Standing Together

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

I still follow the rabbi of the largest (Reform) synagogue in the small California city where I lived before returning to Israel some 8 years ago. Yesterday, I saw that he wrote on his Facebook page that he and his institution, and I presume others of good will, “stand together,” against racial, religious, and anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, and “against all those who seek to divide us…all those who make people into ‘others.’”

He wrote this in response to a news report that several historically black colleges had received bomb threats for the past two days.

I don’t mean to suggest that he is insincere about deploring various forms of prejudice, but could there be an emptier gesture? I was tempted to suggest that if he really wanted to take action, he should send a busload of congregants to the nearest historically black college where they could spend the day checking dumpsters and bus shelters for bombs, as I recall doing during my army reserve duty.

Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in a perversion of its name and mandate, has established what Amb. Alan Baker calls “a permanent inquisition” against the State of Israel.  With a large staff and budget, this “Commission of Inquiry” will proceed to demonize and delegitimize the one Jewish state. Even for the UN, such a one-sided “inquiry” is unprecedented, and its outcome will be used to justify prosecutions, sanctions and perhaps even expulsion from the international body for the Jew Among Nations.

I did not see that the rabbi mentioned this on his Facebook page. Again I was tempted to ask what he thought about it, since one of the first acts of the Biden Administration, for which at least 80% of his congregation voted, was to rejoin the UNHRC.

I also did not see any mention of Amnesty International’s vicious, antisemitic smear of Israel as an apartheid state, which will certainly be used as “evidence” by the UNHRC in its indictment of Israel. Amnesty’s report calls for the arrest and prosecution of Israel’s leaders whom it deems guilty of “crimes against humanity” [!] and sanctions against the country and any other countries that support it. It manages to almost entirely leave out the hundred-year long war against the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel that has been waged by Palestinian and other Arabs and their supporters (with the help of the Nazis, the Soviet KGB, and other interested parties). Even the Union for Reform Judaism, to my surprise, found the Amnesty report scandalous.

If there were ever a group that suffered from being made “others,” it would be the Jewish people. In addition to Israel’s confrontational enemies like Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, and the grass-roots antisemitism that appears to be popping up everywhere lately, there is also an organized and heavily funded international campaign against the Jewish state. Participants include the UN, the EU, and their allies in the so-called human rights industry, like Amnesty. If you read the Amnesty report, you will see that they will not be satisfied with anything less than the replacement of Israel with an Arab state. Anything else would deny the “human rights” of the millions of descendants of 1948 refugees. What would happen then to the Jewish people, inside and outside of Israel?

American Jews, some 90% of whom are non-Orthodox, make up the second largest Jewish community in the world (Israel recently surpassed it for the top spot). If they would “stand together” as the rabbi suggests, and present a unified political front to defend the Jewish state, it would be a powerful counterforce to the international conspiracy – there is no other word – against the State of Israel.

But unfortunately, they seem to care much more about every other identifiable group – blacks, LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, and even Palestinian Arabs. When will we see the liberal Jewish establishment demand that its constituency “stand together” … for Israel?

Posted in American Jews, Jew Hatred, The UN | 3 Comments

Pity is not an Antidote for Contempt, and Respect is Better than Friendship

Posted on January 30, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

Mickey Levy, the Speaker of the Knesset, went to Germany on International Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke to the Bundestag, the German parliament – in Hebrew. He ended his speech with a recitation of the Kaddish, during which his voice broke and he covered his face with his hands. He said later in an interview on Israeli radio that it was an incredibly emotionally affecting experience, and a great honor.

I listened with mixed feelings. No, I admit it, they were not mixed. I was horrified. I was disgusted. Everything about this affair was wrong, the content of his speech (I’ll get to that), his recitation of the Kaddish, his expression of emotion there in the Bundestag.

What is the point here? Perhaps it was emotionally cathartic for Levy, but what did he accomplish? Was the intent to make the Germans feel guilty? I am certain that there were no former SS officers or Nazi officials in the audience. Was it to make them feel sorry for us? That would be stupid. Insofar as there is still antisemitism in Germany, it is fed by contempt, and pity is not an antidote for contempt. Rather, it engenders it.

Germany is a problem for Israel. Germany still shoots at the Jewish people, but not with bullets like the ones that tore the bodies of my extended family in the Pale of Settlement. Rather, the weapon is the millions of Euros that it provides to the Palestinian project to conquer Area C with illegal building, and to the numerous anti-Israel NGOs, both in the international “human rights” industry, and among the Israeli Left, that are working day and night to subvert the Jewish state.

