How Bad Was Ms. Hotovely?

Melanie Phillips did not take kindly to Deputy Minister Tzipi Hotovely listening to her being interviewed on the BBC (starts at 1:31:00):

The interview with Tzipi Hotovely was a car crash. In the face of Robinson’s unleashed aggression Hotovely simply didn’t have a clue. The encounter illustrated yet again that the Israelis have zero understanding of the big lie behind everything British Israel-bashers hurl at Israel – that its behaviour is fundamentally unconscionable because the Jews displaced the indigenous inhabitants and rightful inheritors of the land.

As a result, Hotovely missed the point every time and thus failed to counter Robinson’s allegations with core facts that the listening and uninformed British public badly needed to hear. When Robinson falsely claimed again that the Balfour declaration’s undertaking to protect Arab rights was “unfinished business”, Hotovely replied that Israel’s Arabs did have rights. She was talking, however, about civil and religious rights, totally failing to grasp that Robinson was talking about political rights – which were never in the declaration.

Then Robinson started accusing Israel of denying those Balfour rights to the Arabs living under Israeli “occupation”. Hotovely should have replied that these Arabs were not Israel citizens and therefore not entitled to the rights afforded to Israel’s citizens, including Israeli Arabs. Instead she resorted to the knee-jerk and irrelevant political point about the Jews’ own claim to Judea and Samaria. Even when Robinson further compounded his own error by stating falsely that the Balfour declaration had said “nothing should be done which prejudices the rights of the Palestinian people”, she failed to say it had said nothing of the sort because there was no identifiable “Palestinian” Arab people at that time. Instead she spluttered, correctly but irerelevantly (sic), about the Palestinians’ refusal to coexist with Israel.

She was, in short, beyond hopeless, reflecting the profound and enduring failure of Israeli diplomacy even to understand the world in which it has to manoeuvre.

I listened to the segment.

Hotovely does mention international recognition. And she properly links that as an act which was connected to thousands of years of Jewish history, which appears in the Balfour Declaration and incorporated in the League of Nations decision to award to Great Britain the Mandate over Palestine.

She makes a general, non-religious, statement that it is natural to have a homeland.

She emphasizes that the Arabs-called-Palestinians themselves refused the opportunities for their own self-determination achievement although the intricacy in this is indeed dangerous for it is murky. 

And she stresses that there is no Arab recognition of any Jewish national identity.

All these do not justify much of what Melanie writes.

True, there is a method to dealing with what the host was doing including shutting her off, moving on to another subject while dropping an aside on the previous subject which she was not properly allowed to respond to although I think at twice she stopped him in his tracks and replied.

Yes, she did fail to adequately clarify what I have been writing for years that the quite intentional and consistent over the years non-mention of "Arabs" as a specific "community" in all the documents and rather preferring multiple communities existing at the time without specific "political" rights all indicate that primary and sole political, national sovereignty was to be awarded to the Jewish people.

Yes, she did address the issue of second-class citizens but did not make the distinction properly that the Arab population of Judea and Samaria has its own government agency, the Palestinian Authority.  That there are no elections or civil liberties or other rights is their fault, not Israel's.

One last point on the issue of law:  the international legal authorization and approval of a Jewish national home in Palestine was predicated on, we must recognize, the religious and cultural history of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel as acknowledged by the leaders of the powers at the time.  In other words, it is a circle and inter-connnected.   Melanie and Tzipi go together.

Room for improvement, surely.  Hopeless, though?  Not so much.

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What Roth Wrought (UPDATED -Twice)

To follow up on the Hotovely-Princeton Hillel mishap:

I tried to zero in on how the decision to cancel the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel's talk seemed so, well, klutzy.

Now we read that Daniel Kurtzer had been in communication with Rabbi Julie Roth

The decision to postpone/cancel the visit was wrong, plain and simple. Rabbi Julie Roth, the Center for Jewish Life’s director, regretted that decision almost immediately, as she told me the morning after the fact.

