are, he will almost always say that the highest priority is that he is a Jew. An American Reform Jew might be almost as likely to place something else first, like their American identity, their political creed, or even their profession.

The feeling of peoplehood is considered atavistic among liberals, including Jewish liberals. Sometimes they place themselves so far above it, that they actively disdain those Jews that do have a strong connection to their people, either through traditional observance or Zionism.

So it was not surprising to me to read that the RAC had invited to speak at its recent “Consultation on Conscience” a man who had been an active antisemite, an enemy of the Jewish people, someone who had actually incited violence against Jews on more than one occasion, Al Sharpton.

Sharpton has never admitted that he did more than “say cheap things to get cheap applause,” but the three-day long Crown Heights riot that he inflamed in 1991 was arguably the closest thing to a pogrom America has ever seen.

Sharpton, styles himself a version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but he does not deserve to have his name mentioned in the same sentence as the nonviolent civil rights leader. And yet, because he represents himself as a spokesman for one of the “oppressed” groups that progressive Democrats see as part of their coalition, they are able to ignore the anti-Jewish acts for which he never apologized.  This is because they identify more closely with the progressive movement – although this movement rejects them as “white” and takes the side of the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel – than they do with the Orthodox Jews of Chabad, who were the victims of the Crown Heights riot.

Indeed, after expressions of outrage from Orthodox rabbis and relatives of Yankel Rosenbaum, the Chabad student that was stabbed to death during the Crown Heights riots, RAC clearly expressed its solidarity with progressivism against the Jewish people. In the words of Rabbi Jonah Pesner, RAC director:

That there are members of our Crown Heights family and our Chabad family that are in pain over this actually creates a lot of pain for us, and we’re sorry about that…

At this moment — when children are being separated from their parents at the border, and Jews are being murdered in the synagogues, and people of color are being gunned down in their churches, and people in mosques are being firebombed — we need to stand together, and Reverend Sharpton has stood with us these past couple of years.

Pesner hit all the progressive notes, including the obligatory swipe at President Trump’s immigration policy and the nod to the must-mention issue of “Islamophobia.”

But for his Jewish brothers in Chabad, whose blood has never been avenged (the stabber of Rosenbaum was acquitted of murder in a series of trials reminiscent of those that acquitted murderers of civil rights workers in the South, and ultimately spent 10 years in jail on federal civil rights charges), Pesner only has these words: “Sorry about that.”

Posted in American Jews | 1 Comment

More worries for American Jews

Posted on May 19, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

Dr. Guy Bechor is an Israeli political and legal analyst who specializes in the Middle East. He often appears on Israeli television and his articles are found in various newspapers and websites; however, much of it is not translated into English.

This interview (video with subtitles and transcript), in which he focuses on the predicament of American Jews, is an exception. His argument can be summarized as follows:

  1. Most US Jews joined Roosevelt’s minority coalition in the 1930s, which cemented their bond with the Democratic party.
  2. Demographic change – a decline in the relative number of Jews compared to blacks, Hispanics, and now especially Muslims – has made them less influential in the party.
  3. Some members of the other minorities in the coalition – for example, Muslims like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, as well as some blacks that admire Louis Farrakhan, have expressed themselves in antisemitic – not just anti-Zionist – ways. The party, apparently having made its calculation of the relative number of votes involved, did not support the Jews against them. This came as a shock to many liberal Jews.
  4. At the same time, extreme anti-Zionist positions, including support for BDS and even terrorism against Israel have become a requirement for “progressive” credentials. “They hate Israel,” Bechor says.
  5. A few Jews have responded by moving to the Republican party. Some others don’t know what to do and have taken a break from politics. And some have chosen to join the progressive bloc that now dominates the Democratic party.
  6. Those in this third group have adopted the extreme anti-Zionist position of that bloc. They had no choice – it is a requirement to be accepted (Bechor compares this to the pressure for European Jews in the 19th century to convert to Christianity).
  7. They have placed themselves in the forefront of the movement against Trump and his supporters. Many Trump supporters understandably see a “Jewish conspiracy” against the president.
  8. This also feeds the violent antisemitism of the extreme right, who find Jewish names in all of the progressive causes that they despise, and then attack the most obvious manifestations of Judaism, like synagogues and Chabad houses (but see my remark below).
  9. Jews no longer have a safe home in America. Both the Left and the Right despise them.