That is what Levy should have talked about in the Bundestag, instead of congratulating the Germans on their “moral and historical commitment to the existence and security of the State of Israel.” Yes, they paid reparations. I can well understand Menachem Begin, who was repelled by the idea, as if money could expiate the crime. But that argument is in the past; it’s Germany’s behavior today that’s important.

Levy’s appeal to pity and the idea expressed in his speech that democracy is the antidote to antisemitism represent what is wrong with the response of so many Jews to the pervasive phenomenon of Jew-hatred and its other face, the irrational, extreme, and obsessive hatred of the Jewish state that has suffused half the world in recent times.

It cannot be eliminated by education, especially education about the horrors of the Holocaust, because antisemites believe that the Jews must have deserved what happened to them, and that Hitler proved that it really is possible to finally solve the Jewish problem. Only his tactical mistakes prevented success. They hope to do better.

It also doesn’t work to appeal to the moral sense of today’s little Hitlers. For one thing, they invert morality and claim that it’s actually Israel that commits “genocide” against the Palestinians, who have multiplied at least by a factor of three since Israel’s victory in 1967, while Europe’s Jewish population was reduced by two thirds by the Nazis. One has to be irrational to the point of insanity to argue this. Then there is the apartheid libel. It requires a radical redefinition of the concept, an act of dishonesty which is deliberately undertaken in order to weaponize the justified antipathy to the former South African regime and turn it against Israel and the Jews.

You can’t talk to these people. You can’t mitigate their irrational antagonism with facts or their hatred by appealing to their sense of fairness. And it isn’t our job to do that. “Antisemitism isn’t a Jewish problem” means that we don’t have to try to cure them of it. We are required only to protect ourselves, to fight.

And fortunately for us the solution for the kinetic problem of people trying to kill us, as well as the psychological one that they hold us in contempt and therefore think that it is acceptable to kill us, is the same: national power, in every way: military, economic, and social. It’s obvious what’s meant by the first two, but just a word about “social” power: it is the ability of a society to agree on its goals and move toward them, without being obstructed by interest groups with agendas that contradict one another – and some of them with agendas which are anti-state. Clearly this is Israel’s biggest problem today.

Power creates deterrence, power engenders respect, and power even creates fear, which is not entirely a bad thing. Increasing our power ought to be our highest priority national goal. It is a good thing that Israel has nuclear weapons, and it would be a good thing if Israel had more offensive systems, rockets, drones, whatever. Si vis pacem para bellum. If you want peace, prepare for war.

And we do want peace. But the idea that we can get it by concessions, by giving up land to our deadly enemies, has been proven wrong over and over by recent history. Instead of encouraging our enemies, we should push forward with aggressive Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, as well the reconquest of those parts of the country that have been slipping away from Jewish control. Again, this has both a physical effect, distancing the enemy from our homes, and a psychological one of creating deterrence and respect.

But it isn’t easy. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exemplified defeatism when he said,

We are tired of fighting, we are tired of being courageous, we are tired of winning, we are tired of defeating our enemies, we want that we will be able to live in an entirely different environment of relations with our enemies. We want them to be our friends, our partners, our good neighbors, and I believe that this is not impossible…

The feeling is understandable, but it is an impossible dream, in conflict with reality. Most Israelis awoke from that dream some time ago, but now it is time for them to take the next step, which is to understand that it is not enough just to not surrender: if we do not advance, then we in essence retreat. We must advance, in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley; in the Negev and the Galil; in the Golan Heights and in the “mixed cities” of Lod, Acco, and Yafo, where Jews were recently made to live in fear of pogroms as in the days of the Russian Empire.

We don’t need to make Europeans feel sorry for us. We don’t need to make Palestinians be our friends. In fact, we don’t need to care what they think, as long as everyone knows that we are prepared to fight, ferociously if need be, for what rightfully belongs to us.

Posted in Jew Hatred | 7 Comments

The “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is Back

Posted on January 27, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

Do human stupidity and wickedness have any bounds?

After reading the comprehensive Wikipedia article about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I have to answer a resounding “no.”

The Protocols, from its its first publication in Russia in 1903 by Pavel Krushevan, an antisemitic activist, publisher, and politician whose newspaper articles instigated the notorious Kishinev Pogrom, to its employment by Henry Ford, the Nazis, and Hamas, has been one of the most effective tools for spreading Jew-hatred throughout the world.

Supposedly a transcript of secret meetings of Jewish conspirators, it is not clear who the authors were. Much of it was plagiarized from various sources, including large chunks of dialogue from an 1864 (non-antisemitic) work called Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, by Maurice Joly, with anti-Jewish material interpolated. The work was translated into numerous languages, including of course English, German, and Arabic. It appears in various versions on the internet, and is a best-seller in print as well. The Jerusalem Post reports that “Walmart, Book Depository, Thrift Books, Hudson Books, and Barnes & Noble are each selling dozens of versions,” including some with introductory material that suggests that it may be genuine.

