Thoughts after a mass murder of Jews

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I lived in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood for a few months when I was in grad school. It was a nice, safe, relatively friendly neighborhood.

Now it will be known as the site of the worst mass murder of Jews in US history.

Eleven are dead and numerous others wounded, including four responding police officers. The terrorist, Robert Bowers, as shown by this archive of social media posts, is apparently an obsessed Jew-hater, a Holocaust denier and a Nazi admirer. He appears to have become inflamed by the idea that liberal Jews were supporting uncontrolled immigration into the US (he mentions both Hispanics and Muslims), in particular the “migrant caravan” that is presently making its way through Mexico. Interestingly, Bowers criticized Donald Trump for being “a globalist, not a nationalist,” said that Trump was surrounded by Jews, and that he did not vote for him.

His decision to act seems to have been triggered by an event held in Pittsburgh by the HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), an organization that once brought Jewish refugees out of Europe, but now works to resettle refugees from Syria, Central America, and even Africans in Tel Aviv.

There have been various, mostly predictable, popular responses to this atrocious act. Many, if not most, miss the point. So here is what I think:

This is nothing new. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions around the world and in the US are attacked all the time. Attacks in the US have been carried out by both neo-Nazi and Islamic extremists, and their number has been increasing along with polarization and anger in the country.

Bowers was “ideologically insane.” One common theme among extreme right-wing conspiracy theorists is that Jews, especially George Soros, are trying to destroy the “white race” in America by introducing non-white immigrants. They will then take over (although they are already in charge by means of controlling politicians, even Trump), or they will somehow make a lot of money out of the collapse of the nation. Bowers seems to have believed some version of this. Social media seems to feed this kind of insanity, which often erupts into violence.

It’s not Trump’s fault. Yes, the extreme right is more likely to support Trump than his opponents, and there were anti-Jewish elements involved in Trump’s campaign. That doesn’t mean that Trump encourages or approves of anti-Jewish violence. And there are Jew-haters galore on the other side.

It’s not the liberal Jews’ fault. Yes, liberal and progressive Jews often take positions that infuriate the Right, like favoring increased immigration, especially from Muslim countries. But it’s their prerogative to take whatever positions they like without being murdered.

It is not a problem of generalized “hatred.” It is a very specific kind of hatred; it is the particular hatred of Jews that has existed for thousands of years, that constantly reprises old themes and creates new ones, but which never goes away. Increasing expressions of Jew-hatred in the US are a result of constant anti-Jewish incitement in social media. Rick Jacobs wants to universalize the disaster. He stands in a pool of Jewish blood and talks about anti-black racism and “Islamophobia.” This is pathological. Jews were murdered because they were Jews and he virtue-signals about how he cares for all humanity!

Love is not the answer. Jew-haters are not going to be impressed by posturing that “we don’t need armed guards to pray.” The more that liberal Jews resist security measures on the grounds that they would be “giving the [terrorists, neo-Nazis] what they want,” the softer and more attractive targets they become. Ignoring the threat is not courageous; it is burying your head in the sand, a form of cowardice.

An armed presence is a deterrent. Perhaps one guy sitting in the back of the synagogue with a pistol would not always prevent such a tragedy, but it would greatly increase the odds of doing so. Serious security measures are not, as is sometimes suggested, a sign of fear – rather, as in Israel, a sign that an institution will not accept the “right” of the terrorist to shut it down.

Israel’s experience as the Jew Among Nations shows that a strong, disproportionate response to violent anti-Jewish attacks tends to deter future attacks. When the response is weak – as in today’s response to the provocations from Gaza – the attacks become more frequent and more ambitious.

My recommendations to American Jews and Jewish institutions are these:

Face reality. We live in an increasingly anti-Jewish world. They hate us on the macro and micro levels, from the Right and from the Left. The Golden Age of American Jewry is coming to an end. History teaches us that the condition of Jews in non-Jewish societies is usually precarious. America since 1945 has been an exception.

Take steps to protect yourselves. You can’t walk into a synagogue in Europe without meeting an armed guard and open doors are not left unattended. Unobtrusive security measures are possible, but the visible ones also serve as a deterrent. Don’t expect the authorities to protect you. Yes, you pay taxes and it is their job. No, they are not capable of providing day-in day-out protection. You will have to work with them and supplement what they can provide. This is a lesson the state of Israel learned early: it’s your life – nobody cares as much about it as you do.

Remember who you are. You are members of the Jewish people, not citizens of the world. You have a homeland, the State of Israel. Israel doesn’t need your money, but she needs you to ensure that your nation supports her in international forums and helps maintain military superiority against her enemies. Contrary to what her enemies say, Israel is the temporal center of power of the Jewish people, and her existence deters rather than encourages worldwide acts of Jew-hatred. If Israel should be lost, the Jewish people everywhere will be lost.

The expression “wake-up call” is overused but I think it is appropriate here. This horrific murder should stand as a warning to American Jews, many of whom have felt insulated, safe in a way that Jews have never been safe anywhere prior to the post-WWII period in America. One useful thing that Robert Bowers may have done is send a message to these comfortable Jews: welcome to Jewish history.

Posted in American Jews, Jew Hatred, Terrorism | 5 Comments

Jews, come home

Posted on October 26, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Author Naomi Ragen urges Diaspora Jews to “come home” to Israel, and describes her own feelings of the almost miraculous condition of being a Jew in the Jewish homeland:

I was walking down Prophets Street (Rehov Hanevi’im) in Jerusalem, thinking how lucky I was to be living my life in a place that has such a street. I was thinking how short life is, and how we live in such an incredibly special era, a time when miracles and prophecies are unfolding before our astonished eyes. You have only to read the Torah to see all that God predicted would happen to the Jewish people has happened and to realize that the time we are living in is when the good things that were promised are now coming true.