Bechor continues, saying that American Jews have “brought this on themselves” by embracing progressive causes. I disagree. The anti-Jewish extreme Left and Right will hate Jews regardless of what they do; this is the nature of antisemitism, and it has always been so. However, it is true that when Jews join the extreme Left, they alienate non-antisemitic American conservatives that might otherwise support them.

He goes as far as calling prominent progressive voices like Peter Beinart, Thomas Friedman, The NY Times, J Street, and so on, “our [Israel’s] enemy” who are “more dangerous to Israel than Iran.” They are perhaps not dangerous at the present time, when the American administration is pro-Israel, but when the Democrats regain control of the government – which at some point they will – one can expect anti-Israel policies such as were followed during the Obama Administration, or worse. And they will have the full support of Jewish progressives and media like the NY Times.

Bechor expects that the position of the Jews – caught between the Right, the Left, and the Muslims – in America will worsen quickly, as it has in Europe, and they will have no place to go except Israel. And he expects that the tepid reaction to antisemitic expression on the Left in the public sphere will send a message that it’s acceptable. He compares the Democratic Party to Labour in the UK, which is hemorrhaging Jews and decent people as a result of the antisemitism of Jeremy Corbyn and his followers.

Bechor advocates that Israel seek support among the Evangelical Christians in America, who strongly support Israel (although there are efforts underway in the US to end this support).

He notes that Israel’s Law of Return includes the provision that a visa may be denied to a person who

(1) is engaged in an activity directed against the Jewish people; or
(2) is likely to endanger public health or the security of the State.

He thinks BDS supporters among progressive Jews fit this definition. I do too, but as you will see, I don’t expect that many of them will want to come to Israel.

***

Predicting another Holocaust gets people’s attention, but history never repeats itself in precisely the same way. America today isn’t Germany of 1938, and American Jews aren’t European Jews. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is not a disaster that will cause American Jews to flee to Israel en masse. Yes, antisemitism will continue to increase. Street violence against identifiable Jews, attacks on synagogues and other Jewish institutions, and the prevalence of anti-Jewish stereotypes and discrimination will all become more common. But barring a literally revolutionary change in government, it’s impossible for me to imagine that the institutions of the state will ever encourage or even turn a blind eye to violent manifestations of Jew-hatred. There will be no purges and no Nuremberg laws. It will not become impossible for a Jew to live in America. Things will get worse, but Jews will get used to it. They always have.

At the same time, the current process of cultural extinction of non-Orthodox Jews will continue, thanks to their below-replacement birthrate and an intermarriage rate near 70%. The problem of antisemitism will soon become moot for them, because even those that still identify as Jewish will be barely distinguishable from non-Jews. The members of “If Not Now” will not be beating on the gates of the Jewish state to enter, because they will be just another anti-Israel organization. Nobody will care if their grandparents were Jews.

For Orthodox Jews, today about 10% of American Jews, I expect that there will be increased friction with non-Jewish neighbors, who will continue to harass them as well as oppose the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods. Densely populated Jewish neighborhoods, reminiscent of European ghettos, will come into existence. Some Orthodox Jews may go to Israel, while non-Zionist factions will have no option but to concentrate in rural or urban areas that they will fortify however they can.

The Golden Age of American Jewry, which I somewhat arbitrarily designate as the period from the end of WWII in 1945 to the Pittsburgh Massacre of 2019, is over, although many American Jews haven’t noticed. Jewish history will continue, but its center will be here in Israel. Where it belongs.

Posted in American Jews, American society, Jew Hatred | 2 Comments

What’s in the Future for European Jews

Posted on May 16, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

If American Jews are going to have it tough in the future, things look worse for Europeans.

The recent attempted murder of a Jewish woman in Sweden, apparently committed by a Muslim man “known to the police” and possibly motivated by antisemitism, brings up yet again the question of whether Jews are safe in Europe.

