Beinart Being Part of the Threat, Not Its Prevention

-{take note that I am constantly updating this

with new material and references}-

^^^^^^^

Remember the exchange of Tweets between Peter Beinart and myself, when I referred to him as an interrupting noise maker?

Well, he's gone to the favorite playing field for Jews who have problems with themselves and their Judaism, their Zionism and their politics - the New York Times.

In an op-ed, To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements, he suggests adopting the policies of Israel's - not of the communities in Judea and Samaria - most hateful enemies, one that plays into the hands of the anti-Semites and anti-Zionists.

Some of his remarks and my comments:-

...the Israeli government is erasing the “green line” [before 1967, when the Green Line, properly, the 1949 ceasefire lines, existed, it was then being erased by the Arabs who constantly infiltrated, conducting terror operations, first as fedayeen and then, from 1964, as PLO. but more importantly, in doing so, they demonstrated that for them, the 'Palestine' that needed to be 'liberated' was but Israel, and Israel without any "settlements" in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (although Jews did live there during the Mandate period and earlier) was the target for their violence. "settlements" did not exist there, so what was the cause of their violence?  to dismantle "settlements" is in no way connected to the Arab hostility.]

...The Israeli government and the B.D.S. movement are promoting radically different one-state visions, but together, they are sweeping the two-state solution into history’s dustbin. It’s time for a counteroffensive — a campaign to fortify the boundary that keeps alive the hope of a Jewish democratic state alongside a Palestinian one. And that counteroffensive must begin with language. [continuing his error of historical fact, he propounds it by creating an error of logic: that a Jewish democratic state (and we'll ignore what is meant by 'Jewish') can exist alongside a "Palestine", that that "Palestine is not and will not be inimical to the very idea of any Jewish state of any democratic character or in any geographic configuration]

...Jewish hawks often refer to the territory beyond the green line by the biblical names Judea and Samaria, thereby suggesting that it was, and always will be, Jewish land. Almost everyone else, including this paper, calls it the West Bank. But both names mislead. “Judea and Samaria” implies that the most important thing about the land is its biblical lineage; “West Bank” implies that the most important thing about the land is its relationship to the Kingdom of Jordan next door. After all, it was only after Jordan conquered the territory in 1948 that it coined the term “West Bank” to distinguish it from the rest of the kingdom, which falls on the Jordan River’s east bank. Since Jordan no longer controls the land, “West Bank” is an anachronism. It says nothing meaningful about the territory today. [has he been reading me?]

...Instead, we should call the West Bank “nondemocratic Israel.” The phrase suggests that there are today two Israels: a flawed but genuine democracy within the green line and an ethnically-based non democracy beyond it. [that, I will admit is clever.  but many democratic countries maintain extraordinary situations such as the US and Washington, DC or with Puerto Rico which parallel our situation in terms of non-perfect democracy. but the real point is: will Judea and Samaria, if they become the territory of an Arab "Palestine" - and we know no Jews will be permitted to reside therein - be a land of freedom and democracy or will there be there real apartheid, true non-democracy, "improved" terror as well as ongoing oppression of the Arab masses and Beinart and all his liberal and progressive friends not only will have contributed to Israel's decreased security and increased threat to its existence but will be partners in the subjugation of the Arabs they, I presume, wish to merit a good life.  but only with Israel with Judea and Samaria can there be both security for Israel and hope for the Arab residents of those areas]

We [and here comes the nasty] should lobby to exclude settler-produced goods from America’s free-trade deal with Israel. We should push to end Internal Revenue Service policies that allow Americans to make tax-deductible gifts to settler charities. Every time an American newspaper calls Israel a democracy, we should urge it to include the caveat: only within the green line...We should oppose efforts to divest from all Israeli companies with the same intensity with which we support efforts to divest from companies in the settlements: call it Zionist B.D.S.

...settlements need not constitute the world’s worst human rights abuse in order to be worth boycotting...The relevant question is not “Are there worse offenders?” but rather, “Is there systematic oppression that a boycott might help relieve?”...prominent Israeli writers like David Grossman, Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua have refused to visit the settlement of Ariel. [and that effort has collapsed, proving worthless and lessening the influence of the so-called left-wing camp]

...the boycott should not apply to East Jerusalem, which Israel also occupied in 1967, since Palestinians there at least have the ability to gain citizenship, even if they are not granted it by birth... [lot of luck with that with your progressive friends, Peter. they'll wake you up as to what animosity really exists]...If moderate settlers living near the green line resent being lumped in with their more ideologically driven counterparts deep in occupied territory, they should agitate for a two-state solution that would make possible their incorporation into democratic Israel. [ah, so the Arabs must know that even you will not give them the territory they demand and they may 'lose' land even from such an extremist as you]

...As I write this, I cringe...Boycotting other Jews is a painful, unnatural act. But the alternative is worse...Zionism and democracy were not only compatible; the two were inseparable...If Israel makes the occupation permanent and Zionism ceases to be a democratic project, Israel’s foes will eventually overthrow Zionism itself. [ah, but what if a possibility exists that Israel can remain democratic?  just like in 1949, Israel, despite the war, remained democratic and worked out problems.  or perhaps the Arabs will finally come to realize that Israel is their best social, political and economic bet in the area and peace will arrive and recognition of Jewish nationalism and our rights: historical, legal, religious and cultural to the Land of Israel?  and Peter, if you do not believe that, if you permit yourself a pessimism about that, allow me my pessimism about your approach and your wisdom]

...If we want to effectively oppose the forces that threaten Israel from without, we must also oppose the forces that threaten it from within. [Peter, you are closer to being part of the threat, to paraphrase, rather than contributing to its prevention].

How unfortunate, for Beinart and his children (he is the one who brought them in to the story = "I belong to an Orthodox synagogue, send my children to Jewish school and yearn to instill in them the same devotion to the Jewish people that my parents instilled in me") that he is willing not only to adopt a BDS policy but to publicize it from the pages of that not-so-friendly 'newspaper of the record'.

UPDATE

I wrote a letter but it wasn't among those published.
Here:

Peter Beinart's anti-Jewish residency rant ("To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements", March 19), seeking to deny Jews the right to live in portions of the historic Jewish homeland is logically flawed. There were no "settlements" in these areas before 1967 and since there were Arab terror attacks between 1948-1967, our homes cannot be a reason for Arab animosity and therefore, our disappearance will not provide a solution to the real problem: Arab refusal to accept any form of Jewish national sovereignty. A state of "Palestine" refuses to have Jews as citizens.

Moreover, his concern for Israel's democratic soul may resonant with those of the progressive/liberal camp but his portrayal of its weakening is flawed and misrepresented. His call for boycott actions can but weaken Israel's standing and undermine its security. Democracy serves no one when it endangers the lives of people and the existence of a state.

___________

Richard Silverstein shows how BDSers really hate Israel:

...[Beinart] comes up with the hopelessly flawed, “nondemocratic Israel.” How do I hate this phrase? Let me count the ways. First, it associates the Territories with Israel, when they are not Israel, but Palestine. Second, the phrase clearly indicates a claim that Israel within the Green Line is democratic. For any reasonably well informed observer of Israeli society, this is false. At best, Israel is democratic for its Israeli Jewish citizens. For its Israeli Palestinians? Not so much.

I’d argue further that Israel isn’t a democracy not just because of its dispossession of its Palestinian citizens (and this includes the Nakba), but because it is a national security state that subsumes many rights reserved, in truly democratic countries, to citizens, under the guise of fighting terror.

...his Buy Israel campaign will actually benefit companies based within Israel proper which do business in the Territories. But he argues that we cannot boycott these companies because if we did, we wouldn’t know where to stop our boycotting activities within Israel. That essentially limits the companies and products you boycott to almost nil. Further, settlers could easily get around his boycott by associating themselves with Israeli companies based within the Green Line.

... I wondered why Beinart excluded East Jerusalem from the settler population count. It becomes clear later on when he deliberately excludes East Jerusalem from his boycott. Why? Because East Jerusalem Palestinians can become Israeli citizens. First, these Palestinians do not want to be Israeli citizens. They want to be Palestinian citizens. They don’t want to live in a Jewish state. They want to live in a Palestinian state. Israel took that right away from them when it annexed their homes in violation of international law. Now Beinart offers East Jerusalem a free pass from his boycott because of a flimsy fig leaf of so-called democracy.