I too understand the feeling of experiencing the miraculous, even when I’m only in the somewhat decrepit shuk in Rehovot.

It’s not connected to religion, although it’s easier to observe the commandments in Israel where you are not always wondering where to find kosher food, and where people understand what Shabbat means, whether or not they keep it themselves.

From a religious point of view, the connection between the Jewish people and their land is obvious. The Torah is in large part a story about the relationship between, Hashem, the Jewish people, and the land of Israel. For secular people, especially those living in those parts of the diaspora where Jew-hatred is currently held at bay, it may not be evident. Some feel the connection and some don’t.

I have a good friend, who came to Israel from America close to 40 years ago. He is not observant. He will tell you that he is an atheist. We don’t talk about politics much, but I suspect he is significantly to the left of me. But he has a connection to the Jewish people, and for better or worse this is his home. He could have earned a good living in America or Europe, but he chose to be here. He feels the magic of living in a Jewish state, even if he wouldn’t express it like Ragen does. And he isn’t the only one that feels this way. The socialist kibbutzniks that played such a great role in the early days of the state also claimed to be atheists, but they loved the land of Israel and made great sacrifices for it.

But for some diaspora Jews, the Jewish homeland is not their homeland. There is something missing. It’s easy to find examples. Simone Zimmerman, the Jewish woman who leads the organization called “If Not Now,” accepts the Palestinian narrative of the conflict, calls Israel immoral and corrupt, and seemingly fails to notice the murderous behavior of Israel’s enemies. Jewish historian Hasia Diner feels “a sense of repulsion when [she enters] a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, “We Stand With Israel.”

Zimmerman and Diner are strongly influenced by their progressive political perspective, but why did they choose it? And why did they choose to emphasize its anti-Israel aspects? I believe that it is impossible to adopt an ideology that is so one-sided, that so strongly condemns both the actions and the motives of a people, when you see yourself as a member of it. And they don’t, despite their public identification as Jews.

I greatly prefer someone like Adam Shapiro, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, the pro-Palestinian group that sent Rachel Corrie to her death under an IDF bulldozer. Shapiro believes that being Jewish is simply a matter of religion, and since he has no connection to Judaism, he is not a Jew. Hitler would have disagreed, but at least Shapiro is honest.

Zimmerman and Diner claim that they are acting in accordance with Jewish ethical principles. They are referring to the system of universalist ethics that underlies the social activism that has replaced ritual as Jewish observance for many liberal Jews. While it is certainly legitimate to practice a Judaism that emphasizes the prophetic tradition and deemphasizes ritual, it seems to me that when your ethical system elevates other groups over the Jewish people, then it can no longer be called a Jewish ethics.

And some diaspora Jews really do place the Jewish people at the bottom of their ladder of ethical priorities. Zimmerman says that “Jewish liberation is inextricably tied to the liberation of all people,” a statement which is clearly false. Is there a connection between the Jewish people and the persecuted Rohingya people of Myanmar, a country that has about 20 Jewish residents?

What she means is that in her eyes, the Jewish people are no more important than the Rohingya. Of course I agree with her that a Jewish life and a Rohingya life are equally valuable. But I care less about what happens to the Rohingya than the Jewish people, and I would expect them to feel the same about us. In any event, Zimmerman is a hypocrite: her activism is aimed primarily at opposing the state of the Jewish people, and she devotes little if any energy to helping the Rohingya.

For every Jew that supports the cause of the enemies of the Jewish people there are probably ten that are indifferent. Some just don’t think about it, some deny their Jewishness to escape antisemitism, and for some, the idea of being a part of a people that transcends politics doesn’t resonate, or is even abhorrent.

I think there is something – a spark or a gene, depending on the kind of language you prefer – that no matter where a Jew may be on the spectrum of observance, can act as a channel to the Jewish people and their homeland. You have it or you don’t. You are connected or you aren’t. And in the diaspora many people with Jewish parents, even synagogue members, simply aren’t. They are the ones who see Israel as “just another country.”

Moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt thinks that there are six inherent moral foundations that serve as the basis for our decisions about right and wrong, and good and evil: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty. Cultures and individuals differ in their relative responses to these six triggers. For example, in affluent, educated Western circles, care is very important: morality is primarily about not hurting anybody. In more traditional groups issues of loyalty, authority, and sanctity take precedence.

Haidt thinks that part of the difference in attitudes of liberals and conservatives can be explained by the idea that liberals greatly emphasize the first two, care and fairness, while conservatives place more equal weight on all six. The feeling that one belongs to a people fits in the category of loyalty, which possibly explains why liberals find the universalist ethics of Reform Judaism attractive.

Naomi Ragen speaks in religious language, and she is politically conservative. But there are countless diaspora Jews who don’t fit into those categories but who still feel their connection with their people, their land, and their state.

If you feel that connection, then you should come home too.

Posted in Israeli Society, Zionism | Comments Off on Jews, come home

Trading sovereignty for PR

Posted on October 21, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I live in a country in which everything is negotiable, everything is negotiated, nothing is final, and nothing is really forbidden, at least for our enemies.

Graduate student Lara Alqasem, the former president of a BDS-supporting, Israel-hating, university “Students for Justice in Palestine” chapter, was turned back at the border because there is a law that entry is forbidden to a non-citizen “if he, the organization or the body he acts on behalf of knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel.”  If leading a chapter of SJP doesn’t fit this criterion, nothing does.