Let me repeat: introductory material that suggests that it may be genuine. The bogus nature of this document was conclusively documented in the 1920s, but in some quarters it is still considered “controversial!”

The document strikes every antisemitic chord possible. It presents the Jews as arrogant, dishonest, corrupt, greedy, sneaky, murderous, promiscuous, manipulative, and cold. It lays out their alleged plans to destroy the family, the state, the church, and the national economy. It presents their conspiracy to control the minds and bodies of gentiles, to trick and force them into doing their bidding. It tells how they foment war and insurrection in order to achieve their goals. And of course it describes the great octopus of hidden Jewish control over all the important institutions in society that the stupid gentiles believe are independent.

It’s a perfect theory, because it accounts for everything bad that happens to those who believe it. Business reversal? The Jews cheated you! War? The Jews started it! Your spouse has an affair? The Jews introduced immorality into art, literature, and media! Are you conservative? The Jews are responsible for the destruction of traditional values everywhere, in government, business, and the family! Are you liberal? The Jews are the most privileged of the privileged, exploiting the oppressed classes! They are rebellious communists and rapacious capitalists, godless libertines and God’s purported chosen.

Almost every antisemitic act that hits the headlines echoes the Protocols. Robert Bowers murdered eleven old Jews in Pittsburgh because he believed that the Jews are responsible for uncontrolled non-white immigration into the US. Malik Faisal Akram took Jewish hostages in Texas because he believed that the Jews could pull strings to get a terrorist released from Federal prison. John Earnest killed a woman and injured several other people when he shot up a synagogue in Poway, California in 2019 because he thought Jews were executing a “meticulously planned genocide of the European race,” apparently by encouraging interracial relationships.

Recently, Jewish conspiracies have been “found” everywhere. In one of the most egregious violations of the principles of logic and evidence, cases of American police abusing black citizens are attributed to some American police officials participating in programs to study counter-terrorism in Israel. But even if significant race-based police mistreatment of minorities exists (in fact, it may not), it long predates such training programs, which in any event are related to intelligence gathering or SWAT training and not to techniques of apprehending suspects. And certainly there is no racial content! Nevertheless, the theory – pushed by a “Jewish” anti-Israel organization – became wildly popular. Because nothing “fits” like  a Jewish conspiracy.

Such conspiracy theories have been popular since the Middle Ages (killing Jesus, poisoning wells, the blood libel, etc.). But the grand conspiracy to rule the world that is expressed so comprehensively in the Protocols may date to the late 19th century, and I think it’s fair to say that nothing did more to popularize it than the publication of the Protocols. While it may or may not have affected the thinking of Hitler and other Nazis – there is no evidence that Hitler believed that it was genuine – they certainly used it to great effect as a propaganda tool. And other antisemites continue to do so today. In 2002, the Protocols was made into a dramatic series called Horseman Without a Horse, aired on Egyptian TV. It was rerun in 2012, and was also shown on Lebanon’s Hezbollah-linked Al Manar channel.

There’s no doubt that a book or other work of artistic expression can have malign effects. But does it make sense to say that it can be inherently evil?

I think the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an argument for that proposition.

Posted in Jew Hatred | 2 Comments

Should American Jews Worry About Antisemitism?

Posted on January 23, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

A recent survey tells us that more than 90% of American Jews are “concerned” about antisemitism, and almost half of them have experienced it either directly, or “through family or friends.” I wondered if things were better or worse for Jews than when I grew up, and I can’t say. I was born during WWII and my youth and young adulthood in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s in the USA don’t provide an answer. My American-born parents were completely secular, and although their circle of friends was almost entirely made up of Jews (even when we lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood of the New York suburbs), they were not especially concerned with “Jewish” issues. The conversation at the dinner table was more likely to revolve around social activities than politics, and even when it did turn to politics, Jewishness rarely came into it.

So I wasn’t looking for antisemitism and I didn’t find it. Looking back, I can speculate that some of the kids that picked on me, or the girls that wouldn’t go out with me, or people that seemed to dislike me for no clear reason, or, later, failed to hire me, did so out of anti-Jewish feeling, but at the time it was just the way things worked. You win some and you lose some. I remember that I got along with the Italian kids in the neighborhood better than the Irish ones, but I was not aware then that the priest at the Irish parish gave anti-Jewish sermons at Eastertime.