They aren’t – but neither are non-Jewish native Europeans.

For Jews, it isn’t a problem. They have a country, whether they like it or not. It is here waiting for them. Europeans, on the other hand, are stuck where they are, especially if they want to preserve their historic cultures. There are too many of them to go to America or Australia, even if they wanted to.

The massive migration of people from non-European cultures, especially Muslims, into Europe, threatens to overwhelm the native cultures. Some may think that these natives deserve what they are getting, considering their history of colonialism and genocide, but nevertheless there is great value in what has been accomplished by the West over the centuries since the Middle Ages, and it would be a pity to see it become like the countries of the Middle East and Africa, with their kleptocratic identity politics and general barbarism.

This position is anathema to most educated Westerners, who tend to believe that treating everyone equally is a fundamental moral value. They believe that the migrant from Somalia should have exactly the same rights and receive the same treatment as the native Swede or Briton, sometimes even receiving extra benefits to compensate for a lower socioeconomic starting point.

Looking at the situation from the standpoint of an individual, it is hard to disagree. Nothing justifies discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or national origin (I am deliberately leaving out ‘race’ because I see this concept as cognitively meaningless and emotionally loaded). But it’s different to consider the impact of a mass of individuals from a different, and possibly inferior (yes, I said that) culture.

As an example, there are cultures where rape is rare, and there are cultures in which it is commonplace. If you introduce a large number of individuals from the latter kind of culture into the former, you will have a problem. This is not an abstract example. There has been a marked increase in the number of rapes in Sweden correlated with the growth of the migrant population (although precise numbers are hard to come by because so many are not reported and the conviction rate is so low).

Crime, especially sexual crime, gets people’s attention, but there are many other aspects of non-European migrant groups that are as problematic or more, such as a political culture of identity politics and corruption. Add to this the prevalence of radical Islamism, which advocates the replacement of democratic regimes with shari’a-based theocracies. Islamist organizations and individuals frequently commit terrorist acts, which makes the impact of a culture clash greater.

It is a fundamental principle of Islamic shari’a that Muslims have more legal rights than non-Muslims. Some Muslims believe that this gives them the “right” to victimize non-Muslims, increasing friction between groups of Muslim migrants and native Europeans.

There are also highly violent and less violent cultures. Here in Israel we are very familiar with the hyper-violent Palestinian Arab culture, which often expresses itself by random stabbings of Jews or honor killings of Palestinian women.

Some people dogmatically insist that it is a moral axiom that no culture is superior to any other. I suspect that the reason they say this is that they are conflating this with the legitimate principle that no individual can be prejudged to be superior to any other individual. When one considers a large group of individuals, however, statistical considerations make it possible to draw conclusions – not about particular individuals, but about the group as a whole.

Saying this would get me banned or shouted down at many Western universities. And I haven’t even brought up the possibility – no, the certainty – that some “cultural” properties are actually genetic.

One of my favorite examples is the fact that statistically speaking, Kenyans are good long-distance runners. Whether or not there are social factors involved, it’s certainly true that to a great extent they are born that way. We know that a great deal of human nature and abilities is genetically determined. Why shouldn’t groups of people that share a gene pool have similar behavioral characteristics?

Immigration into Europe is slowing since it peaked at about 1 million in 2015. But due to the low birth rates of native Europeans (the overall rate in the EU is 1.6, far below the replacement rate of 2.1), it may be too late to do anything to prevent the collapse of native European societies, and their transformation into something more like the culture of the migrants. And if it is going to be bad for the natives, it will be even worse for the Jews.

I would advise European Jews to make aliyah. Not only because you’re likely to be physically more secure than in Sweden or the UK or France – you could still be stabbed to death here by a terrorist or blown up by a rocket from Hamas or Hezbollah – but because here you can be spiritually secure. Unlike in Europe, you don’t have to feel the existential anxiety of living where you do not belong and are not wanted. This might be part of the reason the Jewish birthrate in Israel is about twice as high as that in Europe.