The decision of the security service to bar her was initially supported by an administrative court, and then upheld on appeal by the Tel Aviv District Court. But Israel’s Supreme Court threw out the earlier decisions and ruled that she could be admitted. The Court accepted her contention (possibly untrue) that she hadn’t engaged in boycott activity since April 2017, said that the SJP chapter she belonged to was small and unimportant, and argued that since she wanted to study in Israel, she couldn’t have really believed in boycotting Israel. And the justices wanted to avoid giving the impression that, God forbid, she was being excluded for her political opinions.

I could criticize the court opinion in detail, but I’m not going to do that. Just two points: first, even if her SJP chapter (at the University of Florida) was small, the national organization is one of the prime movers of the BDS movement in the US, having introduced countless boycott resolutions at American universities, organizing “Israel apartheid week,” and engaging in intimidation of pro-Israel students.

And second, one of the leaders of the BDS movement, Omar Barghouti, is a Ph.D candidate at Tel Aviv University. So the fact that Alqasem also wants to study here proves nothing.

I assume that since two lower courts supported the decision of the security service to prevent her admission, it was reasonable from a legal standpoint. The Supreme court rarely interferes in such cases. But this time it chose to find reasons to do so. In other words, it thought the political consequences of keeping her out were worse than allowing her in. And this is what I dispute.

The Court acted (quite predictably) according to the principle – also adhered to by the government in its dealings with the terrorists of Gaza, and illegal Bedouin encampments – that nothing is worse than looking illiberal. Its decision, which was probably intended to improve Israel’s image in the world, in practice eviscerated the law that was passed to prevent subversive activity inside our borders, and will encourage more activists to try to enter the country so they can participate in demonstrations and get street cred to help promote anti-Israel activity back home.

It will not improve Israel’s image. Instead, it will be taken as proof that our attempts to protect ourselves against subversion by foreign agents are unfair. Didn’t our own Supreme Court decide that? Those who think Israel is illiberal will continue to think that; indeed their convictions will be strengthened by the publicity this incident created. The security services, second-guessed, have been made to look stupid, and will think twice before detaining anyone again, no matter how egregious their support for BDS has been.

All three of these situations are examples of Israel trading sovereignty for appearances. In a futile attempt to look good in the eyes of hostile international organizations, governments and media, Israel is diminishing its right to control its borders, its right of self-defense, and its right to enforce the law on its own land.

The UK bans people too, including some with terrorist connections, but also others like Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, blogger Pamela Geller, Canadian right-wing activist Lauren Southern, Christian musician Don Francisco, rapper and actor Chris Brown, Martha Stuart, Snoop Dogg, and our own Israeli politician Moshe Feiglin. Not too much is made of this, because the UK is a country whose sovereignty is not questioned.

One usually sensible journalist praised the decision to allow Alqasem to enter, because “it proves that the system works” and “showed just how democratic Israel really is.” But in fact it proved the opposite: that the system of laws does not work, because it is often overridden by considerations of public relations. And it has absolutely nothing to do with democracy, unless the next step is to give Lara Alqasem citizenship because her grandparents were “Palestinian.”

Posted in Israeli Politics | 2 Comments

The One Speech Jacobs will Never Make to Israeli Jews

Posted on October 19, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in the US recently published an op-ed in Ha’aretz entitled “The One Speech Netanyahu Will Never Make to Diaspora Jews,” a not-too-clever attempt to imagine what it would be like for our PM to agree with him. He is quite right that Netanyahu would never say the things he has put in his mouth.

Jacobs seems to believe that he knows what’s best for Israel better than those who live here, send their children to the army, and duck when rockets are launched at them. His movement has taken up the cause of transforming Israeli society into a replica of liberal America, whether Israelis like it or not.

In the spirit of providing free speechwriting services to important people, I have generously written a similar speech for Rabbi Jacobs to deliver to Israeli Jews. I hope he will use it someday, although the likelihood of that approaches zero. Much of what he wrote for our PM to say can be reused with minor changes, so that’s what I did. The portions in italics are direct quotations from Rabbi Jacobs’ proposed speech for PM Netanyahu. My additions and changes are in boldface.

***

Dear Israeli Jews,

It’s truly a gift to see so many of you here for this dialogue between our two Jewish communities, North American and Israeli Jewry. I realize that things have been tense recently between our communities. In the spirit of Yom Kippur, lingering after the gates have closed, I want to acknowledge my responsibility here.

Let’s start with the Kotel, a place that should unite – not divide – all Jews. American Reform and Conservative Jews practice mixed-gender prayer, and we would like to be able to pray our way when we visit the Kotel in Israel. We would like the members of our Israeli movements to be able to do so as well. But the 40% of Israelis that see themselves as religious or traditional – ranging from the 12% who are Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) to those for whom “the synagogue they don’t go to is Orthodox” – do not pray that way. Indeed, Haredim and some others on the observant side of the spectrum find mixed-gender prayer highly offensive, especially at the Kotel, which they treat as an Orthodox synagogue. And fewer than one-half of one percent of Israeli Jews are affiliated with the Reform and Conservative movements (no, the figure is not as high as 12%. Read the linked article).

Now, I strongly disagree with those who find offensive what I find beautiful. But because I care about Jewish unity and shalom bayit, I believe it would be wrong to impose my American-oriented views and those of a handful of Israelis on a much larger number of more traditional ones. And so I am withdrawing my demand to allow mixed-gender prayer at the Kotel.