Antisemitism then was everywhere and nowhere. I know that some Jewish kids were called “dirty Jew,” but this didn’t happen to me. I knew about the Holocaust – my grandparents, immigrants from Russia, talked about it even if my parents didn’t – but that might have happened on Mars in prehistoric times. In 1950, five years after the liberation of the concentration camps, my major concern was the unfairness of the fact that I did not own a baseball card of Phil Rizzuto.

I don’t think the media then invested a lot of words in discussing racism or antisemitism, compared to today’s obsessive interest in these things (at least, the Jewish media is interested in antisemitism). So I think the idea that there is a “surge of antisemitism” in America today is unproven. But we can say that there have been several important recent developments in the evolution of American antisemitism.

One is a result of the KGB’s anti-Israel offensive that began in the 1960s, which brought together traditional European and Muslim antisemitism, and introduced the false but effective idea that Zionism is racism. In one blow, Jews, who had been in the forefront of movements for civil rights and anti-colonialism, became the enemies of all “progressive” movements. Even more momentum came from the Durban conference in 2001 in which Israel was directly identified as the epitome of colonialism and apartheid. So the American Left switched from opposing antisemitism as a kind of racism, to embracing anti-Zionism (which is essentially another form of antisemitism).

Another is the identification of Jews with anti-black racism. This seems to have come about for various reasons, among them being the ideology of the black Muslim movement, personified by Louis Farrakhan. The popular racist “antiracism” movement found the Jews an easily identifiable element in the white power structure that they see as opposing their goals. Ideologues like Leonard Jeffries, argued ahistorically that the slave trade was financed by “rich Jews,” and that the Jews who controlled Hollywood conspired to denigrate blacks. His ideas got a lot of traction with those who were looking for someone to blame.

In any event, these newer expressions of antisemitism have raised the profile of Jew-hatred. The amplification factor provided by social media has also worked to spread and intensify the phenomenon.

The recent hostage incident in a Texas synagogue displays a mixture of modern antisemitic memetic DNA. Malik Faisal Akram, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, seems to have believed in the “Jewish power” myth popularized by the nineteenth-century European Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which found fertile soil among Muslims (e.g., the Hamas Covenant copied parts of the Protocols word for word). He apparently thought that all-powerful Jews could arrange for the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from federal prison in nearby Fort Worth, and called a New York rabbi whom he believed had particular influence.

The extreme right-wing form of antisemitism shares some of the same myths as the extreme left-wing type. Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, claimed that he did it because that synagogue supported HIAS – an organization that facilitates immigration to the US, including immigrants from Muslim countries, who Bowers said “kill our people.” Ironically, HIAS stands for “Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society,” a group originally formed to resettle Holocaust survivors after the war, which has since recast itself to aid all refugees – which today generally means Muslims from Afghanistan, Syria, and so on. Bowers imagined a widespread plot by powerful Jews to replace the white race in America with Muslims and other third-world peoples.

Whether or not it is true that more Americans hold antisemitic views than in the past, my guess is that American Jews are right to be concerned, because the fragmentation and disintegration of American society that is occurring now has released numerous demons, including antisemitic ones – and they are increasingly violent demons.

On the other hand, another Holocaust, this time in America, is very unlikely. That would require a singleness of purpose that is the opposite of the flying apart that seems to be in America’s future.

Posted in American Jews, Jew Hatred | 2 Comments

Keeping the Land of Israel

Posted on January 20, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

News Item:

The European Union has spent half-a-billion dollars over the last seven years to support a Palestinian Authority plan to control Area C of the West Bank, an Intelligence Ministry report publicly released Tuesday.

“Foreign assistance as a significant accelerator in the takeover processes,” stated the report by the ministry’s research division, which was authored in June and published this week for Tuesday’s debate in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the matter.

“The rough estimate is that from the period of 2014-2021, at least half-a-billion dollars were transferred to the Palestinians through various channels and it’s possible that the sum was larger,” the report stated.

An annual sum of some €20 million is earmarked for Palestinian legal battles against settlements and the security barrier, the report stated.

All the territories except Gaza were divided into Areas A, B, and C in 1995 by the Oslo II Agreement. Area A includes major Arab population centers, and is under complete PA security and civil control. That means that PA provides all needed services to the population, including counter-terrorism and law enforcement. The IDF only enters Area A when it is absolutely necessary, and coordinates with the PA to locate and apprehend terrorists (needless to say, this procedure can break down when a wanted terrorist is associated with the PA’s ruling Fatah faction). Area B is under Israeli security control and PA civil control. It is made up of areas with Arab populations that, because of their strategic location or nature, must be under IDF control. About 90% of the Arab population of the territories lives in areas A and B.