Further, East Jerusalem is an occupied as the West Bank. Saying it is less occupied is ludicrous. Not to mention it gives one the impression that Beinart does not believe in sharing Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. As far as I’m concerned that’s a fatal political flaw in his proposal.

...If you are truly a “committed Jew” it becomes MORE, not less important to boycott other Jews when their interpretation of “Judaism” is not only an abomination, but endangers the rest of Israel. There should not be any hesitation in doing so. Boycotting them is not a painful or unnatural act. On the contrary, it is an obligatory act as a Jew. Think of Prof. Yeshaiya Lebowitz, also an Orthodox Jew who brought his children up to be devoted to the Jewish people. Yet he didn’t hesitate to call radical settler leaders, “Judeo-Nazis.” Beinart would never do this. Because Beinart pulls his punches. Beinart holds back. That is what makes him and his analysis so disappointing and so ineffectual...

And there's this letter up already (how did that happen?).

And I left a comment here.

And I found this point (k/t=Faniel Gordis) in a review of his new book, that Beinart's main complaint is that Israel is

alienating a concentrated, core group of liberal Jewish elites

those that are unconcerned about the undemocratic societies Israel faces and moreover, there are ethics -

"Israel's physical survival," he writes, "is bound up with its ethical survival." That ethical survival, according to Beinart, will depend on Israel's willingness to accept that its military and economic might have given Jews a new kind of power. And with that power, Beinart writes, comes responsibility: the responsibility to recognize, far more than most supporters of Israel would readily admit, that the Jewish state plays a large part in shaping the threats that it faces.

So, we're back where we started before Zionism: it is our fault that we are hated.

That is so liberal. And the reviewer then goes off the deep end:

Even if one objects to this kind of moralism, one has to acknowledge that Beinart has identified the genuine threat posed by the occupation to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. And if it's in Israel's existential interest to stave off that threat by withdrawing from the West Bank, then Beinart is right to say that continued settlement construction and subsidization—particularly in areas that Israel will need to forfeit in a future agreement—does "menace Israel's future" by making it that much more difficult to leave and achieve peace. Israel must embrace some level of responsibility for the continuation of the conflict. But not the lion's share—and that, unfortunately, is what The Crisis of Zionism strongly implies

.
_____________

And now this from a JCPA report:

From the substantive point of view, the BDS campaign feeds on and demonstrates a blatant and deliberate ignorance and denial of the basic issues involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The oft-repeated use of such slogans as "apartheid" and "colonialism" and the like with respect to Israel demonstrates total ignorance of the significance of the terms used, and an acute lack of familiarity with the democratic character of Israel and the actual situation in the area.

________________

This on the book from Sol Stern at Commentary:

all the footnotes in the world can’t disguise the fact that Beinart willfully ignores just about any testimony or source that might undermine his uncomplicated narrative of good liberal Zionism versus bad reactionary Zionism.  That elision is evident in Beinart’s assessment of Stephen Wise, whom Beinart vaunts as the model of what a Jewish leader in America should stand for: belief in the prophetic social-justice traditions of Judaism, a commitment to a sane, peaceful Zionism, and a healthy respect for dissenting opinions...

...But the supreme test for American Zionism would come after the U.S. government officially acknowledged in November 1942 that Hitler was implementing a plan to exterminate European Jewry and that two million Jews had already been murdered. There is no Zionism worthy of its name without the priority of rescuing Jews in mortal danger and distress. Wise failed this test, although you wouldn’t know anything about it from Beinart’s book...Wise was a leader of a dozen Jewish or Zionist organizations at the time. Contrary to Beinart, there was nothing very democratic about how he ran those groups, which is why he was often called the “King of the Jews.”

Still, he might have risen to the occasion and used his position to press the administration to change its position on rescue. But the Zionist leader was encumbered by his close personal relationship with the president...One group in America, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, took up the challenge and mounted a public lobbying campaign to pressure the administration to change its policy on rescue. The new organization was led by a small cadre of young Jews who had originally come to the United States from Palestine to work with Vladimir Jabotinsky. (The revisionist leader died in New York in 1940.) Also known as the Bergson Group, after its leader, Peter Bergson, it was successful in pushing the administration to finally create the War Refugee Board, which did manage to save thousands of Jews, mainly in Hungary in the last months of the war. But that was no thanks to Rabbi Wise. Instead of working together with Bergson to put maximum pressure on the administration to change its policy, Wise turned on the dissidents, trying to undermine their organization and block their influence.

There is not a word about this unsavory chapter in American Jewish history in Beinart’s book, only unrestrained praise for Wise’s democratic Zionism.

and this:

What is wrong with Beinart’s book is contained within its title, The Crisis of Zionism. Zionism itself is not in crisis. The liberal Zionism Beinart espouses is, because Beinart and others like him have decided to condition their belief in a Jewish national homeland on its pursuit of policies that make them feel good. They prefer an Israel of social-democratic fantasy—an Israel that need not take account of the behavior of its Palestinian interlocutors, that need not take account of the safety and security of its own population, and an Israel that need not take account of the views and wishes of its own electorate—to the real thing.

_____________


A list of critiques from ChallahHuAkbar.

Add Josh Hasten.

Beinart attacked by an Arab.

Rob Eshman.

Seth Mandel.

Omri Ceren.

Ruthie Blum

Daniel Gordis.

Leo Rennert has something positive to point out ("Beinart is amenable to Israeli retention of major settlements").

Daniel Freeman.

A newer reaction by me, and another

Assaf Romiwowsky.

Barry Rubin.
___________

And by the way, all of Beinart is old hat. From May 2011:-

The unspoken implication...was that Beinart had strayed from the fold of centrist Jewish thinkers...Beinart has aligned himself with Israel bashers, or so Halevi seemed to be implying...the problem isn't that his former co-worker openly criticizes Israel, but that he neglects on-the-ground realities, including existential concerns, that profoundly affect the Jewish state.

...Beinart, in contrast, tends to focus on what he calls "nondemocraticIsrael," the occupied territories in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. The decades-long occupation by Israel, Beinart maintains, has frayed the country's moral fabric and is contributing to the disintegration of its democracy. "It is very important for us to understand that while Israel is a democracy ... it is not a democracy outside of the Green Line," he told the audience. In those areas, he maintained, Israel seems to be morphing into an "apartheid state,"...Jews, Beinart explained, must make a concerted attempt to understand the Palestinian psyche.

...Urging Beinart to "choose your allies very carefully," Halevi lambasted his opponent for signing a missive last year that urged the U.S. not to veto a United Nations resolution censuring Israel. Signatories included several longtime Israel bashers.

____________

Anti-Zionist approach.

____________

Martin Sherman following the Beinart-Gordis debate.
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Argentina - 20 Years After the Blast

One of the series of posters commemorating the event when Iranians agents planted a bomb:

Another.

And another.

And yet another.

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Daily Crimes Are Actually The Crime of False Information

The Pals. are at it again, here (spelling errors preserved):-

Settlers attacks on the Palestinian people and their land and property have lately become daily violations of Palestinian rights...Only on March 8 and 9 three of such attacks occurred.

A group of settlers from Nahale’l settlement, which located close to Beit Illo village west of Ramallah, cut more than 80 olive trees on March 9. The trees belonged to Mohammad Jebrel, in Al Thahrat area close to the village.  Mohammad Jebrel said that this attack came as part of series of attacks on his land. In fact, the settlers had already cut his olive trees before. However, he replanted them again.

In another case of settlers attacking Palestinian land and trees, a group of settlers from Elieh settlement, in Nablus district, cut 40 olive trees in Qariout village on Friday March 9. The villagers discovered the when they went after time again to their land. The Israeli occupation forces allow the farmers of Qariout to access their land only twice a year for a short periods: once in the olive harvesting and once in the plowing season [BS and besides, that particular plot is not theirs]. The villagers said that the settlers cut 40 olive trees [there were no trees there] and destroyed the land [???] in the area located close to Elieh [Eli] settlement. Elieh encroaches on the village from the west.

Further, the security guards of the Shilo and Elieh settlements entered the village from several entrance and threatened the villagers not to go to their lands. They shot bullets which caused power outages as they damaged the electricity infrastructure [er, that's BS and besides, Arabs twice infiltrated Shiloh, once stealing a guard dog they drugged and ran into Qaryut and hid in the mosque which gave them sanctuary from the IDF who entered].