So, some 10 hours or so prior to her talk sponsored ultimately by Chabad taking place, there was a window in which Roth could have reversed herself and still had Ms. Hotovely as a Hillel guest.  Although Kurtzer notes that

By that time, however, the Israeli Consulate had already reached out to the university Chabad

That really means nothing.  If Roth had called up both Hotovely and the Chabad Rabbi and said, "a mistake was made and I'm setting it aright and the Depury Minister will indeed speak under Hillel auspices", I am fairly sure Chabad would have stood down and Ms.Hotovely would have been mollified and accepted the renewed invitation.

But Roth did not do that.

Why?

Was she afraid of those progressives?

Did she freeze?

Did she lose Ms. Hotovely's phone number? 

Did she want to make a statement of her own political ideological outlook, which seems to be pro-New Israel Fund?  Did her more (?) radical husband interfere?

Let's not lose sight of the original opening salvo against Hotovely which was not that Roth had not followed a vetting standard procedure.  It was that the Alliance of Jewish Progressives asserted

“We firmly reject the CJL’s choice to host a racist speaker like Hotovely..."

Right at the start Roth should have shut them down and put them in their place. Racist?  Really now Roth.

I repeat from my earlier blog post: she couldn't call up on Sunday evening the committee members for a vote of confirmation?

Hillel, it was reported, was to have received some $7 million dollars from the Israel government through the Mosaic program.  Is she really so obtuse to act in such a manner to a major funder?

What has Roth wrought?

________________________

Ari Fuld interviews Eric Fingerhut who tried to explaining his own official explanation, and wanted to concentrate on the apology part.

"She [Roth] made the wrong decision"

"She should have acted differently".

__________________________________

UPDATE

I now see (in Hebrew) that Kalman Liebskind asked Hillel if they'll open a channel of communication with Tzipi and meet with her.

They replied, maybe but not now.  And he asked, why not now? And they had no response.

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Hillel At Princeton: On the Roof?

Most of us have heard, or should have, of the adventures of Hillel the Elder on a roof on a snowy night.  As recorded in Yoma 35b

Hillel the Elder every day he used to work and earn one tropaic, half of which he would give to the watchman at the house of study; the other half he used on food for himself and the members of his household. One day he was unable to earn anything, so the watchman at the house of study did not let him in. He then climbed [to the roof] and hung on, sitting over the opening of the skylight, so that he could hear the words of the living God from the mouths of Shemaiah and Avtalion. It is said that the was a Sabbath eve in the winter solstice, and snow came down on him from heaven. When the dawn rose, Shemaiah said to Avtalion, "Brother Avtalion, every day this house is bright with light, but today it is dark. Is the day cloudy?" When they looked up, they saw the figure of a man in the skylight. They climbed to the roof and found Hillel, covered with three cubits of snow. They removed the snow from him, bathed and anointed him, and, as they seated him in front of an open fire, they said, "This man deserves to have the Sabbath profaned on his behalf."...

Hillel of Princeton seems to be stuck up on a roof (cross-posted at TOI).

The bare facts about the Hotovely-Princeton Hillel Affair are known.

Protests from a dovish Jewish campus group, the Alliance of Jewish Progressives (AJP) caused the Hillel of Princeton University to cancel a scheduled talk by Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely that was to take place this past Monday evening at the last moment. Chabad picked up the talk.  By the way, they did this maneuver in a parallel fashion recently.  And while she stiff-armed J Street's hosting of an exhibition of Breaking the Silence, she blmaed her refusal on "timing":

The CJL did not oppose J Street bringing the organization to speak on campus, wrote Rabbi Roth in an email to the Prince.
“However, given the sensitivities related to the timing of the event overlapping with Yom HaZakiron, the day commemorating Israeli soldiers killed in battle and in terrorist attacks, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, the celebration of Israel’s Independence Day, we did not want to host the program in the building,” she wrote.

The protest went public in a letter published in the campus daily. Afterwards, AJP claimed they were only upset that proper procedures for inviting guests to events of the Center for Jewish Living were not followed through on,but were quite forthright that

We firmly reject the CJL’s choice to host a racist speaker like Hotovely while it continues to quiet progressive voices.