I have accused you of “disenfranchising the largest segment of practicing Jewry in the world.” But perhaps I engaged in a bit of hyperbole. What you do in Israel doesn’t “disenfranchise” anyone in the Diaspora, where Jews are free to practice Judaism however they want. And while I strongly disapprove of the way conversion and marriage are handled in Israel (and on this, many Israelis agree with me!), I realize that this is up to Israelis to decide. After all, Israel is a sovereign state!

I believe [the recently-passed Nation-State Law] is an important one that expresses the recognition by all of us that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. I also know, however, that there are many concerns among Israelis, North American Jews, and other friends and allies. Let me set everyone’s minds at rest. The Nation-State Law does not damage the rights of minorities of any kind. And those rights are enshrined in other Basic Laws, so there is no need to repeat them here. In particular, there is no need for a “principle of equality,” which could be interpreted to grant national rights in addition to the civil and political rights that your minorities enjoy. And while my country, the US, is a “state of all of its citizens,” I understand that Israel is not. Didn’t I just say that at the beginning of this paragraph?

And, let me say something about BDS. You are a strong enough people to handle criticism from those who object to your self-defense. In this spirit, you ought to prevent entrance to Israel of those who would exploit open borders for the purpose of delegitimizing and demonizing your state. Entry to Israel for non-Israelis is a privilege, not a right.

Meanwhile, I am awaiting the Trump peace plan. I have no confidence in President Trump, perhaps, even less than many of you. What can I say? I hate the guy. I see myself as part of the “resistance.” [Scattered nervous laughter.]

But, I am not myopic. I know that you cannot have a secure Israel with a terrorist Palestinian state by your side. There, I said it. [Some light applause.]

My friends, your country’s security is intimately tied to the friendship of the United States of America. I pledge that I will do everything possible to rebuild bipartisan consensus  in Washington, so vital to Israel that I, following the lead of President Obama, tried so hard to wreck.

I will never sacrifice the deep bonds that exist between Israel and North American Jewry, including among progressive Jews who love Israel as dearly as I do. Yes, you [pointing to someone on stage who looks confused] heard me correctly.

In closing, I want to say you are welcome … as our dear partners and that I will try to work on my boundary issues and act as though Israel is a sovereign state, hard as that may be for me.

Thank you.

Posted in American Jews, Israeli Society | 1 Comment

Fulfilling the social contract

Posted on October 14, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Rousseau explained the social contract that gives legitimacy to the concept of governmental authority: the true sovereign, the people, agrees to give up some of its freedoms and take on some obligations in return for benefits provided by the government.

Some of the minimal benefits that a population expects from its government include enforcement of the laws (which must be chosen by the people), provision of services that don’t lend themselves to private enterprise, and protection from attacks from outside the community. In return, the population usually agrees to give up the option of using force or taking the law into its own hands, and agrees to support the government by paying taxes.

A government can break the social contract in several ways. It can interfere with the process by which the people choose the laws by which they are governed. It can violate those laws itself. It can exploit the people by extracting wealth from them in excess of its needs and enriching insiders. It can fail to protect its population.

Every government is to some extent parasitic. The best parasites don’t kill their hosts, and the best governments can help their people live safe, ordered lives.

The worst governments – and there are probably more bad ones than good ones – are dictatorships, in which laws and policy decisions are made without input from the people, or their input is ignored. Often the government terrorizes the population with impunity, violating laws that are intended to protect the citizens. It fails to provide the services that it has contracted to perform. And often it pauperizes the great mass of people while leaders squirrel away funds in secret foreign bank accounts.

Such governments break the social contract, and Rousseau suggests that the people – from whom the government derives its legitimacy – should abolish it and form a new one. This is much easier said than done, since the government usually has a monopoly on the use of force and is much better organized to deploy it than the people.

The government of the US is among the better governments in the world. Nevertheless the parasitical nature of government is evident there as well. It’s interesting, for example, that the metropolitan area with the highest per capita income in the US is Washington, DC and its suburbs. What do they produce there, one wonders. New York, the financial capital, comes in 19th out of 280, and my home town of Fresno, California, where much of the food eaten in the rest of the country is grown, is a miserable 267th.

Here in Israel there is a problem of endemic corruption of municipal officials and others in positions of trust, who are always in the news for taking bribes and similar crimes. The Prime Minister is a special case; while he is accused of corruption and continually being investigated, my personal belief is that most of the charges are politically motivated and not substantial. But former PM Ehud Olmert received a well-deserved (if too short) jail sentence for being as crooked as a barrel of fishhooks.

Leaving aside the waste and corruption that’s found even in good governments, in what other ways can they violate the social contract? Consider for example the actions of Barack Obama in connection with the JCPOA, the so-called “Iran deal.” He committed the US to an agreement with an avowed enemy of the nation (how else can you understand “death to America?”), and did it against the wishes of the majority of Congress, which expresses the will of the people. Then he violated federal laws to provide bales of untraceable cash as ransom for hostages held by the Iranians, cash which was used to finance terrorism around the world, including support for proxies fighting against Americans. The deal itself protected the Iranian nuclear weapons program instead of dismantling it, arguably making Americans less safe. All through the process, the administration misled the American people about what it was doing, via the famous “echo chamber.” Thus, the Obama Administration violated every one of its obligations under the social contract.

Here in Israel the administration is not quite as incompetent (or treasonous) as Obama’s, but is still failing to hold up its side of the social contract. In particular, segments of Israel’s population are being exposed to carefully calibrated terrorism short of war, and the government and the army that it commands are not taking actions adequate to protect them.