Many of the villagers are affected by this further attack on the livelihoods of the farming community. Among the owners of the trees are Mahmoud Bader Abu Nejem, Mahmoud Rateb, Ahed Khalil, Hisham Jaber, Abdulnaser Badawi, Hamad Badawi, Abdulghani Badawi and Mahmoud Falah. All of them condemn the settlers attack on their land.

So boring, so predestined propaganda.

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Leon Lets Loose A Linguistic Lambasting

Wrote Leon Wieseltier:

There has occurred a renascence of Jewish fanaticism in the Netanyahu years.

Renascence?

I would think that such an august literary and Jewish figure like Leon would have written it in the French spelling: renaissance.

In any case, the word is defined

re·nas·cence (r-nsns, -nsns)
n.
1. A new birth or life; a rebirth.
2. A cultural revival; a renaissance.

Wieseltier was upset and this is from his lead-in (I do not have the entire piece):

the spirit of criticism must not desist. Like all liberal societies, Israeli society contains anti-liberal elements, and these anti-liberal elements, both religious and secular, have become increasingly prominent, and increasingly wanton, and increasingly sickening, recently. This anti-liberalism cannot be conspiratorially imputed to foreigners or enemies: Jews are doing this to Jews. The odious misogyny of the ultra-Orthodox is certainly not typical of Israeli life, from which the ultra-Orthodox have anyway seceded (except to exploit the welfare system, which magically makes practical men out of zealots); but more needs to be said.

I'd like to read what he has to say about Islamic practices. Well, this short piece is quite linguistically tame.

But then again, since its Jew vs. Jew, Leon lets loose.

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She Said It and She's a Muslim

Journalist Irshad Manji writes in her new book, "an intimate and optimistic apologia for a future with more liberal and open interpretations of Islam...[that] in the end, the book fails to grapple with some of the more substantial questions that would make this future a reality:-

...Despite her belief that a woman’s choice about wearing the hijab should be respected, she accuses hijab wearers of a kind of self-deception, of using the hijab as “an emblem of faux modesty.” Manji claims that, “far from protecting herself against the ‘Western’ disease of sexualizing breasts and other bodily bits, she’s fetishizing her entire body as genitalia.” Manji is skeptical that women choose the hijab out of modesty because she believes men still “gawk at women who cover.”

That is quite a remarkable metaphor.

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You Can Get Wounded in the Head at J Street

Well, at J Street, Las Vegas, that is:-

A man was found dead early Saturday morning inside a home near J Street and Owens Avenue where a Las Vegas police officer and an 8-year-old girl were shot and wounded.

Officers investigating the shooting of the girl late Friday night came under fire at the residence on Wyatt Avenue, police spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said.

One officer was grazed on the head by a bullet and was pulled from the home by fellow officers during the ensuing shootout, Meltzer said.

SWAT officers later found the suspect in the shooting dead after a standoff that lasted several hours. Meltzer said it is unclear whether the man took his own life or was killed in the exchange of gunfire with police.

"It's a very active investigation at this point," she said.

The injuries to the officer and the 8-year-old girl were not considered life threatening. "He was very fortunate," Meltzer said of the wounded officer.

Dangerous out there on J Street.

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Sexual Harrassment at Kfar A-Dik

Remember this video, "Arab Men Should Rape Jewish Women Says Egyptian Lawyer"? And the rape in Tahrir Square?

Well, welcome to the reality:

Israeli leftist activists: We are being sexually harassed in the West Bank

I posted originally here, on August 10, 2010.

(Muqata posted this also then)

In essence:

Female activists accuse leftist organizations of belittling cases of harassment by Palestinians for the sake of the struggle against the occupation; Palestinian activist: It is unacceptable that Israeli or foreign women that come to protest in solidarity with us be harassed.

And note the location of this complaint written by an Israeli leftist activist and sent to her friends at Anarchists Against the Wall:

At the demonstration today (February 10, 2012) in Kfar a-Dik, I noticed looks and finger pointing from the shabab (nickname for young Palestinians) that made me feel some discomfort. They talked amongst themselves, and not with me, but the word that came up quite a lot was ‘slut,’ with glances directed toward me. When I met A. and H. (two men), I told them about this, and H. stayed by my side. Despite this, there was some ‘accidental’ touching, and some incidents in which people called me a ‘slut.’ In the end of the day, it was a very unpleasant experience.”

There is

a wider phenomenon of sexual harassment and assault of Israeli and foreign protesters in the West Bank. In the past two years, at least six incidents were recorded in the West Bank and East Jerusalem: two in Sheikh Jarrah, four more in the Mount Hebron area, in Masra, in Kfar a-Dik, and an alleged case of attempted rape in Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem, that was revealed in Haaretz.

Recently, a special forum was started by a group of women from leftist groups for the purpose of dealing and monitoring such incidents. “The objective is to learn the subject,” says one of the group’s members. “We want to develop tools and guidelines for creating an environment with fewer cases of harassment.”

As some of us bloggers noted at the time

...complaints of sexual harassment by Palestinians started to emerge. In April 2010, an American peace activist filed a complaint against a Palestinian, charging he had tried to rape her. The suspect was later freed when the activist withdrew her complaint.

And

One activist, who in the past used to frequent the protests in the West Bank but no longer participates, told Haaretz, “Two years ago we had a meeting of women who took part in the struggle against the occupation. It took place in an apartment in Jerusalem, and disturbing things were brought up. Nearly all the women that attended told of cases of harassment or discrimination. One of the women recounted how one night, in a tent set up to help Sheikh Jarrah families, someone tried to grab her. She shouted for help and Palestinians came and asked who it was so that they could ‘take care of him.’”

“A female foreign activist of the international solidarity movement that was sleeping in one of the Palestinian villages, where protests against the fence take place, said that one night someone entered her room and tried to grab her, she began to shout and one of her friends rushed to help her. Since then I don’t go to places I ‘shouldn’t’ go to alone, as a women,” she said.

I guess that "liberation" needs still to be disconnected from subjugation.

The International Solidarity Movement trains its activists:

The training costs 180 shekels, which includes 4 meals, a place to stay for one night, transportation to Ramallah and the training itself. Any leftover money helps to pay our rent, electricity and water expenses.

...The training will include the following sections:

Hopes and Fears

We will discuss what are our hopes and fears of coming to Palestine are and with working with ISM. Throughout the training we will try to make sure that everyone’s fears are addressed.

Culture

Palestinian culture is very different from western cultures that many of the internationals come from. In this section we will talk about how internationals can respect the culture. We will discuss cultural considerations regarding gender, eating, greeting people, and living/working in Palestinian villages and cities...

Sexual Harassment and Assault

Sexual harassment and assault happens all over the world and can happen to anyone. Unfortunately we have heard about a lot of sexual harassment and assault specifically towards women in the West Bank recently. We have included this section to address how women can hopefully avoid sexual assault and harassment, what to do in case it happens, and how we can all help to stop this and support people that it has happened to.

And here is how is was dealt with last September, in part:

Hannah Beit Halahmi, a well-known activists and feminist blogger...recently mentioned enraged responses that she and others received after they “dared” discuss the phenomenon. These included demands and even threats to avoid the issue...and claims that “they tried to silence it and I foresaw that it would blow up in their faces.”

Beit Halahmi specifically accuses a Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity activists named Avner of calling her, shouting at her, threatening her and demanding that she stop publishing articles about the issue. Avner denies this...

Good luck, girls.


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Who Should Have Been More Pro-Israel?

Here, in a New Yorker cartoon.

(k/t=JW)

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What A Mess

It is now just after the Shabbat here in Israel.  I've come home, made Havdalah, been interviews on Prophecy Today with Jimmy DeYoung and turned on the TV.  I flipped first to Dubai One and found a detective series on, one I hadn't seen before.  It's called Endgame.  (the episode was The Caffeine Hit) and I found out that

Endgame is a Canadian drama television series that premiered on the Showcase Television network on Monday, March 14, 2011. The series is developed and produced by Thunderbird Films. The series follows former World Chess Champion Arkady Balagan (Shawn Doyle), a genius who uses his analytical skills to solve crimes.

So, what's the mess?

Well, balagan is Hebrew slang for - a big chaotic mess.

And since the series was created by Avrum Jacobson,

and despite knowing nothing about him (and I can't find anything actually) I'd guess he's been fooling around with us.

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You Won't Vote For Noam Schalit, Right?