Area C, which is about 60% of the land area in question, is under complete Israeli control. It comprises all Jewish communities and military installations in the territories, and contains their entire Jewish population. It also includes strategic areas. Some 450,000 Jews and 180,000 Palestinians live in Area C. Some right-wing parties have advocated annexing or extending Israeli law to Area C, and even most “2-state” proponents agree that for security reasons, and to avoid expelling hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes, at least parts of Area C must become part of Israel.

In 2009, former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, in cooperation with the Obama Administration and the EU, came up with a plan to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state, regardless of Israeli wishes. Fayyad envisioned establishing all the pieces of a government and an economy before declaring the state, much like the Zionists did in the pre-state Yishuv. Detailed plans were written, with a high degree of detail and attention to concepts like justice, democracy, and even environmentalism, that would appeal to the Western technocrats who were to pay for the project. The contrast with the actual behavior of the PA, toward its citizens, the environment, and Israel, is striking.

The stated goal is to create a “sovereign and independent state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, and reach a just and agreed solution for Palestinian refugees in accordance with relevant international resolutions, and UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in particular.” If you think the plan might not be problematic for Israel, let me remind you that the PLO has always interpreted 194 to mean that all the descendants of Arab refugees of 1948 can choose to return “home” to Israel, or be compensated for the loss of their “property.”

The plan requires maximum land area under Palestinian control and maximum contiguity thereof, so control of Area C and the expulsion of as many Jews as possible is critical to it. Although Fayyad was pushed out in 2013 by a jealous Mahmoud Abbas (he went to work at various prestigious educational institutions and think tanks), the implementation of the plan continued under his successors.

American funding for the project began with the Obama Administration, stopped under Trump, and is being restarted by Biden. But the lion’s share has come from European sources. Regavim, an Israeli organization dedicated to protecting Israeli lands (both within and outside of the pre-1967 lines), explains some of the methods used by the Palestinians and their European partners to take de facto control of land in the most strategic parts of Area C, such as “E1,” located between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim:

The method is simple: E.U. vehicles station water cisterns and solar panels in strategic spots in Area C. Bedouin clans then create encampments around these critical resources, and the rest is history: The Jahalin clan and the residents of Khan al Akhmar are two well-known examples of the results.

Another ploy is to build an illegal structure at a strategic location, and to post signs designating it a “school” or a “hospital.” If Israel attempts to remove it – remember, the area is supposedly under full Israeli control, which includes zoning and issuing building permits – then she is alleged to be guilty of an inhumane act, or even a war crime. It’s ironic that at the same time, Palestinians and their supporters claim that Israel is “gobbling Palestinian land” by “settlement construction,” when in fact there is almost no construction of new communities and minimal construction inside old ones going on.

The Israeli government does sometimes take action, often when prodded by Regavim, but equally often the thefts of land are simply ignored. I think this is because many Israeli officials, even ones that are supposedly “right-wing,” have internalized the idea that a Palestinian state of some kind is both benign and inevitable. It had better not be inevitable, because nothing about it is benign. The Fayyad plan is essentially a detailed blueprint for the implementation of Arafat’s “Phased Plan” for the replacement of Israel by an Arab state (Fayyad was Arafat’s Finance Minister in the PA’s 2002 government).

It is difficult to think that the European – and American – officials believe that they are doing anything less than working to subvert the Jewish state. It is difficult to think that they are so credulous as to actually believe that the Palestinian State that they are creating on top of us will be democratic, peaceful, and neighborly. Finally, it is impossible to accept that they don’t have the imagination to picture what is likely to happen here if the PLO succeeds in implementing its plan.

What they are doing is an act of war. I would say it is flying under the radar of the citizens of their countries who are paying for it, but the truth is that most of those citizens couldn’t care less about what happens in this tiny spot in the Mideast.

But we, who live here, care, and it’s up to us to make our government carry out its responsibility to defend its citizens, which in this case also means to protect our lands from being nibbled away.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs | 1 Comment

Disappearing the Jews

Posted on January 17, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

On any scale of importance, the absurdity that the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures somehow ignored the fact that Jews, most of them running from antisemitic Eastern Europe, created the industry ex nihilo in the face of still more antisemitism in America, is insignificant.

Naturally, in these diverse and inclusive days it is supremely important to emphasize the role played by non-whites (and downplay that of non-BIPOC), so that Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki gets more play than – get ready – Walt Disney, who was not Jewish, thus demonstrating that the discrimination was merely racism and historical negationism and not primarily antisemitism.

Nevertheless, leaving out the Jews, not only the famous studio moguls that built Hollywood, but the actors, directors, and technical people that were so much a part of it, is like writing a history of the auto industry without Henry Ford and Alfred P. Sloan. It seems ridiculous to anyone who knows anything at all about the subject. And since the movie industry has declined into woke idiocy (it is possible that there will never again be a good American movie), maybe the memories of Jack Warner and the rest are best served by leaving them out of it.