I see now that Rachel Frommer has a great quote:

Mikaela Gerwin, co-president of AJP who attended Hotovely's talk, maintained that the deputy foreign minister has said "hateful things" about Palestinians and non-Orthodox Jewish religious sects, but that her group may have misstepped in claiming racism.
"That’s a complicated word," she said.
Gerwin added that nothing Hotovely said at Princeton struck her as racist, but that it was a generally uninteresting speech that lacked nuance.

And Frommer adds:

the AJP is being disingenuous in now framing its complaint as being with Hillel's event policies, the student said.

"AJP didn’t once mention the IAC until after the event took place. The name of the protest was ‘stop hate,'" said the student. "This wasn't about having a debate about ideas, and it wasn't about process. This was about stopping Hotovely coming at all."

While Deputy Minister Michael Oren demanded a boycott, I tweeted him

No, more should come until the Hillel staff there is removed

At the campus newspaper article I commented that its content is what someone has called an "Reality inversion alert" -

You write:
“Hotovely’s alarming vision for the future of the region is coupled with a complete rejection of Palestinian history and connection to key sites such as the Haram al-Sharif [Temple Mount]."But it is the Muslims, from the Mufti to Arafat to Abbas who reject any Jewish claim to or identity with Mount Moriah, the First and Second Temples, the attempt to build a Third Temple in 363 CE or anything Jewish about Jerusalem. Have the signees ever studied anything about Jewish history...Do they possess knowledge or slogans? Outlook or out-of-touch? This is all so embarrassing for we Jews who, of whatever political stripe, at least actually know something of what we speak and write.

I added that

throwing around a charge of "racism" really gets one no where when, on the record, the most racist element in the conflict are Arabs who wish to deny a ethnic national community any political, civil and human rights the international community recognized and guaranteed consistently since 1917

A late-burner was the AJP post-event claim that they were misunderstood:

MK Hotovely clearly misunderstands the intricacies of the Princeton Jewish community and the aims of our protest. Our Hillel’s response to the concerns of progressive Jewish students does not constitute a “liberal dictatorship.” Rather, the events of the past two days show the CJL’s commitment to more equitable standards of inclusivity and diversity.

But they weren't. They clearly sought to shut her down,

“We firmly reject the CJL’s choice to host a racist speaker like Hotovely..."

and succeeded, while claiming all they wanted was for the rules for inviting speakers, the "Israel policy", by applied equally. P.S. Their activity at Chabad was titled:

Stand Against Chabad-Sponsored Hatred

and characterized as one that "deserves intense pushback".

Be that as it may, what raised eyebrows even more was AJP's claim that a Jewish Agency shaliah was somehow involved. They published

On the evening of Nov. 5, in an email to students and members of the community who planned to attend an address by Tzipi Hotovely, a member of Israel’s Knesset, Rabbi Julie Roth, the executive director of the Center for Jewish Life, and the CJL Israel Fellow, Lior Sharir, announced they would be postponing Hotovely’s visit to the CJL pending further review by the Israel Advisory Committee.

Yigal Palmor left a comment at my Facebook post, writing:

We've checked and I can confirm that any suggestion that the Shaliach was behind the cancellation is *untrue*. Hillel have published an apology and it clearly shows this had nothing to do with the shaliach...the Shaliach had nothing to do with the cancellation.

I should trust him as he is, after all, Director of Public Affairs and Communications at The Jewish Agency for Israel. I did ask him if he would call out AJP as liars. I am still waiting.

What is even more intriguing than an Israeli-funded shaliah quashing a government minister's right to free speech is the role of Rabbi Roth. Could she not have simply picked up a phone and within 5-10 minutes received a confirmation that Ms. Hotovely's right to appear at Hillel is approved? Did she really think Hotovely is a racist and her arrival should be stymied by rules?

UPDATE: from Daniel Kurtzer -

The decision to postpone/cancel the visit was wrong, plain and simple. Rabbi Julie Roth, the Center for Jewish Life’s director, regretted that decision almost immediately, as she told me on Monday morning after the fact.

Rabbi Roth is active in the New Israel Fund. She's #163 on this petition and #1868 on this one. She has full free speech. Even progressive free speech. And she has unique insight into other radical groups as her husband is Rabbi Justus Baird who has written:

The Torah was received in the diaspora. Most of Jewish history was lived out in the diaspora. Diaspora Judaism deserves a foundational, equal place in the self-identity of the Jewish people, right alongside the Jewish state.