The communities located near the border with the Gaza Strip are being attacked with dozens of incendiary and explosive devices attached to balloons launched every day from Gaza. These devices have already burned hundreds of acres of land which is used by farmers or which is part of nature reserves – that is, the property of the people of Israel – and have endangered the communities, many of which are only a few hundred meters from the border. The residents are being sickened by the smoke from tires burned continuously by the Gazans. Incendiary or explosive balloons from Gaza have been found as far north as Givat Brenner, not far from Rehovot. In a worrisome development, there are now almost nightly incursions of armed Palestinian guerrillas through the border fence. So far the army has stopped them, but they would not have to get very far for the consequences to be tragic.

The Gazans have put teenagers and even younger children in their teams that launch the balloons, and the IDF will not shoot at them (IAF helicopters or drones have fired missiles nearby to scare them, but since they understand that they are not actually targeted, it just increases the fun).

The situation in Judea and Samaria is different. Here there are not usually mass riots including thousands of Arabs (although there are some regular demonstrations against the security barrier in specific places), but there is always murderous terrorism. Jews waiting for buses or rides along the roads near Jewish communities or at the main junctions are exposed to car-ramming attacks, and perhaps once a week there is an incursion into a community by a terrorist or a stabbing/shooting attack at a shopping center, which can result in one or more fatalities.

In the case of Gaza, the IDF seems to have decided that stronger responses would result in unwanted escalation. Meanwhile the Gazans, encouraged by Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, have been multiplying and perfecting their attacks.

The type of terrorism that is more common in Judea/Samaria involves individual terrorists, and is hard to prevent. It is incited by propaganda in Palestinian Authority media and social media; afterwards, the PA pays generous salaries to imprisoned terrorists or their families. However, many Israelis believe that a stronger reaction would help deter the attacks. For example, the homes of terrorists are sometimes demolished – but often not, sometimes as a result of the intervention of Israel’s Supreme Court. Some think that banishing the families of the terrorists to Gaza or Jordan would serve as a deterrent. Also, various ways of punishing the PA for paying the families of terrorists have been considered. But the practice has not been stopped.

There are lots of reasons – that is, excuses – for why the government and the army is unable or unwilling to put an end to the terrorism that is hurting its people. But the job of finding solutions is not the job of the people; it belongs to government officials and military officers, and the people have a right to expect that the political/military establishment that it is paying so generously do its job and eliminate the threat. That is, after all, in the social contract.

And it is the most important clause of all in the contract between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. One of the major motivations, perhaps the most important, for the Zionist project was that there was no place in the world where we could be safe from anti-Jewish violence. The experiences of millennia taught us that only a sovereign state defended by a Jewish army could guarantee the survival of the Jewish people. Yet, even in the Jewish state in its 70th year, with the strongest army in the region, Jews are endangered.

This is not acceptable. The Jewish people has a right to demand that its state discharge its duties. Otherwise it ought to be abolished and replaced with one that will.

Posted in Israeli Politics, Terrorism | 2 Comments

JFNA’s chutzpah

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I first made aliyah to Israel in 1979, but returned to the US in 1988. During the 26 years between my yerida and my return to Israel in 2014, I became more and more involved in pro-Israel activism, both because I felt that I was more knowledgeable than most Americans about the issues, and because of a nagging feeling that I should never have left.

I wrote, spoke, arranged events, passed out fliers, picketed anti-Israel happenings, and tried to convince my mostly liberal and progressive friends that they should support Israel (see Rob Vincent’s comments about the futility of this enterprise here).

One of the things I did was to become active in the local Jewish Federation. I became a board member and served as treasurer for a number of years. I tried to keep the Federation involved in countering the anti-Israel activity that flowed from local “peace” groups, from activists in the university, and (later) from a growing Muslim community. I tried to influence the Federation to make grants to pro-Israel causes and to invite speakers and present films to correct the misinformation from the media and other sources that was so prevalent.

The Federation always allocated a portion of its grants to “Israel,” which traditionally meant via the national organization, the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). I had some problems with this. For one thing, JFNA did not support projects across the Green Line. When it made grants to bodies that had projects all over the country, it even audited those bodies and deducted an amount equivalent to the funds spent in Judea/Samaria, the Golan Heights, and (then) Gaza. For another, I didn’t see why we should support the overhead of the JFNA bureaucracy when we could give directly to those causes in Israel that we thought were most effective. Finally, I found their annual meeting extravaganza, the “GA” (General Assembly), an orgy of self-congratulatory posturing, to be distasteful, counter-productive, and wasteful.

This year, JFNA is having its GA in Tel Aviv, for the first time (it is usually held in a major US city, and has been in Jerusalem in the past). There could be technical reasons for this choice, but it seems to me that in the year that the US Embassy is finally established in our capital, it is clear that holding the GA in Israel but not in Jerusalem sends a message – and not a very friendly one. I am sure that JFNA officials do understand this and did it deliberately.

In addition to the choice of venue, the theme of the conference itself shows an insensitivity that borders on insult. “Israel and the diaspora, we need to talk,” it says, and the clear implication is that they need to talk and we need to listen. What chutzpah!

Caroline Glick notes that the homepage of the GA’s website spells out what they think we need to talk about: only 8% of Israelis see themselves as “liberal” (in Israeli terms, on the Left) while 50% of Jewish Americans do; only 43% of Israelis compared to 61% of American Jews think Israel and a Palestinian state could coexist; and only 49% of Israelis compared to a whopping 80% of American Jews think that non-Orthodox rabbis should be able to officiate at Jewish weddings in Israel (my italics).