But when my wife mentioned this to me this morning, I immediately thought of a similar project of historical negationism, one that is even more absurd, but on a much grander scale: the attempt to write the Jews out of the history of the Land of Israel.

How is that possible? The combination of written documentation and archaeological evidence for the existence of a Jewish culture in the Holy Land, back to at least 1200 BCE (and much longer if you credit biblical accounts), is overwhelming. And yet, Palestinian Authority officials and media tell us that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that Jesus was a “Palestinian” – indeed, even that he was the first Islamic  martyr – and so on. The PA engaged in excavations in the Temple Mount, in violation of agreements that such actions require archaeological supervision, and discarded large quantities of debris containing artifacts of the Jewish presence there in ancient times. They and their supporters get the UN to declare Jewish holy sites “Palestinian.”

The statement that “Jesus was a Palestinian” is particularly ridiculous, since there the Romans hadn’t renamed Judea “Syria Palaestina” (Philistine Syria) until their vicious suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE; and all contemporary accounts indicate that Jesus was a Jew. The argument seems to run like this: Jesus was persecuted by Jews, [today’s] Palestinians are persecuted by Jews, and therefore Jesus must be a Palestinian. No more perfect combination of false premises and invalid logic can be found, but this nonsense is repeated not only by Palestinians, but retweeted by members of the US Congress.

The BDS movement is yet another example. If Israel can’t be part of anything, from academics to sports to literature, then the message is that it is not real. The State of Israel is treated as an imposter state. “You are not a real country,” I’ve been told on social media. We are accused of “stealing Palestinian culture,” including food and music. This is an example of the psychological phenomenon of projection, since this is precisely what the “Palestinian people” are attempting to do to the Jews. And it flies in the face of reality. Jews from the Middle Eastern exile eat Middle Eastern food and like Middle Eastern music. Should a former resident of Morocco eat gefilte fish?

This is a kind of magical thinking that is especially beloved by Palestinians. They seem to think that if they make maps on which Israel does not appear, and destroy evidence of Jewish provenance in the Land of Israel, they can make us disappear (to be fair, they also take more practical steps to make us disappear, such as murdering Jews whenever possible).

But Palestinians and Hollywood museum directors aren’t the only ones who try to wish the Jews away. The theological stream called “supersessionism” or “replacement theology,” which holds that a “new covenant” supersedes the old one between Hashem and the Jewish people has been a feature of Catholicism since St. Paul, and has often served as a justification for the persecution of Jews. True, in 1965, Pope Paul VI made the Nostra Aetate declaration. But that did not repudiate the doctrine, only in effect asserting that Jews should not suffer as a result of it. More extreme versions of this view exist, like some of the “Black Hebrew Israelite” groups who believe that they are the “real” Jews and that traditional Jews are imposters.

In all the above cases, the common element is that the claims fly in the face of reality. They are not just distortions, they are pants-on-fire whoppers. But that doesn’t matter – just like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the more unlikely a claim is, the more powerful it is if people believe it, and by repeating (and retweeting) these lies enough, it is possible to make people believe them.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Jew Hatred | Comments Off on Disappearing the Jews

The Bedouin Occupation

Posted on January 13, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

Bedouin citizens of Israel formerly embraced a nomadic lifestyle, drifting between Arabia and the Sinai; but since 1948 many have permanently settled in the southern part of Israel. They established their settlements on any convenient unoccupied land, where they grazed their flocks and planted crops. Israeli authorities have established several towns and even a large city, Rahat, for Bedouin occupation, and in recent years have legalized numerous unrecognized settlements; but many Bedouin still live in the “dispersion,” a collection of hundreds of illegal favelas built on state land that resemble garbage dumps with scattered satellite dishes.

Throughout the years there have been various programs in which the state offered plots of land or homes in or near the recognized towns, along with agricultural land to replace state land on which Bedouins were squatting. Success of these programs was mixed. About 3/4 of the roughly 200,000 Negev Bedouin live in recognized towns.

The Negev Bedouin are virtually all Muslims. The population is significantly younger and is growing faster than either the Jewish or non-Bedouin Arab sectors, with (as of 2009) a fertility rate of 5.7, compared to Jewish and other Arab rates that are close to 3. Some 30% (as of 2002) of married Bedouin men have more than one wife.