There are several reasons why one should not support Noam Schalit in the upcoming Labour party primaries and surely if he obtained a high placement on the list. One would be his exploitation of his son and his son's plight such as his appearances with him at events he needn't be present, such as this week's visit to the Ethiopian encampment at the Prime Minister's residence. Another would be his clumsiness in delivery of his thoughts and opinions, must of which, though I have tried, I cannot understand both linguistically and logically.

A more recent reason is this from the JPost:

Noam Schalit, father of former kidnapped soldier Gilad Schalit, said Wednesday that if he were Palestinian he would try to kidnap IDF soldiers. In an interview with Channel 10, Schalit, who is running for a Knesset seat with the Labor Party, paraphrased former Labor leader Ehud Barak, who shocked many people when he told Israeli journalist Gideon Levy in a 1998 interview that if he was Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization.

“We also kidnapped British soldiers when we were fighting for our freedom,” Schalit said, referring to pre-state Zionist paramilitary organizations during the British mandate.

In saying that “We also kidnapped British soldiers when we were fighting for our freedom,” Schalit displays a problematic value-system.

Yes, the Irgun kidnapped British soldiers, and hanged two. Others were whipped and others were held to gain release of Irgun soldiers. But why was the Irgun kidnapping? It wasn't just a fight for freedom. That fight was necessary because the British were reneging on the Mandate and instead of faciltitaing the reconstitution of the Jewish national home, they sought to create an Arab state by limiting immigration, restricting land purchases, preventing Jewish refugees from exiting Nazi Europe and not properly defencing Jewish property and life.

On the other hand, Israel - and the pre-state Yishuv - accepted several partition proposals even being forced to accept the removal of portions of historic Eretz-Yisrael in Transjordan. We surrendered the Sinai Peninsula, twice - in 1957 and 1981. We agreed to many rounds of negotiations that the Arabs sought thereby to gain what they sought to achieve through aggression. We disengaged. We set up Areas A and B. And the list is long.

To compare Israel vis a vis the Arabs with the British Mandatory regime with the Zionist undergrounds is either the result of woefully uninformed historical knowledge or, worse, a corruption of such.

The Arabs were killing Jews not for freedom but to simply kill thm.  Their terror was never a matter of political advantage or need but a derivative of Muslim anti-Jewish religious orientation first and foremost.

Politicians so uninformed or suffering an ideological inferiority complex should not be in our political system.

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Dimi Reider Gets A Free Ride in the NY Review of Books

The New York Review of Books hosts Dimi Reider on "Israel: The Knesset vs. Democracy".

He writes about:

...a far-reaching series of laws now pending or already passed by the Knesset suggests Israel is moving in an alarmingly anti-democratic direction.

...[a] sustained assault on such fundamental democratic principles as the right to asylum, the right to free association, the right to freedom of speech, and the right to an independent judiciary?

...it has been the Knesset itself that has become the primary engine of Israel’s turn away from democratic values.

...Some say the undemocratic system established for these Palestinians is now seeping back across the Green Line.

...the decline of Israel’s independent press

...Israel’s dual identity as a democracy for its citizens and a Jewish state is undergoing a momentous change, with the current coalition increasingly willing to sacrifice the former to preserve the latter.

I left this comment there (for after all, they'll never give me a platfrom to adequately respond):-

In writing "They portray civil society NGOs as agents of foreign influence, the Supreme Court as an unelected clique that grossly obstructs the democratic process, and news organizations that question government policies as left wing and unpatriotic. These allegations find a ready audience in an increasingly nationalist electorate; even those skeptical of some of the more radical proposals have shown little readiness to engage in organized opposition", Reider, one of the more extreme left-wing progressives here in Israel, summarizes what is the only truths in his otherwise misrepresentation of Israel's societal discourse and incorrect assertions in his flawed piece.  Earlier he wrote that what is supposedly happening is an "sustained assault on such fundamental democratic principles" but what has happened since the mid-1980s was a takeover of central power focii by the three main elitist groups: the judicial, the media and the 'humanist' associations (funded by liberal Jews) who seek, with each one's support, to alter Israel's ethos into a "state of all its citizens" (while one group of citizens denies any allegiance to or current/future idenification with the state), to de-Judaize the public square, to supplant basic values with post-modern reinterpretations and, most of all, to implant a feeling of remorse and guilt in Israelis for being Jewish, Zionist and zealous in desiring to be...Jewish, Zionist and zealous about our security, our identity and our just cause in a surrounding Middle East which is undemocratic, fanatic and dangerous.  Almost a death wish.

^

More "League of the Trembling Israelites"

I left this comment

so, “multiculturalism” denies any “multi” activity? Brooke is outside the “culturalism” that can be debated, listened to, mulled over? or is it that fear drives the decision to rescind? when do you feel “safe” enough to discuss? who defines – at a university (!) – the realm of discourse that is acceptable – to who?

at this site.

The story.

^

Eighteen Years and 26 Million Dollars

One Israel Fund:



^

Another Spray-On Story But Whose Price-Tag?

Remember my doubts, based on handwriting, about the identity of those who scrawled "price-tag" on the wall of a mosque in the Beduin village of Tuba Zangria?  And the follow-up story and this one noted by EoZ?  Here, too.

Well, I saw this item in Hebrew in Israel Hayom and Ynet and found it at this site, Israeli Uncensored News, in English:

Young Arabs arrested over Nazi graffiti


Two fifteen-year-old Arabs from Beit Zarzir village were confined to house arrest after spraying swastikas on a school.

The Ynet adds that they also sprayed grafitti "Death to Arabs".

Well, we do not know, as yet, who was violent in Tuba but from now on, we cannot be sure exactly who is doing what.  It could be a Jew, it could be an Arab.

Just saying, you know.

^

Jacob Birnbaum - We Salute You

I have signed on to this salute to Dr. Jacob Birnbaum:

CREATOR OF THE STUDENT STRUGGLE FOR SOVIET JEWRY (SSSJ), FIRST INITIATIVE TO ADDRESS THE PLIGHT OF SOVIET JEWRY -- WIDELY REGARDED AS THE FATHER OF THE MOVEMENT TO FREE SOVIET JEWRY, will be presented with the Torch of Freedom Award at the RAJE (Russian American Jewish Experience) annual Gala, to be held on Thursday, March 15th 2012 at Gaustavino’s in Manhattan. This is the first time the Russian American Jewish community will have a chance to thank Dr. Birnbaum for his revolutionary and pioneering work on behalf of Soviet Jewry. Natan Sharansky, the famed Prisoner of Zion, human rights activist and current Chairman of the Jewish Agency, will deliver the Keynote address at the event and there will be a special Message from Senator Charles E. Schumer.

Here is a video prepared for the occasion:

And here are two outtakes of Betarim I caught:

That's Moshe Kiczales of Bronx Betar on the left and in the middle another Betari, Dov Skolnick, in 1964 1968 [? see comment] the first year of major mass public demonstrations that began:

The Betarim are carrying the Geula March sign:

Some other photos we've collected:

here

here


Some history:

here

here

here

here -

A group of former Betarim and other activist lawyers including Moshe Brodetzky, Morty Dolinsky, Yitzhak Heimowitz, Mel Stein and Judah Harris joined forces with SSSJ to set up the “Center for Russian Jewry” chaired by the movie mogul Spiros Skouras with a suite of offices in the Empire State Building. At its dedication the keynote speaker was Congressman (later President) Gerald Ford.

here

here.

And my wife's blog post on Laura Bialis' "Refusenik" film.

^

Headline of the Week: West Bank; Construction; Site Plan Approval

Here it is:

Construction should start soon on West Bank

That's in West Des Moines

Site plan approval was granted last month by the West Des Moines Plan and Zoning Commission for construction of a new West Bank and a Casey’s General Store near First Street and Grand Avenue in West Des Moines.

If plans continue to progress smoothly, both projects could be completed by the fall.

The new bank branch — just west of the existing West Bank building — and a convenience store with seven fuel pump islands have been in the works for several years. A building on the corner was cleared of its businesses several years ago in anticipation of replacing it with what was then going to be a Short Stop convenience store. Short Stop was purchased in October 2010 by Casey’s, which gave its name to the six existing Short Stops in Iowa.

^

Little Known Facts of Sex

Er, that's of famous sex therapist and educator Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

In talking about her past,

Dr. Ruth also talks a little about her Orthodox Jewish parents. During World War II, Westheimer was sent from Frankfurt to a children's home in Switzerland after her father was rounded up by the Nazis; both her parents later died in the Holocaust. She was an only child. The war ended when she was 16. "I then went to Palestine, lived on a kibbutz, which is a collective farm," she explains, "and then worked in the underground movement as a sniper." (Dr. Ruth was a member of the Zionist paramilitary group the Irgun.)