That is, I should stress, a legitimate opinion. It is also radical and skewed, but that's my opinion. The Diaspora, I think, does not deserve, in Judaism, equality to Israel.

He's with Rabbis Without Borders. They, at least, hold to the principle that a Rabbi should "strive[s] to be aware of the partial truth in a view with which we deeply disagree". He is on the Rabbis & Cantors Board of J Street. He identifies with T'ruah and he and his wife have donated a sum of between $1,00-$2,499 to the group.

T'ruah promotes positions - and I don't know if one would term them mainstream, radical, progressive or extreme - that include that they

advocate for an end to the military occupation of the West Bank and an end to the continued expansion of the settlements that extend this occupation, that infringe on the human rights of Palestinians, and that compromise the safety and security of Israelis...We urge all members of the North American Jewish community to engage in debate and disagreement for the sake of greater truth, justice, and peace.

That sounds to me a little like...Tzipi Hotovely and her predicament which someone termed an example of moral panic by left-wingers.

And at T'ruah they

are concerned about efforts to shut out a growing segment of our community based on their support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Despite our disagreements with this movement, we believe that the Jewish community is strengthened by vigorous debate on issues that are vital to the well-being of Israel and the worldwide Jewish community.

That sounds very much like support for AJP.

He was a supporter of Linda Sarsour as published at TOI:

“Anyone who has worked closely with Linda knows that she has a deep love for and appreciation for Judaism and Jews,” he said. “Linda and I don’t agree on everything about Israel, Palestine or about other issues, and that is OK with me. I fully support CUNY giving a pubic platform to Linda Sarsour, and I think its graduates have a lot to learn from her voice.”

Hillel has apologized. But I still cannot figure out Rabbi Roth's role in all this. Was she too busy? 

Why didn't she convene the committee to obtain approval prior to the protest? Why couldn't she do that in a quick round of phone calls after the AJP protest? She is signed on the 'apology' that notes Hotovely's appearance cancellation was done

because it had not been reviewed by the Center for Jewish Life’s Israel Advisory Committee, which is designed to review and facilitate a broad range of Israel programming throughout the year...This was not a good enough reason to postpone the event... we should have engaged a broader range of students in this program from the beginning...

I am sorry but that sounds very weak and less plausible each time I read it. Was there any doubt in Roth's mind that Hotovely should be a welcome guest? Or does she think providing her a platform, perhaps, should be debated? Did she really think she was a racist and that AJP had the power over her to stop the event? Does she agree with her husband that the Diaspora is at a level of offsetting Israel?

Why hasn't AJP been called out on suggesting Sharir was not involved? Did they lie or what? Why haven't we heard of an investigation or a review of what occurred? Will Rabbi Roth be censured or found innocent of any possible wrongdoing?

Until Next Year in Jerusalem?

(with thanks to AB)

_____________

Now this about Rabbi Roth and Nonie Darwish and this quote

Grinberg told the Tory that he felt “a lot of pressure from Rabbi Roth to cancel.”

She has a record. 


P.S.  And yes, there are others who argue in favor of shutting down Hotovely.

___________

I am mentioned by Caroline Glick and in the Hebrew version, too.
^

Dream vs. Dream at the Temple Mount

.

^

MK Tzipi Hotovely Went on An Ascent

She went on an ascent to the Temple Mount, a day before her wedding.

MK Deputy Minister for Transportion Tzipi Hotovely:

Was she a-stormin'?

She said (Hebrew):

The visit was coordinated in advance with the police commander, after it was made clear to Hotovely that the purpose of the visit is personal only.

"Ascending to the Temple Mount is important to me on a personal level because of my wedding to be held tomorrow*. Establishing a family cell is not just a private event, but also wearing a national public dimension of building a ruin ruins of Jerusalem."

Hotoveli added, "This is the most sacred place for the Jewish people, and all Jews should be free to access it. Therefore restrictions imposed on public officials who want to climb the mountain - are improper."