Obviously what Israel does about a Palestinian state must be entirely up to Israelis. Why would anybody think that the opinion of Americans, thousands of miles away, should be taken into account by Israelis who are next door to the prospective Palestinian state, and who would be the targets of its terrorism? Why should Americans even have an opinion about who can perform a wedding in another country? It is as ridiculous as Israelis complaining about Elvis impersonators performing weddings in Las Vegas. One can see now why “we need to talk” makes Israelis uncomfortable: what is really being questioned is our sovereignty as an independent state.

Glick believes it’s all about punishing Israelis for liking Donald Trump. According to a June 2018 AJC poll only 34% of American Jews approve of how he is handling relations with Israel, compared to 77% of Israelis. And from an Israeli point of view, Trump has been one of the most friendly of American presidents. While his decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem got more attention than anything else, it’s possible that his administration’s systematic puncturing of the Palestinian “refugee” myth and ending the policy of financing the endless multiplication of the refugee population via UNRWA will do more to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than any of his predecessors’ failed initiatives.

American Jews, Glick says, simply can’t get beyond their liberal politics to notice that at least in the case of Israel, Trump is doing the right things. Reform Movement President Rick Jacobs even initially expressed reservations about Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the US Embassy there. But what can you expect from a Jewish organization that couldn’t even agree to oppose Obama’s Iran deal?

I am sure that Trump is yet another issue that American and Israeli Jews disagree about. But in my opinion, he is not the primary cause of the Federations’ decision to emphasize and magnify the disagreements.

Much of the material in the GA’s breakout sessions seems to be taken directly from the playbook of the Reform Movement, which has so far been unable to gain traction among a significant number of Israelis for issues like religious pluralism, concessions to the Palestinians, support for keeping illegal migrants in Israel, mixed-gender prayer at the Kotel, and so on. For a number of years – long before the advent of Trump – the movement has been working with its partners J Street and the New Israel Fund (both groups in which Jacobs was active before he became URJ President), to assist the forces of the Left in Israel in regaining the political dominance they lost when Menachem Begin became PM in 1977, and the popularity they have continued to lose since then.

Since Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM, one of the strategies that the Israeli Left and its partners in the US has employed has been to cook up “crises” between their American Jewish constituency and the Israeli government. These have included presenting proposed changes in the rules regarding conversion to Judaism in Israel (which have zero effect on American Jews) as “delegitimizing the diaspora”; comparing isolated incidents of ultra-Orthodox harassment of women with the government-sanctioned behavior of white racists in the Jim Crow South; hijacking the Women of the Wall movement; taking up the cause of illegal migrants in Israel; attacking the Nation-State Law; and so on. With each crisis, the spokespeople of the movement blame Netanyahu, and suggest that unless Israel undergoes a change of government, the relationship with American Jews – and hence with America as a whole – will be irreparably damaged.

It’s clear that JFNA, the national organization of Jewish Federations, has adopted the ideology and strategy of the Reform Movement in connection with Israel. This follows the general trend of non-Orthodox Jewish organizations in America moving leftward as older pro-Israel activists die off and younger products of the very biased American university system take their places. It’s happened in university Hillels, the ADL, Hadassah, and in numerous local Jewish organizations.

Their target is much larger than Netanyahu or Trump. It is the character of Israel as an ethnic nation-state that the liberal Jewish establishment wishes to change. And why do they want to change it? They don’t really know. Perhaps they are just unfamiliar with it. But in fact their actions make them part of a much larger movement, one that can’t abide a Jewish state, and which would see it destroyed or changed beyond recognition.

Nevertheless, with all their sound and fury, the Jewish Federations no longer do very much for Israel, and they do nothing we cannot do for ourselves. We are not required to defer to them.

Like so many of the disparate concerns surrounding Israel today – the Temple Mount, the Gaza border, the Golan Heights, building across the Green Line, European financing of hostile NGOs – our issues with the American diaspora revolve around sovereignty. We need to defend it wherever it is in danger – even from our friends.

Posted in American Jews | 3 Comments

The war for the political soul of American Jewry (guest post)

Posted on October 10, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

I almost never publish guest posts, but yesterday I received this from an old friend, Rob Vincent, and it seemed so on point that I asked him to allow me to do so.

Rob has a master’s degree in political science, but works in manufacturing and (in my opinion) is therefore able to see things more clearly than the average academic. Rob is a tireless pro-Israel activist in his small Ohio community.

By Robert Vincent

I serve in a volunteer capacity on my local Jewish Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council in a Midwestern city, primarily in a role of Israel advocacy. As in most American Jewish communities, the majority are aligned with the Democratic Party; I am something of an exception as an unapologetic and sometimes outspoken Republican.  Another member of our local JCRC sent an email to the committee linking the following article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/us/politics/democrats-israel-palestinians.html

This article proclaimed that the “blanket support” Israel has heretofore received from the Democratic Party was coming to an end, citing various candidates with substantially anti-Israel views.  The committee member who sent this to the group added a comment expressing alarm at this situation.  I replied to the committee as follows (edited to maintain the anonymity of others on the committee):

Hi, everybody.

OK, for this particular message, I guess I have to take off my hat as “Israel Advocacy Coordinator” for our local Federation, and simply address you all explicitly from the point of view of being a private citizen.* But what I am about to say, I strongly feel, has got to be said. Further, let me preface this by saying that I am not approaching anyone in an accusatory or otherwise belligerent context. I am only intending to relate personal experiences and observations on the topic raised by the article sent to the list. I really feel that what I am about to say, needs to be considered by American Jews everywhere.

While most of you know my political leanings as a Republican, what most of you don’t know is that I used to be a Democrat. I would say that I had been pretty solidly aligned with the Democratic Party since my grad school days in the late 80s until about 2006. And I have something of a “newsflash” for you: the Democratic Party’s “blanket” support of Israel ended in 2004, long before the present day.