Irgun?

Some underground movement that was.

^

Should Arab Neighborhoods Be Skipped Over?

Should Arab neighborhoods be skipped over as a result of the attack this morning?

The stabbing occurred while the Jerusalem light-rail was stopped at a station on Yekutiel Adam street in the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev at about 10:15 a.m. on Thursday. All north-bound Jerusalem light rail trains have been halted since the attack.

According to Israel Radio, the attacker got onto the train two stations before the Pisgat Zeev station. At the Yekutiel Adam street station the attacker stood by the door, and as it opened he stabbed the woman soldier, who was in army uniform, and then fled.

Dvir Adani, a volunteer with the Hatzolah organization who was at the scene, said he saw the woman lying unconscious on the floor.

The soldier was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and is said to be in serious condition.

Is that an act of apartheid, discrimnation or - self-defense?

^

Israeli Drones Have Missions Reprogrammed

Blatantly stolen and adapted from here:

Drone visiting Gazan families on condolence mission


Arab residents of Gaza who have lost family in recent IDF military activity in response to the liberating activity of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are to be visited by a Eitan-type Heron TP, UAV drone specially programmed to comfort the bereaved.


The drone usually used for surveillance and targeted killings has been switched, as a result of vociferous far-left protests including a hunger strike by Peace Now general-secretary Sieve Upfenheimer (which was found out to be an advanced diet program) to a back-up American-based "Winning Hearts & Minds Operation". With this newly altered system, it is going house-to-house to provide emotional support and tea.


Jabalya resident Ahmed Falaywi said: "The nieghborhood has been on the edge of a blade of nervous tension. When I heard the knock at my door my son had his AK-47 ready to fire. But when my eyes met its multi-spectral targeting system and it mechanically intoned 'I am sorry for your loss of family, friend or member of your religious community,' I felt a sincerity I had never felt from any Jew before.


"We took tea, it put the span of its titanium wing on my shoulder and told me how deeply it empathised with my pain. I am proud to call this Heron my brother."


The drone is programmed to offer sympathy to all civilians who have reported the loss of a family member, or limb, to the IDF, and has more than 3,000 stock phrases of consolation including 'There, there', 'Life goes on,' and 'You will be reunited, inshallah, in paradise'.


Operation Total Civilian Commiseration has been rated a success, with only one minor copmputer foul-up when the drone misidentified some sheep near Rafiah as members of an Al-Kuds unit and took out them and the surrounding farm with an air-to-surface Hellfire missile.


Sheikh Unseen Udrupt downplayed the error: "A simple mistake, and not even up there in our top 10 friendly fire incidents. I have always preached death to the West but this gentle, caring Predator has made me think again."

^

When All Is Said and Done

John Meeks of the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago had been doing research on Nietzsche and productive (kataphatic) discourse and taught religion at De La Salle Institute when he decided to publish an article on Edward ("stone-thrower") Said.

I found these two extracts worthy of attention:

... in Said’s hands the experience of being a Palestinian, of the irrecoverable [really?  well, that is good news] loss of “home” and homeland and of the atrocities [??? exactly which ones?] that have been passed over in silence by “the news” [are you kidding?] never translate into the ressentiment of an exclusive nationalism based on religion or ethnicity.

For the record, ressentiment is

a sense of hostility directed at that which one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, assigning blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority and perhaps jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying... a morality which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.

But that is exactly what the Arabs of the former Mandate for Palestine territory have done and continue to do.  Theirs is a refined "victimhood" phenomenom.

Meeks continues -

Living as a Palestinian exile made it necessary for Said to exist, as he says, “between worlds” without succumbing to an Orwellian “tourism among the dogs.” [dogs??]...in the work of Edward Said lines of interaction are always brought to the forefront [like his PLO membership]. As an exile, Edward Said claimed to have existed between many worlds. For him this was not a source of tragedy but an opportunity for a truly cosmopolitan future. One vision of this future may be culled from the remembrance of Said by Daniel Barenbaim: addressing a room of music students (Arabs, Germans, and Israelis), Said reminded them of Weimar, city of Goethe and Buchenwald and “did so in a way that did not offend the Israelis, did not distribute collective guilt to the Germans and made the Arabs see the necessity of understanding that period in Jewish history.” He brought the very heterogeneous history of Weimar to students in a manner that justified neither guilt nor victimization but in a manner, as in all of his writing, that makes solidarity among divergent peoples possible. This, finally, is Edward Said’s poesis.

Oh how they fool themselves these academics.

P.S.

Excerpted this from an article just sent to me by Richard Landes:

Edward Said’s masterpiece of cognitive warfare forbidding Westerners from othering Muslims.

^

Satire on Arabs Killing Arabs (Is Nothing Sacred?)

Is anti-Arab satire allowed?

Like this:-

UN deadlocked over Arab-killing rights

THE United Nations Security Council remains deadlocked over which countries are allowed to kill Arab civilians.

Russia and China have vetoed a plan which would have stopped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad shelling the city of Homs, setting a dangerous precedent of allowing Arabic leaders to kill their own people and threatening Western domination of the Arab extermination market.

Experts believe the veto signals a challenge to the long-held British and American monopoly of Arab slaughter and that the Chinese now plan to move aggressively into this lucrative field.

A US State Department spokesman said: "Ten years ago it was the French trying to stop our invasion of Iraq, which has since proved to be an unprecedented, decade-long bloodbath of success.

"Now we're supposed to watch Arabs murdered in the streets by guns, mortars, and rockets at the hands of the Syrian Army when they could be humanely executed by remote control. And we're not even sure they're killing the right Arabs."

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We've been killing Arabs since the 11th Century and all of a sudden we're supposed to ask for permission? Are we supposed to ask for permission to go to the toilet as well?"

The US spokesman added: "We have to fight constantly for Israel's right to kill any Arabs that look at them funny, and now this.

"Sometimes I wonder if the UN wants us to kill any Arabs at all."

P.S. I'm working on another which needs to be adapted.

Soon.

^

Arab Apartheid Week

Im Tirzu held a demo yesterday protesting Arab Apartheid. The poster/ad:

^

Be Aware, Listen Up to the Temple Mount

Are you aware of what is happening - and what is not happenng - on the Temple Mount?

Be aware:-

The Chairman of the Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, told the committee that "the Temple Mount is an antiquities site that is not supervised by me like the other antiquities sites are. There are limitations on the supervision. We work in cooperation with the police. We know what goes on there even without being there – I am not pleased with what goes on in the Temple Mount."

MK Aryeh Eldad told Arutz Sheva after the committee session that "there is systematic destruction of antiquities organized by the Waqf and the Islamic Movement in order to build the ideological infrastructure for the claim that our Temples never existed. Our prime ministers over the years have surrendered to the Waqf and were willing to accept their rampage on the Temple Mount."

MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud), who initiated the discussion, said that "there is a dereliction of Israel's sovereignty on the Temple Mount. Day after day, another bite is taken out of our sovereignty...

A member of the Public Committee for Prevention of Destruction on the Temple Mount, Yisrael Kaspi, said bluntly: "We blame the Prime Minister. There is criminal negligence, there a state of anarchy, destruction is being carried out and by now it cannot be undone."

Be aware:-

I should be interviewed at 18:45 to 19:30.

Watch me!

^

Moral Bankruptcy Displayed at +972

+972 goes after the Hartman Institute.

They call the Torah from there:

the worst kind of religious-messianic nationalism.

Why?

They quote from a Ynet op-ed by Rabbi Donniel Hartman of the Hartman Institute which Noam Sheizaf claims "demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of Jewish thinking on Israel".

And why that?


Hartman wrote:

Targeted killings of known terrorist leaders, those with blood on their hands and the self-expressed desire and capacity to spill more blood, are not morally ambiguous, but rather acts of tikkun olam, repairing the world...it is our responsibility as Israelis and moral duty as Jews to see this evil, and even if we cannot destroy it completely, to do everything in our power to limit it and to not allow its terrorist intent to rule our neighborhood.

 
 
I ask you: who is the real morally bankrupt thinker?  The deluded messianist?
 