_____________

* The custom is that a bride immerses herself in a mikveh prior to a wedding and since it is not fitting that an unmarried woman goes to a mikveh, the only chance such a woman can enter the Temple Mount if she is observant is close to her wedding day, after visiting the mikveh.


(k/t=LH)

__________________

UPDATE

Ramadan is approaching and so the shade coverings go up:

SECOND UPDATE

INN report.




 

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Psssst! Wanna See a Picture of Glenn Beck?

In Gush Etzion:

(l-r: Glenn Beck, Dany Dayan, MK Tzipi Hotovely, Shaul Goldstein)


(photo credit: Yigal Dilmony)

^

On Democracy and Demonology

MK Arieh Eldad attended a discussion in the Knesset today - which was not an actual parliamentary activity but an outside conference convened to exchange ideas and thoughts on the theme "Alternatives to the Concept of "Two States" and sponsored by MK Tzipi Hotovely. I also attended although due to overcrowding I entered the room late.



These types of meetings have nothing to do with Israel or the Knesset in any official fashion.

Around 200 people attended the conference on Tuesday, including Knesset members and representatives of the Yesha council of West Bank settlements.

Organizer MK Hotovely stressed that the forum did not represent "an assembly of Likud rebels," but that it aimed to open channels of thinking on ways of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict aside from the two-state plan.

Hotovely said the conference was intended to "strengthen the hand of the prime minister, returning from Washington after standing firm againstU.S. President Barack Obama."

Jordan doesn't quite understand that this is an expression of democratic exchange of ideas on the one hand and not an official representation of Israel's government. They would prefer some sort of "Elders of Zion" demonology.

And what happened that bothered Jordan?

As Haaretz reports:

Eldad told lawmakers during a Knesset plenum last week that Palestinians must be given Jordanian citizenship, claiming that Jordan is essentially the Palestinian state.

Jordan lodged a strongly-worded protest with Israel on Tuesday over the proposal. Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh summoned the Israeli ambassador in Amman, Yaakov Rosen, and handed him a protest that "categorically rejects the ongoing discussion at the Israeli Knesset on a proposal by one of its members entitled 'two states for two peoples on the two banks of River Jordan'," a statement carried by the official Petra news agency said.

Actually, Jordan should have been more upset over the words of someone else who spoke there:

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya'alon, who participated in the conference on Tuesday, said past peace plans urging Israel to give up captured land to the Palestinians have failed.

"The Western way of thinking has proven irrelevant and dangerous to this region," the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff said, adding that Israel should stop looking for an immediate solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

"We have to disavow the commonly held perception that we should find an imminent solution," he added. "The Disengagement from Gaza in 2005 was the Palestinians' golden opportunity to show the world that the end of the occupation would lead to political and economic stability."

"Hamas' violent takeover of Gaza and the ongoing missile fire at Israel proves that the problem was not the occupation. For them, the entire land, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, is occupied."

"[Late Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat came very close to achieving independence, but he chose to launch a war against Israel in September 2000 instead," he said. "The issue wasn't the ability to give them independence, but their desire to get it."

"Instead of a state, Arafat chose to set up a terror regime," Ya'alon continued. "Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] is behaving the same way and exercises political weakness as a strategy."

And what do the Pals. say?

Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), who heads the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel:

"[Former U.S. secretary of state] Condoleezza Rice told me she understood our position about Ariel but that Ma'aleh Adumim was a different matter. I told her, and Livni, that those residents of Ma'aleh Adumim or Ariel who would rather stay in their homes could live under Palestinian rule and law, just like the Israeli Arabs who live among you. They could hold Palestinian and Israeli nationalities. If they want it - welcome. Israeli settlements in the heart of the territories would be a recipe for problems. Israel evacuated all the settlements in Yamit and in the Gaza Strip. All the prime ministers who negotiated with Syria, including Netanyahu, agreed to evacuate all the settlements from [the Golan] Heights. So why is it so difficult for you to evacuate the settlements in the West Bank?

Here are a few pictures:

MK Tzipi Hotovely with Adi Mintz -



MK Robert Ilatov -



Some of the attendees -