Israel is not close to a perfect society, but it’s yours, even if it doesn’t seem so welcoming once you get here. The fact that there is a state belonging to the Jewish people, dedicated to the ingathering of the exiles, where every Jewish person has an irrevocable right to live, is nothing less than miraculous.

Posted in Europe, Islam, Jew Hatred | 1 Comment

What’s in the future for American Jews

Posted on May 12, 2019 by Victor Rosenthal

One of the favorite myths of American antisemites – of both the left and right – is that the Jews push America into wars for the sake of Israel, or for the sake of the Rothschild fortune*, or both. Take this newly-announced candidate for the US Congress, for example.

So President Trump’s recent tough talk about Iran is red meat for antisemites. Nevertheless, Trump is right to pressure Iran to end its nuclear program. If you are the US President, and a country that chants “Death to America” every day several times before breakfast is clearly developing nuclear weapons (despite a worthless “deal”), the rational thing to do is make them stop, right? How hard is this?

OK, Obama didn’t agree, but then … never mind. I’m talking about today.

Trump is being accused of dragging America into war, and Israel – and by extension the Jews – are dragging trump. That is precisely the point of the hateful antisemitic cartoon that created such a furor when it appeared in the NY Times International Edition recently:

I am sure PM Netanyahu and a majority of Israelis, me included, would be happy to see the US destroy Iranian nuclear facilities. The US has the power to do it, and Israel would doubtless offer to help.

But this doesn’t imply that the US would be doing it on behalf of Israel, or even more so, on behalf of the Jews. The US, as a general rule – like other nations – does what it does to advance its interests. In this case American self-interest includes protecting itself and its allies, as well as preventing the rise of a hostile caliphate in the Near East, and keeping Iran from taking control of a big chunk of the world’s oil supply.

Saudi Arabia has as much or more influence in the US than Israel, and has had a “special relationship” with the US since February, 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud on board a Navy destroyer in the Suez Canal. Indeed, when the Saudis went head-to-head with the vaunted “Israel lobby” over the sale of AWACS airborne warning and control systems aircraft to Saudi Arabia in 1981, Israel lost.

The Saudis, who are presently fighting Iran in a proxy war in Yemen, are perhaps even more worried about Iran than Israel is. But that is less interesting to those who want to blame the Jews.

A conflict with Iran could result in attacks on American bases in the region – there are more of these than you may think – or terrorism against the homeland. If this were to happen, there’s no doubt that it would be used as an excuse for anti-Jewish acts. It’s ironic that even those Jews that supported the Iran deal, hate Trump, and have no connection whatever to Israel, would find themselves targeted (ironic, yes, but it serves them right).

This is something that today’s American Jews are not ready for. Having grown up during the Golden Age of American Jewry, they are not expecting irrational, unfair treatment. They are not expecting the kind of crazy conspiracy theories that blame the Jews for 9/11 to become mainstream. They are not expecting their ideas and opinions to be discounted because they come from Jews, their children rejected from elite schools – or admitted, and then tormented and threatened there. They are not expecting to be cursed or even knocked down in the street if they look Jewish, something that seems to happen on a daily basis now in New York City.

Most do not understand, yet, that every Jew is responsible for every other Jew, and that – as someone recently said – “when visibly Jewish people are victimized, then every Jewish person is victimized.” And finally, they almost never realize that, whatever they think about it, the Jewish state – not Brooklyn and not Los Angeles – is the center of the Jewish world.

But they will learn. Either the US will follow the courageous policy of the Trump Administration and confront and defeat its enemies (who are also the enemies of Western civilization overall), or it will return to the cowardly strategy of appeasement and obsequiousness of the previous administration.

Either way, the Jews will be in the middle and it will be hard for them. And they will either learn to stick together and fight against the antisemites, or they will save themselves by giving up their Jewishness, insofar as this will protect them (it didn’t during the Nazi period).

What’s changed in the last two millennia or so?
—————————————————–
* Full disclosure: My daughter is married to a Rothschild. They both work and are saving up to buy their own apartment. Apparently he is not one of those Rothschilds.

Posted in American Jews, American politics, Iran, Jew Hatred, War | 1 Comment