^

The Arabs Did Kill An Israeli

In this latest round of violence, the stats claim no Israelis were killed.

Wrong.

There's a murder investigation in Ramle as it's claimed that George Sa'ado was shot by Arabs in revenge for the Gaza operation

A translation from the Ynet item:

"George was murdered for nothing, just picking on him", senior officials in the central district of the police said, investigating the shocking murder in Ramle, where Sa'ado was murdered in the night between Sunday after George, a father of five, had dined and then walked his dog. Six boys, aged 15 to 17, residents of Juarish arrested.

Central District Central Unit, commanded by Commander Yigal Ben Shalom, was continuing investigations and collecting evidence oo the suspects. However police said that the investigation is basically closed in terms of the investigation...which revealed that before the murder the boys who used to sit every night and smoke water pipes and talk had met. Sa'ado, who used to walk with his dog in the area, was familiar to them...

Addition:

Saado's family said that before he died, he managed to tell a neighbor that the men who shot him said, "We're doing this because of what you're doing in Gaza."

Local Arabs have often harassed Jews in the city, the family said, but they left Saado alone, both because he spoke Arabic and because of his strength.

^

Illegal Construction

I have tried to explain the situation in Israel where construction actions are taken in line with reality but the approvals and licencing procedures are slow to catch up.

Usually, the construction activity out here in Yesha is in the limelight.

But I found this:

the cemetery, called Menuha Mehubedet (Hebrew for "dignified rest"), is running out of land and has built a 33-meter-long, four-level hillside structure for burial. But the structure was built without a permit, and is now under a demolition order.

Do you really think that it will be demolished or that ex post facto, official recognition will be granted?

Oh, the cemetery is in Kibbutz Givat Brenner.

A secular project, a socialist icon for location.

It's just a matter of how long it'll take to smooth bureaucratic problems.

Take note:

Before the demolition order was issued, the authorities turned a blind eye to the unlicensed burial structure and acted as if its approval was a mere formality, Abir said. The cemetery submitted an application to the courts to stay the demolition, but the order remains in place.

When Menuha Mehubedet built the disputed structure into a hillside, with space for 160 burials, it did not apply for a permit, confirmed Abir. He said the building was built on agricultural land, and the plan to rezone it has not yet been approved.

The plan, which includes a new road to reach the site and the industrial zone next to it, has been stuck in the planning committees for eight years now...Despite these objections and the committee's demand that the law be enforced, no steps were taken against the cemetery and two previously constructed multi-level burial structures...

On Sunday, the district committee discussed the issue again. The minutes have not yet been published, but Ofer says it approved the plan. However, the Interior Ministry says the plan has still not been approved and must be reviewed by legal experts.

Will Peace Now ask for criminal charges to be brought?

^

On Our Israeli Media, Our Dangerous Media

From Evie Gordon:

...Israel journalists don’t like either Barak or his boss, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. They loathe Netanyahu for refusing to make far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians; they loathe Barak for joining Netanyahu’s government and then splitting the Labor Party to remain there; and they loathe both men for their hawkish line on Iran. So anyone who opposes Netanyahu and Barak is guaranteed a sympathetic media ear, especially if he portrays himself as being victimized for his “moderate” political views.

And that’s precisely what the politically savvy Ashkenazi did: He told the media Barak hated him because he opposed a rash attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since this fit neatly into the media’s preconceived narrative, journalists lapped it up and sought no further...

... the media’s bias condemned Israel to years of an incredibly dangerous situation – one in which its two top defense officials were barely on speaking terms – by depriving Barak of the usual democratic remedy: He couldn’t simply fire Ashkenazi and appoint a new chief of staff, because the media would have crucified him...

... What else are we not being informed of due to the media’s ideological bias?

In an unwittingly revealing op-ed last week, Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit wrote that Ashkenazi considered his insubordination legitimate because he was “subordinate to four elected officials that the public considered illegitimate – prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, and defense ministers Amir Peretz and Barak.” I have no idea whether Ashkenazi actually thought this. But Shavit clearly does, and so do many of his colleagues...

...on what grounds does Shavit conclude that the public considers Netanyahu “illegitimate”?

There’s only one possible answer: What Shavit means is that the media considers Netanyahu illegitimate. It dislikes his positions and doesn’t want him as premier. And therefore, all’s fair in the effort to undermine his government – even undermining Israel’s security by idolizing an insubordinate officer consumed with petty politics, and thereby precluding his dismissal.

As long as this remains true, the public has no hope of getting honest information from the media about any government action, any more than it did on the Barak-Ashkenazi feud. That’s a devastating indictment of Israel’s media – and far more dangerous to the country’s long-term health than any spat at the top of the defense establishment.

Now you know why we need Israel's Media Watch?

Defense Instructions: How To Discover If A Photo is Old

Go here.

^

State Dep't Official Thinks Apartheid

According Peter Beinart, anyway:-

...But the administration’s motivation [in opposing West Bank settlements] was not only instrumental; it was moral, too. In March 2009, Hillary Clinton, Mitchell, and a few aides traveled from Jerusalem, where they had met Israeli officials, to Ramallah. As they sped through the West Bank, passing boulders that blocked Palestinian villages from accessing settler-dominated bypass roads, the Americans grew palpably uncomfortable. “There was a kind of silence and people were careful,” remembers one former senior State Department official, “but it was like my God, you crossed that border and it was apartheid.”

Can you trust Beinart?

Can you trust the State Department?

(k/t=AH)

^

Should You Trust the Police and Public Prosecution?

Kalman Liebskind had a life-exprience lesson which he blogged (in Hebrew) and here it is, in extracts:

I know. Arabs who throw rocks at Jews is not a story. If the stone does not split open someone's head the paper will not devote an inch of coverage paper. So it goes...

...A year ago I told you here about my experience, a few hundred meters from my house in Gamzu, the heart of the Green Line, when I returned from a trip with the family on Shushan Purim...[when] Arabs attacked us with stones. One stone hit my wife's car windshield, forty inches from the head of the child, and miraculously it was not shattered. Another stone hit my car. Other stones hit us a few friends. Trained citizen instinctively dialed the police. Meanwhile, members begin to try to identify the culprits...we found them...[and handed them over to the police]...

Three days later I received a phone from one of the investigators...."We need you to come in to complete the inquiry". It was a brilliant investigative exercise...Half an hour later, I sat opposite him and I found myself at the main suspect in this case. It turns out that one of the Arabs who came with us to the station that night, claimed the Jews filed a complaint that someone threatened him with weapons. When I heard that Arabs told about someone with a pink shirt, I relaxed. I was with a brown sweatshirt. But that didn't bother the police. "We checked and of all who was here, only you have a gun license which means you threatened". Bingo. We got cracking. Great investigative logic...

Was I laughing? Absolutely not. Threats with weapons? Me? Had someone fell on the head here? Very quickly, a member of the police bothered to tell me it was the system. When you submit a complaint against these guys, they automatically serve a counter-complaint, and we have a draw. Head to head. Not attacker and victim but a suspect against a suspect.

A severe-looking policewoman photographed me from all angles and took my fingerprints...The guy who tried to kill my kids laughing at me all the way to the mosque.

A month after that incident I realized that what begins stupid baseless complaint against you, can easily deteriorate into quite unpleasant areas. That was when I received notice that the District Attorney's Office have 30 days to apply to the prosecution and convince her, "Why not she should not be filing charges against you."..."You make a motion to review investigative materials and we will consider." Submitted.

Since then, I've had this terrible swift sword above my head...This week the Ministry of Justice explained that since the evidence in my case and that of the young terrorist "are intertwined and can not be separated ... more investigation needs be done and the work will be completed soon." Bullshit. Do not believe them...

I know I'm not the only suspect in Israel whose file is lying somewhere at the prosecutor's office but still, it is a scandal. A double scandal. Once because this should not be a country dangling people in the air due to a case containing perhaps four pages and the decision should take maybe five minutes. And the second time because of what the state is conveying to the stone throwers. No pressure. Nothing is urgent...no "special urgency".

I made one big mistake in this story. I dialed 100. Friends who were around me laughed at me. What are you calling the police, they told me. Let's get the whole moshav and bash them about. I resisted. I was wrong. The law enforcement authority passed on to me this story which I also suggest you learn: There are things you can handle them alone. No police and no prosecution, no Court and no B'Tselem.