Their political loyalties are primarily to their tribe or clan, though they are citizens of the state of Israel. A small number choose (it’s optional for Arabs) to join the IDF. Probably an equally small number of them identify with anti-state groups like Hamas. Those that vote lean towards the Ra’am party of Mansour Abbas (not to be confused with Mohammad Abbas of the PLO), a party whose official ideology is Islamist and associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. But Abbas has adopted a pragmatic approach – i.e., obtaining money and benefits for his constituents – in preference to an ideological one. This, and the deadlock resulting from the fourth successive election in two years, has led to Ra’am becoming the first Arab party to join a governing coalition in Israel.

Apparently the price paid to Ra’am for joining the coalition was astronomical, close to 30 billion shekels (US$9.6 billion) for programs to benefit the Arab sector. One of the promises made to them was that structures in unrecognized Bedouin settlements could be hooked up to the national electrical grid. This past week, the coalition, in one of the most raucous Knesset sessions ever, kept its promise to Mansour Abbas, passing an amendment to the Construction Law (referred to as the “Electricity Law”) permitting connection of illegal structures to electrical and other utility systems.

Normally, a structure built without a permit on land that the builder does not own cannot be connected to the national electrical and water systems. This has been described as “one of the state’s most effective tools against the national epidemic of illegal construction.” There have been exceptions when the state planned to legalize or otherwise regulate the structure, but these have been few. It will now be possible for tens of thousands of homes and other structures built illegally on state land to become permanent. To add insult to injury, an attempt to include “young Jewish communities” in Judea and Samaria to the law was voted down.

The law was passed by the Coalition with a vote of 61-0 after much of the Opposition walked out. Supporters say that it will save lives by eliminating unsafe electrical connections and will result in the Bedouins paying for electricity instead of stealing it. Opponents say that it will formalize the illegal occupation of state land, and permanently eliminate the possibility of relocating squatters. Israel Harel writes,

What’s the big deal? All they did was whitewash the (intolerable) status quo, in which thousands of illegal buildings are connected illegally to utilities, mainly electricity, putting lives in danger. Very humane. But – and it is a big but – in so doing we determine, in both theory and practice, that the piratical construction that extends over hundreds of thousands of acres will become permanent. Let’s recall that the so-called Kaminitz Law [increasing enforcement of building codes – vr] was suspended as a preface to the Electricity Law. Thus, the government put an end to existing plans to help the residents of the “Bedouin dispersion” to move, at almost no cost to them, to planned communities built by the state connected to modern infrastructure.

In 2005, the state of Israel tore Gush Katif from itself. Now, after the Electricity Law, it is ripping away large parts of the Negev too. In the area that extends eastward from Be’er Sheva nearly to Dimona, and southward from Be’er Sheva to the mountains of the central Negev, an independent regime will be established that will operate – and already does operate – according to Bedouin law. The neighboring state, Israel, will pay for this regime, according to the provisions of the most recent national budget.

Recently, there has been a sharp increase in crimes committed by Bedouins in southern Israel: car theft, drug offenses, agricultural theft, theft of weapons and ammunition from IDF bases, the use of firearms, and protection rackets. Women are harassed on the streets. Criminal activity is in the open, policing is ineffective, and judges give light sentences to those arrested, because they fear retaliation. Residents of the area complain of a “wild west” atmosphere; not long ago there was a shootout between gangs in the parking lot of a hospital emergency room.

One of the promises that the government has made, both to Jews and Arabs, was that it would crack down on crime among Arabs. So in November, the police took a stab at cleaning up the Negev, sending 1,200 policemen, with IDF assistance, into the area. They made a total of 12 arrests and confiscated a few makeshift weapons (in fact, the Bedouin are armed to the teeth with stolen military weapons) and some marijuana.

The Bedouin do not accept the idea that there is land which belongs to the state; as far as they are concerned, land belongs to whoever cultivates it. So this week the Jewish National Fund tried to plant trees on state land that Bedouins had decided was theirs. A riot ensued (encouraged by Hamas), in which cars were burned and rocks placed on railroad tracks. The planting continued this morning (Wednesday), but after Ra’am threatened to topple the government, a “compromise” was reached in which the tree-planting was delayed. Israel Harel’s words about “an independent regime” operating according to “Bedouin law” are apparently no exaggeration.

It seems that the Right’s worries about the consequences of including an Islamist party in the coalition were well-founded. Of course, the present coalition, which includes both Ra’am and the left-wing Meretz party, only exists because the Right has split itself over the question of Binyamin Netanyahu. Could we work any harder to defeat ourselves?

Posted in Israeli Arabs, Israeli Politics | 1 Comment

Our Strategy – or Theirs?

Posted on January 9, 2022 by Victor Rosenthal

In the context of Israel’s security situation, somebody recently told me to be more cheerful, because there have been worse times.