I was still a Democrat at that time, and in that election, I voted for John Kerry, albeit very reluctantly (I really didn’t like him, but at that time, I considered him the lesser of the two evils, a choice many of us find ourselves making in most elections). I watched the entire 2004 Democratic Convention on TV, and also much of the Republican Convention (unlike many of today’s Democrats, I was interested in hearing both sides). One thing that really struck me about the 2004 Democratic Convention was that Israel was not mentioned ONCE. EVER. At least Dubya made a passing remark to the effect that “…of course, we’ll continue to defend our ally, Israel,” but not from Kerry – nor from anyone else in attendance at his nominating convention – was the word “Israel” even uttered. I found this disturbing, but since no one there “attacked” Israel, either, I didn’t exactly obsess on it. But I remembered it.

As subsequent events relevant to Israel demonstrated, it was probably a very good thing indeed that Kerry didn’t win. At the time, I in fact received many warnings from my Israeli friends not to support Kerry, warnings I did not receive about any candidate from either party for any previous election. They warned me that if elected, Kerry would basically throw Israel under the bus. I thought they were exaggerating or being paranoid… but history proved them to be likely correct. It was Kerry who presided over the negotiation of the sham Iran nuclear deal, it was Kerry who was the last negotiator Obama sent to badger Israel into accepting a phony peace deal with the thugs of the PA (and who subsequently blamed Israel for the failure of the negotiations), and it is Kerry today who, despite the massive evidence since uncovered by Mossad of Iran’s cheating on the Iran deal, is STILL trying to salvage the same.

Then of course, we all witnessed the events surrounding the Obama administration. Not only the Iran deal, but also UNSCR 2334. And before that, there was Obama’s cutoff of arms shipments to Israel in the middle of the ’14 Gaza war, plus his spurious issuance of an FAA flight ban to Ben Gurion Airport (which was lifted only when GOP members of Congress threatened to investigate said ban, thus revealing Obama’s malevolent political agenda towards Israel). Plus, there was the constant pressure and blackmail from the Obama administration, literally from the day he took office (Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in the ’09 war was completed exactly the day before Obama was sworn in; that was obviously not coincidental). The very first phone call Obama made to any foreign leader upon taking office was to Mahmoud Abbas. That is also a matter of record.

Today… well, we have the recent article from the NYT, so I don’t need to elaborate further. My point is that this did not happen just now.

Israel was not the only reason I left the Democratic Party, but it is first among equals. It was clear to me that starting in 2004, the Democratic Party was moving in a direction that aligned themselves against Israel and in favor of Israel’s adversaries. The implications of this, to me, were horrendous. They should be horrendous to any person of good will, and certainly, to any Jew.

There is a saying among students of military history: In war, there are no “good guys”; there are only “bad guys” and “worse guys.” In much of history, this is more or less true. But there are exceptions. There are some wars in which the delineation between a clear “good guy” versus a “bad guy” is crystal clear. WWII is obviously such a case.

And the Arab-Israeli, or Palestinian-Israeli, or Iran-Israeli conflict is another case of this type. Israel may not be perfect – no enterprise comprised of mortal human beings ever could be – but relative to her adversaries, Israel practically IS perfect.

After all, on what basis do we, as a people, as a country, stand with one side of a conflict versus another? Don’t we choose sides – or shouldn’t we at least ideally choose sides – based on the extent to which one side reflects our own values and institutions as a country and as a civilization? What do Israel’s adversaries represent in terms of human rights, political rights, women’s rights, and so on, compared with Israel? Who hangs gays in public (Iran)? Who controls their press and jails and murders political opponents without due process (all of Israel’s adversaries)? Who condones FGM and child marriage (most of Israel’s adversaries)? The list goes on and I’m sure you know all of this very well.

And so, I concluded that if the national-level leadership of the Democratic Party couldn’t even get this right, an issue as close to black and white as any could get, what else are they capable of? What else can/will they get wrong? What does this tell us about what they really value?

I know that by writing this, I am perhaps going to anger some of you, and almost certainly my little essay here is not going to convince any of you who are Democrats to switch parties tomorrow morning. I imagine that some of you might believe that by working within the Democratic Party, you will perhaps be able to help influence them to become supportive of Israel once again. And to those of you who nurture this latter hope, I wish you the best of luck… and I would submit to you that you are going to need a great deal of luck. I can only say that in my capacity as an advocate for Israel on both a personal and public level, I have been in so many countless fights over this with so many people to the left of the political aisle, that I personally see no chance of this happening for the foreseeable future. Really.

Just this past April, as many of you know, along with two other members of the committee, I squared off against some SJP types at an event of theirs on a local university campus… and the Democratic opponent of my representative in Congress, for my district, was sitting there, absolutely uncritically, happily hobnobbing with the most vicious Israel haters in our state. A local Israeli friend of mine is acquainted with this same fellow from Rotary, and the latter has tried to garner the former’s support, describing himself as a “centrist”; what does that tell you? A guy who is willing to be seen as making common cause with SJP is what passes for “centrist” in today’s Democratic Party?

So if Israel means a lot to you, I would ask that you consider what I am saying above, and consider it very carefully, going forward.

Regards to all,

– Rob

*(I had to explicitly disassociate myself from my official title on the committee, because American tax laws prohibit nonprofit organizations from advocating openly for one political party versus another, at least if they want to maintain their tax exempt status). — RV

Posted in American politics | 4 Comments

Art for hate’s sake

Posted on October 7, 2018 by Victor Rosenthal

Emory Douglas, the former “Minister of Culture” of the Black Panther Party, and the premier artist of the black power movement, delivered a lecture to University of Michigan students in which, among other things, he displayed a poster showing Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler, with the legend “guilty of genocide.”