What do I tell my children when I have to hire a lawyer to defend myself to not be convicted of threatening with a weapon? Yes, the children who were with me in the car and saw the young Arab throwing at us from point-blank range. What do I tell my child about what she learns in civics? That this is a nation of laws? ...We are in the jungle, my children. And in a jungle the fittest survive...Arabs throw stones at you? Go get them. One thing what not to do. Don't dare involve the police and the prosecution.  Never. They are not on the side of law and not on the side of justice.

^

The Vagaries of Life Or, Poor Duncan Stewart

In 1947, the members of the Executive Council in the Mandate of Palestine, under the presidency of His Excellency The High Commissioner, included Duncan George Stewart, who served as Financial Secretary - as per the Palestine Government Staff List as of the 1st of April, 1947, (Jerusalem: Palestine Government Printer, 1947). p. 5.

In 1949, he was assassinated in a British colony in East Asia named Sarawak.

Oh, and by the way, the names of the Districts were:

Jerusalem
Samaria
Galilee & Acre
Lydda
Haifa
Gaza

Samaria?

Isn't that a Jewish geographical name?

^

My Massacre Poster

Source

Going to the Seminar in NYC?

Israel in the Write Light – Program

9:00 AM Registration & Breakfast

9:30 AM Opening Remarks
Presenter: Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week

9:45 AM What do Israel and Zionism Mean Today?
Presenter: Julian Resnick
Brief history of Israel and Zionism
o Why is Zionism still relevant today? How to we clarify our own personal
perspectives of Zionism and articulate it productively

10:15 AM Digital Age Journalism: Is it really different than traditional journalism?
Presenter: TBD

o As A.J Leibling once said: “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.”
Internet enables everyone who owns a computer to have his or her own printing press.
Information becomes public so quickly in the digital age. How do we take this into account
when reporting on events or topics?

11:30 AM Breakout Sessions (Choose One)

1 – Writer? Blogger? Tweeter? How to Crystallize Your Point of View
Presenters: Rob Lattin/Kortney Shapiro

o Learn tips from your peers on how to create your own news agenda instead of having it
created for you by traditional media. Whether you want to be a professional journalist,
or simply strong Israel advocate, this session will help you determine what you are
passionate about and how to convey your message.

2 – Bringing (Virtual) Life to Your Message
Presenter: Ashley Scorpio

o Learn best practices and messaging techniques to convey how to develop and market
your message, create an emotional connection with your target audience, drive world of
mouth and generate maximum reach for your message.

12:30 PM Lunch

Revamping Israel’s Persona in the Media:
Presenter: David Olesker

o How do we credibly tell Israel’s story through the modern lens of journalism?

1:30 PM Internal vs. External Advocacy
Presenter: Gil Lainer, Consul for Public Diplomacy at the Consulate General of Israel in New York
o Understanding the differences and challenges of “The Israel Conversation” to Jewish communities and media vs. the rest of the world.

2:45 PM Breakout Sessions (choose one)

How to Make the Most of Limited Knowledge
Presenter: David Olesker
o Think you lack the background and knowledge base to adequately defend your opinion? Don’t worry! Learn tips on how to get your message across.

It’s Not What You Say, But What People Hear
Presenter: TBD
o Being an effective communicator: Together we will explore the art of messaging and strategic communications.

3:45 PM Closing Sessions

o What have we learned? The importance of using information effectively
o Media Resources and Contacts
o Ways to get involved
o Intro to DTWT at GA

^

"All I Did Was Mention Israel To Him"

.

^

Testimony on Obama and Israel

...Obama took office with a distinctly progressive vision of Jewish identity and the Jewish state, one shaped by the Chicago Jewish community that helped launch his political career. Three years later—after a bitter struggle with the Israeli government and the American Jewish establishment--that vision is all but gone.

Obama entered the White House after an adulthood spent—more than any predecessor—in the company of Jews. Most of his key legal mentors were Jews (Abner Mikva, for example); many of his biggest donors were Jews; his chief political consultant, David Axelrod, was a Jew; he lived across the street from a synagogue. And for the most part, the Jews Obama knew best were progressives, shaped by the civil-rights movement and alienated from mainstream American Jewish organizations over Israel.

Obama’s initial statements about Israel often mirrored the liberal Zionism of his Jewish friends. Like them, he embraced the progressive aspects of Israeli society and Jewish tradition while critiquing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. During his 2004 Senate run, Obama criticized the barrier built to separate Israel and its major settlements from the rest of the West Bank. In an interview with the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, he praised David Grossman’s book Yellow Wind, a searing portrait of Palestinian life under Israeli occupation. Before a Cleveland crowd in 2008, he challenged the view that “unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel, you’re anti-Israel.” In the words of Rabbi Arnold Wolf [of Breirah], an earlier supporter who ran the synagogue across the street from Obama’s house, Obama “was on the line of [the dovish Israeli group] Peace Now.”

...Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had a record of opposing settlement growth too. In 2003, he had been one of only four Jewish members of Congress to sign a letter endorsing the Road Map. Privately, he told associates that the Bush administration had coddled Israel, and that it was time for Israel’s American friends to speak more frankly to the leaders of the Jewish state...

From Peter Beinart's forthcoming book, The Crisis of Zionism, excerpted in Newsweek.

You'd trust your Zionism and Israel's security to that approach?

^

^

Chris Gunness - Terrorist Stooge

The spokesman for UNRWA is a terrorist stooge.

His latest Tweet:

Chris Gunness ‏ @ChrisGunness

Superpower-backed nuclear state attacks majority-children refugee community blockaded behind a fence with nowhere to run. Sick sick sick.

To which I replied:

ymedad ‏ @ymedad

@ChrisGunness children are not rocketing Israe; terrorists r. & Israel has children too, a primary school was shelled yesterday. grow up.

^

Is Meir Dagan Rational?

Have you read this from his 60 Minutes interview?

Dagan: The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.

Stahl: Do you think Ahmadinejad is rational?

Dagan: The answer is yes. Not exactly our rationale, but I think that he is rational.

Stahl: Do you think they're rational enough that they are capable of backing down from this?

Dagan: No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.

Stahl: Other people think they're not going to really stop until they have this capability.

Dagan: They will have to pay dearly and all the consequences for it. And I think the Iranians, in this point in time, are going very careful in the project. They are not running in it.

Stahl: If they're that rational as you suggest and that logical, then why can't you, Israel, and the world live with a nuclear Iran?

Dagan: In the Israeli case, they have said they want to destroy Israel.

Ah, destroying Israel is "rational", in an Iranian rationale?

^

American Jews Divided into Rwo by One Goldberg

Jeffrey Goldberg divides the sea of American Jewry:

...here are all the usual Goldblog caveats: AIPAC is too unthinkingly rightist to me, J Street is too naively leftist, etc. etc., but both groups represent legitimate streams of Jewish pro-Israel thought in America, and both are worthy of the President's attention.

So, rightwingers don't think but they are not naive but leftwingers think but are naive?

If so, do you like someone who can think, or pretend he's a thinker, but can't do anything really with his thought because in the real world, he's a loser?

Is that what you want for your Jewish leadership?

(k/t=BT)

^

Fight Against Real Genocide

Not Arab anti-Israel propaganda.

^

Jews Are Jews and Christians Are Christians

I snapped this photo of the yard of the Baptist Congregation on Narkiss Street last Friday:

You'll notice that the boy is wearing tzitzit (fringes) and one man a kippah:

Let's keep Christians Christians and Jews Jews and not mix-up religions.

^

J Street Whitewashes

ChallahHuAkbar has the story of how J Street referred to the Gaza terrorists as just "civilians", not even "activists".

They later realized how stupiud they were and altered their text to "militants".

Their anti-Israel posture blinds them.

^

Even A Senator Can Err

Well, a former Senator.

James Abourezk, former U.S. Senator from South Dakota and author of a memoir, Advise & Dissent: Memoirs of South Dakota and the U.S. Senate, has writtne of meeting Menachem Begin and in touching on Deir Yassin, writes

...In April of 1948, Mr. Begin and his terrorist thugs joined with another vicious terrorist group called the Stern Gang, massacring some 107 villagers in Deir Yasin...Several of the villagers were taken prisoner and were most likely killed, but only after they were paraded through the streets of Jerusalem in an action designed to create enough fear among the Palestinians to cause them to leave Palestine.

Two quick comments:

a) notice how the number, 107, is much different from what Arab propagandists used to push and some still do. But at least the figure is dropping.

b) there was no real "parade" and most certainly those driven in open lorries, all the Irgun possessed at the time, were not returned to the village and killed. In fact, there is a film about one of them who was in a group of children driven to the Damascus Gate and there left.