Leaving aside the question (which my wife would answer in the negative) of whether I am capable of cheerfulness, of course there have been worse times. Israel lost 1% of her population in the War of Independence. The country was on the brink of destruction on Yom Kippur of 1973. During the period of austerity in the 1950s (the tzena) food and other necessities were rationed and many things were unavailable. During the Second Intifada, bombs were exploding on buses and in restaurants every few days. These were, in an obvious sense, worse times.

So what’s my problem? Why do I insist that the state is in as much danger now as it was in 1948, 1967, or 1973?

It’s this: our governments and military planners have followed a policy of “minimum pressure” on our close-by Iranian-proxy enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist militias. It’s based on the assumption that they are deterred by our greater strength from attacking in full force, and that it’s only necessary for us to periodically push them back.

Unfortunately, the assumption is incorrect. Let me quote Dr. Aaron Lerner, who leads an organization called “Independent Media Review and Analysis” (IMRA):

Let’s not have any illusions:

It isn’t fear of the IDF that’s stopping Hamas from firing a barrage of rockets tonight at Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv or for that matter Raanana.

It is patience.

Hamas is not only busy upgrading and manufacturing rockets. They are no doubt devoting huge resources towards shifting their network of defense/attack tunnels in every city in the Gaza Strip so that they run mostly under buildings rather than streets to make it difficult for the IAF to attack them.

And fear of the IDF is not what is stopping Hezbollah from firing its hundreds of thousands of rockets towards the Jewish State tonight.

It is patience.

As each day passes they manage to smuggle in and install more of the suitcase sized guidance system rocket upgrade kits.

That’s “patience” – not “deterrence”.

There is an important difference between the two.

Because if defense officials who talk about “deterrence” really believe that there is “deterrence” then they are clueless.

And if they are clueless then this can lead to serious errors in not only planning and preparations to address these challenges but also in the timing of the execution of operations against Hamas and Hezbollah.

After all, if you think we are deterring our enemies there is no rush to do anything about Hamas or Hezbollah.

On the other hand, if Hamas and Hezbollah are patiently preparing to attack us in the future under conditions considerably more favorable for them then “quiet for quiet” does not serve our interests.

We are in a precarious position. Control is not in our hands, it is in the hands of our enemies. They decide when to heat things up, and when to cool them down. And they exploit our restraint to build up their capabilities during the cool times, so that at some point they will have the ability to land a blow strong enough to cause the collapse of the state.

Look at it as a ratchet mechanism. Each time there is a limited conflict, we destroy some of their capability. And each time, they rebuild it better, with support from Iran and various other countries. One step back, two steps forward.

Are our officials actually “clueless,” or are there other reasons for their policy? I think it is a bit of both. The false hypothesis that our enemies are deterred is accepted because the alternative would require Israel to wage war to obtain total victory over them; and that, in turn would have consequences that our leadership is not prepared to accept.

These consequences include a large number of casualties, both among Israeli and Gazan/Lebanese civilians and our soldiers, as well as large-scale damage to infrastructure on both sides. Such a war would also trigger our “soft enemies” in Europe and the Biden Administration, who would quickly respond with a diplomatic offensive to end hostilities early to Israel’s disadvantage, even to impose a settlement, followed by initiatives to sanction Israel, and legal action against our government officials and IDF officers. There is also the question of “the day after,” when it is said that Israel would have to take responsibility (at least in the case of Gaza) for the civilian population formerly governed by Hamas.

There is another problem, specifically in connection with the IDF. Our top generals have grown up in a solar system whose center is the USA. They are used to a large percentage of their budgets, and most of their equipment coming from America. They are unable to conceive of a strategy that goes against the wishes of the administration in Washington.

The denial of a proposition because its consequences are unpleasant is a fallacy called Argumentum ad Consequentiam. A rational strategy has to be based on what our enemies are actually doing, not what we would prefer that they do. And what they are doing is building up their forces in preparation for a larger war. The current policy of doing as little as possible is extremely comfortable in the short term, but may lead to a disaster in the slightly longer term. It must be replaced by one which takes into account the possible consequences of campaigns to preemptively defeat Hamas and Hezbollah, and includes elements to mitigate those consequences.

Although more attention is given to the direct nuclear threat from Iran, the combined capabilities of Hezbollah and Hamas, especially when accompanied with insurrections in Judea and Samaria – and even among a segment of Israel’s Arab population within the Green line – represent no less of an existential threat to the State of Israel.

It’s so obvious that I don’t know why I need to say it: you don’t win by following your enemy’s game plan. You don’t sit back and hope that a miracle will happen. The miracle of 1967 may have been decreed by Hashem, but it was carried out by the IDF, after careful planning. Now it’s time to plan, and execute, another miracle.

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, War | 3 Comments