One student, Alexa Smith, was furious. “…I sat through this lecture horrified at the hatred and intolerance being spewed on our campus,” she continued. “As a Jew who is proud of my people and my homeland, I sat through this lecture feeling targeted and smeared to be as evil as the man who perpetuated the Holocaust and systematically murdered six million Jews.”

I’m not going to reproduce the offending poster. You can view it at the link if you wish. Artistically speaking, and even as propaganda, it’s junk.

The message of the poster is a slander. Anyone who says that Israel or its Prime Minister is guilty of genocide or in any sense comparable to Hitler is either a moron, abysmally ignorant, or a vicious liar. The meaning of “genocide” and demographic facts about the Palestinian Arabs are freely available. No population that increased fivefold between 1970 and 2014 can have been a victim of genocide.

So which is Emory Douglas?

I watched the hour-long video of his talk. He covered the period from the formation of the Black Panther party to the present day and presented slides of his work in the Panther newspaper, his posters, murals, and other items. Some of it is powerful and some is embarrassingly bad by any standard.

The first hint of anything relating to Israel or the Palestinians came when in discussing the tumultuous year of 1968, he mentioned the Palestinian “struggle” in passing. Later, he talked about an incident a few years later during the Olympics, when two black runners, Vince Matthews and Wayne Collett, had protested racism in the US. They stood on the winners’ podium in casual poses, hands on their hips, facing away from the flag. Collett was barefoot. Avery Brundage, head of the International Olympic Committee, banned them from further competition for their disrespect.

The year was 1972, the place was Munich, and Matthews’ and Collett’s protest came several days after Palestinian terrorists had murdered eleven Israeli athletes and coaches, and a German policeman, in one of the most high-profile and vicious acts of terrorism ever. Douglas didn’t mention it. I wonder if he is even aware that the protest and the mass murder almost coincided in space and time? I suppose that he has eyes only for what he perceives as his struggle.

Toward the end of the presentation came the “genocide” poster and a couple of others accusing Israel of apartheid. He didn’t comment on them to any great extent. He certainly didn’t seem to think that accusing a man and a nation of genocide and apartheid was a big deal. The feeling I got was that he saw this as just part of a very broad struggle by the oppressed in America and the third world against racism, capitalism, pollution, global warming, the US, various puppets of the US, the “prison-industrial complex,” the police, the American military, and many other enemies.

Douglas expressed a very naïve, almost childishly leftist view of a Manichean universe. It seemed to me that he saw his positions as obvious. How could anyone doubt that the US was and is an evil, racist enterprise, structured to exploit the victimized groups at home and abroad for profit? How could anyone not agree that all the oppressed were on the same side, against US imperialism? How could anyone not think that all the world’s unpleasantness is interconnected and rooted in rapacious capitalism? How could anyone fail to understand that it had to be overthrown, “by any means necessary?” Oh, and by the way, Jews are Nazis.

Emory Douglas is not a great artist and he’s not much of an intellectual. Of the categories I listed, I think he falls into the one I called “abysmally ignorant.” Unfortunately, ignorance of this kind is common in the black community in America.

An ADL survey showed that blacks are “nearly four times (34%) more likely than whites (9%) to fall into the most anti-Semitic category.” Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan and pogrom-inciter Al Sharpton are respectable, even revered as leaders. Jeremiah Wright got seven honorary doctorate degrees when he preached classical anti-Jewish libels. And the first black president of the US was the most anti-Israel president since the founding of the state.

Relations between blacks and Jews in the US have been particularly poor since 1968, when a New York teachers strike pitted the overwhelmingly Jewish United Federation of Teachers against a black community-controlled school board. The flirtation of the black community with various forms of Islam, from the homegrown version of the Nation of Islam to the increasing numbers of black converts to more normative Islam, has added an anti-Zionist flavor; and there seems to be no shortage of outright anti-Jewish agitators like Farrakhan, Sharpton, and Wright.

In this context, the appropriation by anti-Israel elements of the Movement for Black Lives against police violence and putative racism makes sense. There is, they think, a fertile field in the black community to plant with comparisons between American blacks and Palestinian Arabs, between the PLO and Hamas and the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, etc. groups that fought the battle against Jim Crow in the South in the 1950s and 1960s.

The complete absurdity of these comparisons is lost on those who don’t understand the racism, violence, and genocidal attitudes that characterize the real Palestinian movement, which unlike the American Civil Rights movement, is opposed to human rights (for Jews, or for that matter, for Arabs). But who cares about reality?

And what about the University of Michigan, whose spokesperson defended the talk as “provocative?” Provocative it was, and even illuminating and historically interesting, but surely the spokesperson could have said something to denounce the offensive – no, libelous – nature of the poster in question. I’m afraid that the academic community also has an anti-Zionism problem, which as usually happens is also turning into an anti-Jewish one. But that wasn’t the only problem with his point of view.

Douglas’ talk was delivered in a matter-of fact way, as though everyone knows, or should know, that his worldview was correct. When he finished, the student audience gave him an enthusiastic ovation. If I may be allowed Hannah Arendt’s word, his words were banal. They implied that the corrupt, racist, capitalist, system should be overthrown, but they didn’t specify how that could happen in practice.

But his pictures did. Especially the ones that showed pigs with badges being shot in the face, with the bullet and a spurt of blood coming out the back.

Posted in Academia, American society | 4 Comments