^

A Comment on MJ Rosenberg

I left this comment at JJ Goldberg's defense of MJ Rosenberg:-

Since JJ & I are also friends, and from that era of the mid- to late-60s, can I ask: when does "scorchingly critical" phase into intemperate, irrational, nonsensical and then nasty, bitter and hateful semantics? Can one separate semantics from one's frame of mind, from one's ideology? Does language reflect or is it a tool, thoughtfully and tactically (and usually tactlessly) employed even with malice aforethought? What is MJ really thinking when he writes what he writes and how he writes it? Forget (no, don't, but still, for argument's sake) his "Israel firster". For the last few years, "strain" or not, he has left the rails (as we say he Hebrew - yarad min hapasim). Do we forgive him? Because he's Jewish and one of us? because he's a friend? because he's of the Left? Or do we say that it is his Leftism thsat demands we treat him differently? His playing on the field of anti-zionism and anti-semitism is unworthy - of his past, of our future.

^

An Opinion of a "Settler"

From Harriet Sherwood's review of Israeli opinion:

Israelis: Portrait of a people in tense times

Talk of an existential threat to Israel from the Iranian nuclear programme echoed around Washington last week. Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, described the world's failure to prevent the Holocaust and Barack Obama spoke of the country's sovereign right to defend its people. But what is the nature of the state that has become central to global diplomacy? Harriet Sherwood listens to Israelis across this diverse nation

Someone I know:

THE SETTLER

NAME: Natalie Hershkowitz
AGE: 49
OCCUPATION: settlement secretary
LIVES: Barkan
FAMILY: married, six children
RELIGIOUS IDENTITY: 'connected to God' but not traditionally observant

Natalie Hershkowitz moved from Tel Aviv to Barkan 15 years ago because she needed a big house to raise her family in and wanted to live in a "good community". "The fact that it was across the Green Line [in the West Bank] was a benefit. We come from the right side of the political map, so it was our duty to come here. It was the right thing to do according to our beliefs," she says.

But the distance – 25 minutes in the car – from Tel Aviv, and the "quality of the air", helped the decision to move from the city in which she was born and raised. The price of land and property in West Bank settlements was cheap then, she says; now Barkan – which was founded in 1981 – "is very exclusive".

She describes it as a "village" not a settlement – "although we are not ashamed of the word settlement. But the connotation today of 'settler' is someone who came to conquer a foreign land. This is our land. We are not colonialists. God gave us this land."

Natalie and her husband, Itzhak, say they have a strong connection to and belief in God, but are not conventionally observant Jews. "We go to the synagogue regularly but not every week. We celebrate holy days. We don't keep a kosher kitchen, but we don't eat ham or oysters."

Barkan is a mainly secular settlement. "It's very important to say that," says Natalie, "because people think once you cross the Green Line everyone is a religious fanatic. People don't know that a third of the [Jewish] population across the Green Line is secular."

The essence of being Israeli, she says, is "to be here on the biblical land of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank]". The Palestinians who were born on the land should have the right to live there, "but to live in peace with us. They can't make us disappear, we can't make them disappear." She points out that 3,000 Palestinians – or "local Arabs" – work in the settlement's industrial zone. "We are working together, living together. It's impossible to divide us."

She believes a separate Palestinian state is not possible "even if the whole world recognises one. You can never draw a border because it's all too mixed up now. This land has to be one Israeli Jewish state, but with an Arab minority with human rights. This is meant to be ours, we were here before. I don't want to drive them away, but I want to live with them in peace."

She includes Iran among the most important issues facing Israel, but says "it's not only our problem, it's a problem of the whole western world".

The settlement movement is getting stronger," she says. "This situation will be for ever. No politician will ever be able to make a peace [with the Palestinians] without leaving us here."

^

It's 45-15; Who Loses?

Which of these two headlined stories, one appearing right above the other, will get the bigger media play?

The Israeli one or the Yemen one?

How many Gazan terrorists were killed?  15.

And how many Yeminites?

Yemen air strikes kill 45 militants linked to al-Qaida

Bombing raids on Bayda and Jaar include targeting of militant base south of capital

Well, what's your guess?

^

Arabs Are Not Irrational (Really?)

Here's the new "if it wasn't so tragic it's be funny" news item from our "peace partners", or whatever:-

Head of Quds Supreme Court Warns about Zionists' Plots to Destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque

Head of Quds Supreme Court Yusuf Ade'is warned about the Zionist regime's plots to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque through artificial earthquakes.

"Artificial earthquakes"?

Yes:-

"This action (creating artificial earthquake) is not difficult for the Zionist regime since the drilling operations around the (al-Aqsa) Mosque has worn off the foundations of the Mosque's building," Ade'is told FNA on Saturday.

He further cautioned that officials and rabbis of Zionist settlements have recently attended a series of overt and covert meetings coordinated with Israeli defense ministry to work out plans to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Peace?

They need psychiatrists.

^

Academic Freedom of Expression - Not

I received this message to a post I had sent on the academic mail-list at Hebrew University:

Your request to the SocSci-IL mailing list

Posting of your message titled "Re: [Social Science- IL]: The OTHER Eviction of Women from Busses - the one the Feminists Ignore" has been rejected by the list moderator. The moderator gave the following reason for rejecting your request:

"Your message was deemed inappropriate by the moderator."

Any questions or comments should be directed to the list administrator at: socsci-il-owner@listserver.cc.huji.ac.il

What was my post?

Here:

Yisrael Medad
Mar 6
to socsci-il
just as a matter of correct English. there's a spelling error. the plural of bus is buses.
"busses" is actually an exuberant kiss

Kissing and bussing differ both in this,
We busse our wantons, but our wives we kisse.
[Robert Herrick, "Hesperides," 1648]
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=robert+herrick

I was replying to this:

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 11:41 AM, steven plaut wrote:

Israelis have been terribly upset when one or two bus lines were set up in Ultra-Orthodox chareidi neighborhoods in which the menfolk and womenfolk sat separately. The irony here is that there really is a form of malicious bus-related gender discrimination in Israel, although one about which Israel's feminists have never had anything to say.  Israel may be the only Western country in which there are no (or virtually no) women bus drivers. The reason for this is that, ever since it was created, the Egged monopoly has refused to allow women to be bus drivers. In my 32 years in the country I have seen one or two women bus drivers, and I think they were not even on Egged busses but Dan busses (the Tel Aviv separate bus monopoly). Egged denies it bars women from being drivers but Egged is lying.

In all other countries, women drive busses. And since Egged drivers are grossly overpaid, driving a bus would be a great form of livelihood for women who do not have college educations or technical training, and would even allow divorced and single mothers to raise families. There are also almost no women taxi drivers in Israel...In other words, the feminists are concerned with the advances of the pampered Queen Bees, but working class women have no interest for them.  Israeli women are harmed by the Egged discrimination far more than they were from being asked to sit separately from men on the Chareidi bus line.

Academic freedom.

Freedom of expression.

???

All I was doing was pointing out a spelling error.  One, by the way, which was, to my mind, a bit funny in its context.

Was I boycotted?

^

Beinart's Blog

I left this comment at the site of a blogger at the new Peter Beinart blog:-

I think this – “The term has become so politicized and associated with the right that this is a moment where the question of what Zionism is and the variety of different Zionisms that can exist really needs to be discussed.” – is remarkable. To my understanding, he asserts that the “right” has absconded with the term but unfairly. Of course, it could be that the “left”, and especially the progressive camo of such is trying to abscond with the term very unfairly so much so that classic Zionist activity, instead of becoming simply a matter for dispute as to when and where, is villified as outside of Zionism. An example: my residency in Shiloh. Instead of a debate, we get delegitimization. Where will the new blog place itself? Having been reading most of the bloggers, what can I say but oiy-vey.

BTW, here's what the anti-Israel, antizionist Mondoweiss has:

Notice below that all of the columnists are Jews and Palestinians-- oh and one Iranian-American, the great Trita Parsi. And many of the Jews are Israeli. When you are in Palestine, people wink and say "Our cousins." So this is a site for the cousins. Where are the American realists? Where's Paul Pillar, Pat Lang or Scott McConnell. Do American non-direct-stakeholders get a vote?

And remember, I'm the guy who earned a "touche" from Beinart.